RENDER was mentioned in the news of two major German Web sites.

Heise online and taz.de reported about Wikimedia’s plan to build a centralized database that will be shared over all language versions of Wikipedia where the RENDER project is involved.

Read full article on heise online and taz.de

The Economist’s article about the dangers of the internet goes into detail about the so called “filter bubble”, a unique universe of information for each single person, that we can experience everyday on Google, Amazon, Facebook and Co. Our location, interests, previous surf behaviors etc. are taking into account from these sites and we are presented with a personalized result. That sounds good, but is this all we want to have?

Eli Pariser and other critics think this is dangerous and believe that this approach prevents us from seeing and using the full potential of the Internet, not being presented with information that doesn’t fit into our own universe of opinions and interests. Eli Pariser calls this “invisible autopropaganda, indoctrinating us with our own ideas”. In his book “The filter bubble: what the Internet is hiding from you” he goes into detail how such a filtered Internet can be dangerous and how sites can give users more control over their personal data.

Wikipedia is introducing the WikiLove Button. It is already live on the Wikipedia test site and it will be available site-wide on Wednesday June 29th. It appears in the right hand corner of each user’s page, in the form of a little red heart. Users are encouraged to click the button when they come across edits or other on-site activity that deserves commendation.

A click of the button will result in the launch of a Love Interface, in which the user is presented a number of options for what kind of love to send and images to append to a free-text compliment area. The resulting declaration of support is published to the receiving user’s account discussion page and is monitored by top Wikipedia users to prevent misuse.

In the Spiegel Online article from March 3rd, 2011 author Konrad Lischka talks about Facebook, Twitter and Co’s algorithms to filter all displayed content. So it could happen that posts from friends will never be shown for you on Facebook as the algorithm identifies these posts as irrelevant.  Or worse, friends that have been added will disappear as will their posts. Users of social platforms often only realize the fact that algorithms decide what they see after months and therefore they feel patronized and not informed.

The algorithm determines from previously visits to profiles and pages, the number of comments a user creates, user’s visits to profiles/pages etc. how relevant a post is. Simply said, people that like cats will no longer see photos of dogs but are rather presented with pictures and posts from other cat-lovers. Doesn’t sound that bad, but it might become a problem when people use social platforms more and more as their primary sources to get news and opinions. Irrelevant or contrary opinions are simply not displayed and that can create a wrong picture of the world.

Eli Pariser, former Executive Director of MoveOn.org, and the organization’s current Board President, talks about a world where we only see things on the Web of which algorithms have decided that we must see these things – but we will not see what we should see. The article’s author raises another problem: It may seem plausible that people in a specific environment hold back with their opinions. If that happens we lack a different viewpoint – and the digital world seems much more unanimous than it truly is.

Wikipedia ist nicht nur ein Nachschlagewerk, sondern auch eine Datenbank der Informationen. Mit semantischen Techniken versuchen Forscher den Wissensschatz zu heben.

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