[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.