Honestly, macromedia missed the a when they didnt capitalize on the success of Flash much earlier.
Great article. Very interesting poit of view.
I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot this week, especially in relation to Wikipedia. Lots of people say it’s unreliable because anyone can edit it. Of course, the counter argument is that for anything to really stay you need to cite your sources, which of course means that if you are seriously using the information you need to look at those sources and check them out.
However, within schools, in my experience, this is never taught. We’re either told to embrace it, without being told how to take precautions, or told to fear it and leave it alone.
Citing sources and checking them out is becoming ever more important with the Internet. Gone are the days when references were only for scientists and journalists, now every Tom, Dick and Harry needs to know how to do it at a basic level.
I take you left comments on the relevant blogs, advising them of their errors?
With 20/20 hindsight, every error is shockingly obvious.
You can’t check every piece of information yourself, you have to decide to trust certain sources. Nobody here is different – how many reads ACTUALLY downloaded the SDK to see if that tidbit you posted was really in it ? I’m willing to bet that the vast majority, if not all of us, simply assumed that you weren’t lying and didn’t make that little sniplet up, despite the article telling us to do our research.
And how far are you willing or required to go anyways ? Did you blindly copy the SDK text and trust the SDK to be correct ? Or did you do your research and actually tried to use the Download object yourself ? After all, just like the blog, the SDK could be wrong too – and you would have propagated a mistake.
The point is, everyone sets limits as to how much research is necessary, and who/what to trust. Bloggers tend to trust other blogs to be correct when they post something as fact. And if you don’t trust blogs, then why are you reading them anyways ?
Good points Jeff. Yes blogging is not like writing a reference material to some people. Blogging provides that unique insight into how people talking to people and how bad information can get out if soemone does not verify it. Although there are many shortcomings in Silverlight and it feels rushed that they wanted to release just as CS3 was coming out, it does not mean that its not good tech. You must check the APIs and docs from the company itself and usually you will have an answer what is supported or not.
Outride, what I meant to say was that you can not check EVERYTHING. Obviously, if you report some brand new information that is not common knowledge, you should check that before posting it. However, you can barely write a sentence without relying on SOME informations you accept as real without checking them. Let me give you a hugely exaggerated example: you would readily write something like “Java is on average slower than C”. But would you actually take the time to find a credible, scientific study that proves that ? Or would you go by what you consider to be widely accepted fact ?
I’d say there are three categories you have to distinguish between:
Original research (such as the original blog entry), which yes, should clearly be confirmed before accepting as true, unless it comes from a source that you can reasonably assume never to publish erroneous information. An exception would be original research that is not easily confirmed – a complex physical experiment, an expensive study involving massive amounts of resources, etc. In the latter case you can’t really confirm the claims, and have to settle for a “they said” disclaimer.
“He said!” research, such as the thousands of “I read xxx somewhere” blogs, that usually either offer commentary, a new perspective or new insights (like this one does often) or offer little but a quote from the original source. As long as it is made clear where the claim comes from, confirmation of the data/claims is probably not required, although a nice bonus. Still, this level is absolutely slanted towards the amateur section of ‘journalism’, and as such can’t be expected to follow the same standards. Blogs are at best on the level of a school news paper when it comes to professionalism, and to expect more of them is optimistic at best.
Sun/Mirror blogs. There are plenty of blogs that try to look like original research, but can’t even aspire to amateur status. Random people who think too much of themself and too little of others can post just as much as highly intelligent and educated professionals; that is the downside of the internet. Obviously, those kind of people never do any research at all, which doesn’t hinder them to claim their opinion as facts. These could in theory be confused with the first category, but are usually rather easy to spot. Exceptions to this will get covered by the “He said!” category by accident and cause issues like the one that prompted this article.
Obviously, the last category is not restricted to blogs or kids on the internet, but then the internet can’t be the root of ALL evil.
People don’t think for themselves and parrot back what they’ve been told. Chocker.
Funny that many point out the failings of so called professional “journalists” to try and refute the key point in this post.
The point is NOT that bloggers should act like many of the so called “journalists” we hear about in the news. It’s easy to call yourself a journalist just as easy it is to call yourself an “expert”. But if you don’t act journalisticly (is that even a word?) or act expertly, then are you truly a journalist or expert?
The important thing is to do a favor to your readers and do your best to try and follow a basic set of ethics mentioned in the blog post.
Better to act like a true journalist than to just label yourself one.
And when you make a mistake, own up to it. And when others make a mistake and own up to it, cut them some slack. It’s the ones who refuse to admit mistakes that are the problem, as becomes more and more evident every day.
So you are saying that bloggers are just as bad as journalists? For a similar example, witness the Duke prosecutorial misconduct and perjury case (described by the media as the Duke rape case).
Or any stupid health scare, based on one scientist claiming a paper he plans to write in the future will prove that $EVERYDAY_HOUSEHOLD_ITEM causes CANCER BE AFRAID CANCER DONT THINK BE AFRAID!
fact checking is a recurring problem in the blogosphere…thats why some people are starting to call it blogostan
Isn’t it more than possible that the misinformation in the original blog post (now unavailable) was intentional? The blogging phenomenon has become an effective propaganda tool for corporations, politicians and anyone else who has interests to protect. What better way to fire the first salvo in the RIA War?
You know it is funny that you posted about this, because I just recently ran in to the same thing with a football blog claiming that Microsoft forgot to put in the “Save As” button.
http://coderjournal.com/2007/04/fumbled-fumbles-on-the-microsoft-excel-save-as-issue/
The original person at fumbled.org was probably the last person on earth who actually used clippy, but with a little curiosity he could have found the big circular button on Excel and disproved his whole theory. It is pure and simple laziness combined with hatred for something.
The font problem with the big tt’s and ti’s is caused by not having Calibri and the stylesheet using the next substitute font with the same kerning. This stretches the t’s and i’s to make them appear bold. Simple solution is to get Calibri.
When you find information on a blog via google, the problem is that you often lack context.
But when you follow blogs for a while, you end up knowing which ones are reliable and which ones aren’t (the cream rises to the top).
Bloggers aren’t journalists, unless they try to be. Bloggers aren’t pundits, unless they want to be.
Even if the downloader object didn’t exist, the silverlight “movie” can be manipulated by Javascript so you could still get the data via plain old XmlHttpRequest and set the properties as needed. Beyond not doing an due diligence, they didn’t even bother thinking about how it could be done.
For Tim:
“Blame Vista?” is the best reply I’ve seen so far to Gutmann’s paper: http://www.fastsilicon.com/content/view/141/27/
Not written by Microserfs, but very good. I like the part when the author talks about Super Audio CD (Gutmann blames Vista DRM, but SACD don’t work on PCs… because Sony doesn’t sell SACD players for PCs)
Funny thing, Gutmann claimed once he never tried Vista but cannot find the claim anymore (although reported here http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=429). That’s very good for a researcher to speculate without even direct observation. In this last link you will find a mention to another ‘security blogger’ who reported blindly Gutmann observations(?)
Jeff, for some added irony: I have a blog myself where lately I spoke, by using actual screenshots, about usability of Mac, Vista and Linux/Gnome. I don’t need to tell that I’ve been accused by zealots to be biased (one of the argument was: you are wrong since it works on my machine). Point taken: even doing a painstaking job of proofing with facts what you say can have its share of pain (?).
sarcasm
I wonder if I should start simply linking stuff myself… at least is easier
/sarcasm
When comparing blogs to paper publications, you have to qualify which blogs and/or publications you consider. I mean there are blogs which are obviously bogus and full errors, and there are tabloids, sensationalist papers, and propaganda papers that are equally poor. As others have stated though, even in reputable papers like the New York Times, simple fact checking has been poorly done or not done at all in some cases. At least with any kind of credible blog, the blogger provides a hyperlink to his source(s) so readers can fact check themselves, or failing that it is a trivial task to google the subject. I doubt many people fact check anything they read in a paper publication, even if they aren’t gullible gits, because it requires a lot more effort to leave what your doing to go to the computer and look it up. Especially if they are reading a paper somewhere they don’t have computer access.
On an unrelated note, apparently Firefox spell checker does not recognize “hyperlink”, “google”, or “gits.”
A friend worked as a reporter for small papers for while before giving up since it didn’t pay as well as delivering pizzas.
But he saw stories developing and discovered that even “professional journalists” copy from each other extensively. One reporter gets misinformed but writes up this bad information in a compelling way and it becomes the “official” line ever after.
So it isn’t just bloggers.
This highlights two of my biggest blog annoynances.
My first pet peeve is exactly what Jeff is talking about. People that spout highly emotionally charge rants without doing a shred of their own research, except to perhaps read the comments on slashdot or digg.
Second, the fact that people confuse bloggers for journalists. Nothing in this article should come as a surprise to anyone yet people still try to equate blogger = journalist. Remember, blogging really grew out of people using livejournal to post their diary. In other words, random rants and general running off at the mouth. There are a few bloggers that attempt to have some code of ethics but not many, people would rather write “editorial-style” blog entries than anything with real facts. While real journalists have a lot of the same faults, such as copying each other, they can at least be held accountable. It’s their job to be accurate and fact check and there is a process you can use to call them out. On the other hand a blogger is just some random person that can say whatever they like, with as much or little fact checking as they like, and there is zero recourse.