Wikisurveillance--and a little tabloid journalism

There's never a shortage of hijinks in cyberspace--people posting admiring things about themselves while pretending to be a third party, or preposterous (and often slanderous) rumors of the type studied and debunked by the admirable Snopes.com.

But things are getting more complicated out there. Many of you have read that VP-nominee Sarah Palin's Wikipedia page received such a makeover--beginning 24 hours before the announcement of her selection--and that Wikipedia suspended public updates of her entry and is allowing only senior editors to make changes.

Many other VPs-in-waiting had their pages polished a bit in recent weeks. But Palin's page was treated to an extensive series of tweaks (including things like downplaying her beauty-pageant history). The most interesting of these were thirty changes made over five hours in the 24 hours preceding her nomination by someone who posts by the handle of Young Trigg*. (Trig, with one 'g', is the name of Sarah's youngest child; see the Yellow Journalism section at the bottom of this post.) The "Young Trigg" account was then retired. Some folks are jumping to the conclusion that Young Trigg is Sarah Palin herself, which seems patently absurd to me--I assume she had better things to do with her time in the hours before her nomination was announced.

It wouldn't be surprising at all were it someone from the McCain campaign, and I find it to be far from a scandal--in a business where outright lies are used as attacks on one's competitor, spiffing up a Wikipedia page seems like a minor sin. All of the changes Young Trigg made were certainly favorable to the candidate, but they were also arguably "true" within the Wikipedia guidelines. I imagine the public's reaction to what is being promoted as Wikigate will be, "So?"

The truly interesting part of this story has to do with how this last-minute burnishing came to light. The Washington Post became aware of the massive edits of Palin's page through a firm called Cyveillance. Cyveillance is a firm that watches internet traffic, and one of the things they monitor is updating of Wikipedia pages. According to the article in the Post:

Cyveilliance normally trawls the Internet for data on behalf of clients seeking open source information in advance of a corporate acquisition, an important executive hire, or brand awareness. For example, an executive updating his Wikipedia page or resume on Monster.com may be an indication of that person's plans to change jobs, or even that the company is in financial trouble.

Gudaitis said the company decided to monitor the veep picks on a lark to test the applicability of its open source methods in the sphere of politics. In addition to the Wiki pages, the company monitored chatter on other Internet sites that discussed the observations, movements and locations of potential VP candidates.

Blogs by pilots and others in the airline and private aviation industry also are a font of open source information, Gudaitis said.

My, my. We are being watched in ways we never suspected. Roger Morris has admitted to spending most of his summer setting up new internet sites for himself. Do you suppose Roger's now on some sort of Cyveillance watch list?

So, don't go order six copies of your own book online, hoping to bump your Amazon ranking for the day from 4,333,286 up to 2,522,314. (Can six books do this? Yep.) Someone is tracking all this. And it will come up when you're nominated as VP. Or for the Booker. Or the next time you apply for a loan.

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* The Tabloid Journalism Section of this Blog: (I tried a yellow font for that, but it wasn't readable. You'll have to settle for purple prose.)

One of the first things you hear about Sarah Palin is that she is so committed to her anti-abortion stance that she bore her youngest child, Trig, despite the fact they knew from amniocentesis that he had Down's Syndrome.

There have been rumors for some time that the child is actually the son of one of her teenaged daughters, Bristol, and that Mrs Palin claims it as her own. This seems on the face of it to be a preposterous story, but various events can be added up in such a way that it all hangs together. If you want to follow this tale out through its various branches, here's a good place to start.

The more I think about this story, the more I like it; it sure would be fun to write as a novel. But if you want to run with it, don't let me stand in your way--I have too much on my plate as it is.

Alas, I seriously doubt that it's true. The rumor has been around for some time, and you can bet the McCain campaign went over it with a microscope before they selected her.

Politicians only make careless, unexamined moves once they've already taken office.

McCain Chooses Palin as Running Mate

That's the News Alert headline for the NY Times that came shooting into my e-mail this morning.

As it turns out, though, there's some other Palin out there. It seems she's the governor of Alaska.

Every so often, the Republicans show a keen sense of humor. (For example, nominating Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Or nominating Dan Quayle for anything whatsoever.)

Unfortunately, the sense of humor doesn't extend quite as far as asking Michael to be the vice-presidential candidate. Too bad. They might have swayed my vote.

Questions Writers Get Asked

Lawrence Block said one of the only things certain in life is that if you admit to being a writer, someone will ask a silly question. My favorite Q&A of his was:

Have I ever read anything you've written? (I don't know--I said a was a writer, not a psychic.)

Emma Darwin has a post on her favorite dumb questions and her answers to them. Check it out, it'll cheer you up.

An Open Question to the Community

I have a friend who is involved in starting up a website oriented towards artists and writers. He contacted me to ask what blogs and websites I considered useful and important for writers, probably with a view to posting links.

I gave him a list of some I considered valuable--and, of course, referred him to the esteemed cast of bloggers over on the sidebar of this blog. But I thought I'd throw out the question to all of you folks as well. Are there any writing-related sites you consider especially valuable or prominent?

At Last I'm a REAL Writer

The paperbacks of Shock and Awe have arrived on my doorstep.

Nice. Shiny. And with a kind blurb from thriller master James Barrington (for which I am grateful).

You can't see it in the pics here, but the glossy gold title on the front is embossed. I spent the morning running my fingertips across the raised letters as if there might be messages in Braille lurking there.

It's a childhood fixation, I admit. But real writers to me were people who wrote books you could go out and buy--and in the benighted part of California where I grew up, there weren't any stores where you could wander in and buy hardback novels. (Not that I could have afforded any.)

And there they are: Paperbacks.

I suppose a lot of what I do is to please the ten-year-old lurking inside me. (Sad, but true.) Now if they'd just put me on a rack in a supermarket, I'd really have arrived.

One More Post On This Topic And I'll Shut Up

Probably. Unless I change my mind.

Way down in the comment trail (on my original question about writing someone else's book), Emma Darwin observed there would be a difference in impact on your real writing depending on whether you could knock it off in one six-weeker, like Faulks, or whether you had to spend most of the year churning out a half-dozen Mills & Boon Harlequin romance novels. That's a salient point.

But, then, who knows? One probably wouldn't like to find out such a thing, but perhaps one would find the world of Mills & Boon to be where one's talents really bloomed. (I, for one, always worried that if I ever discovered what I was 'supposed to do with my life,' that it would turn out to be something I didn't respect. Even harboring such thoughts says something peculiar about me, but I try not to think about it. Yeah, sure, the unexamined life isn't worth living, but there's no reason to get carried away wit the whole thing.)

All this put me in mind of the rather strange case of Robert Graves. Today Graves is remembered, and still admired, for his novels, especially the pair of Claudius novels. But Graves himself viewed his novels as potboilers, paid hackwork he tossed off to support his real and lasting art, his poetry.

Now there's a sweet irony. Today, Graves' poetry is hardly remembered, and his novels are his lasting legacy.

(I'm putting my hands over my ears so I don't have to hear the outraged screams from aficianados of his poetry. On the other hand, there can't be all that many, can there?)

A Note From My Sister

My sister comments on my blog every so often, but is for some reason reluctant to get into the actual Comment trail. I'm not sure why--deniability, perhaps--but I thought I'd share the e-mail she dropped me about my previous posts on writing for hire:

David,

Had to comment on your blog (cuz that's what it is there for!). I think writing for a soap opera would be wicked fun. If anyone offers you said gig and you don't want it, send them my way. I would love to spew out five hours a week involving sweatless sex, artificial lust, attractive drug addiction, furfree beastiality, and alien baby abductions - all with limited special effects and tons of lip gloss. It would be just like the high school only lunch would be catered.