What happens if you’re a group that doesn’t like the collababorative nature of the internet, particularly sites like Wikipedia, where members keep changing the “truth”? You create your own media of course. In a twist that’s reminiscent of war time propaganda, a chap called Andy Schafly created a mirror of Wikipedia called Conservapedia that wasn’t subject to Wikipedia’s apparent liberal leftiness and all round bias.

The Guardian’s Charles Arthur spotted a development on the story, reported on Ars Technica and Panda’s Thumb, where an argument has brewed up about a scientific paper by Richard Lenski, who has been been “conducting a long-term experiment in bacterial evolution, one that has encompassed over 30,000 generations of bacteria going back over 20 years.”

It all kicked off when Andy Schafly posted an open letter on Coversvapedia calling access to Lenski’s data (he’s not that keen on evolution, see) and it would appear that doubt was cast over the validity of the experiment. Lenski didn’t take kindly to the accusation and replied in great (very great) detail about the experiment, objecting to Schafly’s letter. It’s worth a read if you have a few minutes.

As a side issue to the argument at hand (my GSCE Physics doesn’t permit me to enter the debate in any way), it raises an interesting question about the merits of controlling the message.

Follow the commandments - or else

Schafly and his group clearly didn’t like their entries being constantly being re-written and given the strength of opinion against Conservative Christianity and creationism in general, it’s not surprising that they decided to create their own version of Wikipedia.

When you visit the site, however, you’re not immediately made to feel sympathetic to their view. You’re told to read the strict Conservapedia Commandments before posting an entry “Posting of obscenity here is punishable by up to 10 years in jail …The IP addresses of vandals will be reported to authorities” (!), the entry on Lenski says he “has displayed annoyance, arrogance, and elitism when asked to release the information”. Meanwhile, a section on Wikipedia cites “liberal bias, deceit, silly gossip, and blatant errors on Wikipedia”.

I don’t think anyone would disagree with the silly gossip and blatant errors on Wikipedia (it does also have the tone of chippiness quite a lot of the time), but it’s a bold claim to say that the founders have a deliberate policy for hiding the truth. Wikipedia is a group edited by the masses. Unfortunately that means the masses have the biggest voice.

Good idea, badly deployed

Creating their own platform to voice their opinion, the team behind Conservapedia made a potentially smart move from a PR perspective. Given their situation and opinions they were probably unlikely to get a fair crack of the whip on Wikipedia. The problem is that they’ve gone too far and the site itself, in terms of tone, language and content, feels quite extremist and far too highly moderated. Yes, they’ll have a well controlled message. But will they attract new members or get a fairer hearing in blogs and the media? Probably not.

Oh and the site accuses the “leftist” Guardian of getting “hysterical, as though there is something wrong with wanting to see what the public has paid for.” But I’m sure they’ve had worse levelled at them in the past.

It’s rare that on my short commute to work that I read a technology story headlined in the Metro, but low and behold, they’d covered ICANN’s changes in its domain name policy. Well I say covered, it was leading on a tabloid style .sex and .xxx angle. Ah well.

For some reason the story’s not on their website, so over to ZDNet to explain:

At its meeting in Paris, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a not-for-profit organisation that oversees the naming scheme for websites, voted to accept a proposal that will allow companies to purchase new top-level domain names ending in almost whatever suffix they choose.

So, for example, instead of being restricted to sites ending in .com or .org., eBay could have a site that ends in .ebay, or New York City could end its website address with .nyc.

The new naming process will begin in 2009. The first suffixes will probably be given to businesses and other major organisations. Countries are expected to keep their specific suffixes, but, as in the example above, cities could also get individualised URLs, such as .london or .chicago.

Of course, it’s an opportunity to pull in more cash, as the new top level domains could be priced at £50,000 or more. I’m on the fence on this one - the public has only just got used to .com and .co.uk and it could prove to be a nightmare for businesses looking to cover their bases with their online identity (cybersquatting heaven). The ongoing saga about the sex.com domain (which eventually sold for more than $12 million in 2006) could be superseded by a new auction for imaginately named URLs.

A couple of years ago I was at a rainy football game at Craven Cottage with editor of ITPRO Chris Green. He showed me this funky new application called Twitter on his smartphone. Like when Peter Kay talks about garlic bread, Chris said it was the future.

I checked it out later, had a play on it, but didn’t really see the benefit, preferring blogging, Facebook (it was new then) and later, mobile blogging via text. Twitter always felt a bit too much like stalking. More recently a lot more people have been talking about Twitter, including Andrew Grill, who raised the question on his blog, “Is twitter a serious business tool or just a complete waste of time?” A good question really. I’d always been more inclined to the latter.But it seems that Andrew’s a fan:

I’m a bit slow out of the traps on this one, but stumbling across the cartoon above from gapingvoid motivated me to write something. Marketing Week reports that buzz marketing - the ‘art’ of creating a buzz about a brand, these days largely online - is set to tighten up with some new regulations.

A new consumer protection regulation, called the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading 2008, is set to change the face of buzz marketing forever, and heralds the demise of certain stealth techniques used by the discipline.

…Blogs such as Coca-Cola’s “The Zero Movement” (created in Australia and later revealed as a work of the soft drinks company itself), or the one called Wal-Marting Across America (apparently produced by two ordinary citizens on a road trip visiting Wal-Mart stores, but which turned out to have been sponsored by the retailer) will be banned.

The new regulations will make seeding positive messages about a brand in a blog - without making it clear that the message has been created by or on behalf of a brand - illegal… Seeding internet virals in a manner that implies you are a member of the public will also be banned.

The problem, of course, lies in the issue of deliberately misleading consumers. The blosphere lit up when an allegedly genuine video entitled Why every guy should buy their girlfriend WiFit popped up on YouTube (and has had over 4 million views, and a whole host of spoof immitators, at last count). Nintendo vigorously denied any involvement, but no one seems to believe them.

Most online marketers would agree that the world of buzz marketing does need more transparency, but whether natural forces will manage this on their own or if we need new laws is open to debate.

PR agents are making a dog’s dinner of dealing with bloggers as they are adapting to translating media relations to the online world. At least that’s the conclusion after reading an an interesting article on Problogger.net. PR consultant Erik Sebellin-Ross basically pitches his case to bloggers about why they’re being targets by PR agencies and explaining how the process works, from a PR pespective.The article gets interesting when you taking a peak at the comments, where bloggers get their right of reply. It doesn’t always make for happy reading. Generally, the blogsosphere (at least the sample of commenters here) seems confused as to why they’re being targeted - or worse still, the manner in which they’re being targeted.