[bbrizzi]

What a bad article...

The author talks about something (google indexing) she admits she doesn't understand.

She doesn't understand that by editing her Wikipedia article, the google crawler would update her infobox data pretty quickly.

Her birth data was added to the wikipedia entry today and the google infobox is fixed. It took less than 2 hours. Not something worth whining about.

[nathanb]

Yes, the fact that a reasonably well-respected writer and English professor doesn't understand the inner workings of Google's infobox means that her blog post is terrible.

This arrogant and dismissive response highlights the problem even better than her mild and humorous complaint (which, for the record, I didn't see as whining).

Perhaps she did understand that editing her Wikipedia page would correct the problem but also understood that Wikipedia's policies frown on editing one's own page, even to correct factual errors such as birth and death dates. Or perhaps she was entirely ignorant that she could even edit Wikipedia. Or perhaps she knew but didn't care and only wanted to write a humorous and potentially thought-provoking blog post.

Why are you so quick to defend an algorithm which produced a wrong answer and detract a reasonable and intelligent human being?

[bbrizzi]

Well, the Wikipedia article's history shows that she edited her own article quite a few times, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.

I don't see how the error detracted her in any way, and, as I highlighted it, it was a quick 2-minute fix.

I also don't think the Google algorithm is to blame. If her Wikipedia entry had followed the style guidelines ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Biogr... ), her birth date would have been parsed correctly.

For the record, I didn't find her post funny or even particularly well-written.

I guess if there's something that can be taken from this article it's "Program or be Programmed". The author didn't understand the inner workings of the Google Factbox data, so she assumed computers control her identity and her online information. However, with a little more computer knowledge, you can figure out how to control this data yourself.

Humans control the computers; it's not the other way around.

[finnp]

The Google algorithm is to blame. This was probably the version, where the false data came from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amy_Wilentz&d.... There is no big mistake in the style, it's just that the birthday is missing.

The Google algorithm took the results from the middle of the text, even though the birthdates are always right behind the name. I guess they did something like take the first dates instead of just focusing on the part behind the name. This way the algorithm was more flexible but on the other hand as we see more likely to make mistakes.

[leephillips]

"Wikipedia's policies frown on editing one's own page, even to correct factual errors"

Indeed, Wikipedia editors have informed notable people that they are not authoritative sources for information about themselves and should not correct mistakes on the site about their own lives.

[542458]

I don't understand how the engine in my car works.

I might complain to my mechanic that it won't start. To him, diagnosing a bad spark plug and swapping in a new one is a simple matter of five minutes, but to me it might as well be heart surgery. That doesn't mean I was wrong to complain.

She knew something was wrong, but admittedly didn't understand all the details. She complained to bring it to the internet's attention, after which it was swiftly fixed. This doesn't mean she's done anything foolish or wrong - she was simply pointing out a problem.

[Strang]

I don't think she is really whining; she's just using dry humor.

And she is raising an important point, and one that keeps recurring with Google: what do you do when their automated processes are not enough?

She should not have to edit Wikipedia to resolve this situation. That is not a reasonable expectation of anyone.

In fact, she chose the only solution that usually gets through to Google: blog/tweet about something and get enough exposure.

[Ensorceled]

Actually it's a great article for exactly the reason you give for it being a bad article.

She has no idea how to tell Google to stop saying to the world she is dead. There are "this is wrong" buttons that she clicks that don't do anything, apparently.

This is actually the point of her article. She doesn’t know how to fix the problem and Google (the robot) isn't providing tools to fix it.

Yes, you and I know that if she goes to a high traffic site such as wikipedia, google will scan that very quickly. But that's a hack, albeit a very simple one, but still a hack requiring a lot of knowledge of how Google, and the web, works.

[protomyth]

No, this is what a normal person would do because they don't understand google indexing.

Normal people look at the piece of the world that is wrong. If given the opportunity, they click on that same piece of world (the "infobox" in this case) to fix it. Google doesn't provide an indication in the infobox where they are getting their "facts". Other than talking to people (something not available to everyone), how would a person know what to do to change this?

Second, it was my understanding that editing your own wikipedia entry is not acceptable.

[DanBC]

> What a bad article...

But a good reminder of just how little understanding most people have of The Internet.