Japanese Bureaucrats Reprimanded for Wikipedia Editing 177
sufijazz writes "Six bureaucrats in the Japanese agricultural ministry have been reprimanded for working on the job ... for Wikipedia. The six officials were publicly chastised for editing hundreds of Wikipedia entries during work hours. These included over 250 entries about robots in anime. '"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said a ministry official, Tsutomu Shimomura ... The ministry's internal inquiry followed recent media allegations that a growing number of Japanese public servants were contributing to the internet encyclopaedia, which anyone can edit, often to reflect their personal views. The ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and slapped a ministry-wide order to prohibit access to Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry, Mr Shimomura said. '"
People have been goofing off at work for (Score:5, Funny)
[1] Thog, you to kill it, not fuck it. Eat first, fun later [Bonk!]
Re:People have been goofing off at work for (Score:5, Funny)
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[citation needed]
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Gotta catch 'em all!
Tell me.. (Score:2, Funny)
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Now here's some news (Score:4, Insightful)
The ministry, however, did not object to their limited contributions on the World Trade Organisation and free trade agreements.
I was about to have a slashtantrum about this not being news. As everyone should be thinking "You can't be wasting your employers time working for anyone else like that, even if it is Wikipedia." That would have been 'nuff said.
However this above statement disturbs me. It's okay if they spend time updating WTO and free trade articles, but not anime pages? They shouldn't be updating either pages. Anime pages are one thing, and they can and should be reprimanded for that. But I shudder at the thought of governments paying employees to update Wikipedia. Why aren't the head bureaucrats getting reprimanded by someone!!! ugh.
Re:Now here's some news (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked for an employer once that had an IT department which banned things all the time. Including Slashdot. One day I got in trouble for using ssh tunneling through HTTPS so I could have unfiltered Internet. That was the last straw.. I threatened to quit. My employer agreed to have the restrictions removed for my machine's ip address only. I was in such a foul mood by then that I demanded they remove all the restrictions, for everyone, and they refused. Next day I tended my resignation.
Thankfully, they saw reason, tore up my resignation and removed the web proxy. People in the office who had heard nothing about my annoyance were heard to remark how much faster "the internet" was now.
About a year after that event I started working remotely for the same company because my partner's work commitments had moved us interstate. I had very rare contact with my coworkers during this time, but occasionally my employer would fly me in for conferences and celebrations. I got told that IT had now banned all workstation-to-workstation communications in the office to stem the use of a scribble-board chat program. Apparently people were using the scribble-board to draw pictures of penises (as is inevitable) and one of the likes-to-think-he-is-upwardly-mobile set was worried this could lead to a sexual harassment issue.
Something else happened to spark it.. I don't remember what, but the result was that virtually the entire developer staff threatened to quit, then went on strike, as a result of this stupid scribble-board program. Management refused to budge on the issue, but by this point cheap routers and long lengths of cable had been brought from home and a makeshift "dark net" had been setup entirely for the use of this silly drawing/chat program. Some of the guys sent me pictures.
Eventually, after IT cut off the Internet access, things came to a head and management buckled under the pressure. They got to keep their stupid scribble program and the Internet remained unfiltered. But, to this day, IT support in that office is pitiful. If you want RAM or, god forbid, software installed, you do it yourself. Of course, the geeks don't care.. the people most affected by the poor IT support is the likes-to-think-he-is-upwardly-mobile set.
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While it sounds like the company overall sucked at the way it was handling these, in this particular instance, that kind of behavior COULD lead to a sexual harassment suit. All it takes is for one person to express that they feel this is unprofessional (which it is) and then management would HAVE
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It's simply not our problem.
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Just be happy... (Score:2)
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However this above statement disturbs me. It's okay if they spend time updating WTO and free trade articles, but not anime pages? They shouldn't be updating either pages. Anime pages are one thing, and they can and should be reprimanded for that. But I shudder at the thought of governments paying employees to update Wikipedia. Why aren't the head bureaucrats getting reprimanded by someone!!! ugh.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that the agricultural ministry has some expertise in the WTO and international trade issues. Individuals contributing to a public information resource on issues that they are professionally acquainted with seems rather ordinary... even commonplace. I also wouldn't be surprised if these individuals had a lot of other things they were doing as well (and would find themselves hard pressed to justify not seeing to other tasks in order to favor time editing Wikipedia entries).
sounds familiar (Score:2)
Wrong Ministry (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh, wait, they aren't real, you say? Well then...
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New meme's abrewin'? (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot, for instance, is certainly *not* in charge of Gundam.
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Re:New meme's abrewin'? (Score:4, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, Gundam is not in charge of YOU.
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i can literally see this becoming a meme. (Score:2, Funny)
srsly, what were they smoking, err thinking ?
I Would Like to Know... (Score:2, Funny)
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Tsutomu Shimomura? (Score:3, Informative)
Not the famous hacker I take it?
Another bullet point on his resume (Score:2)
Book and movie to follow WITH Gundam suit!
Tin foil hat time (Score:2)
Those clever Japanese, telling the truth as a lie, and burying the Gundam budget in the one for the agriculture ministry. Its the SR71 and Area 51 all over again, I tell you!
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Different Tsutomu Shimomura (Score:3, Informative)
Repoat (Score:5, Funny)
I lolled.. hard!
My new sig (Score:2)
They Omitted the Most Interesting One (Score:3, Informative)
Someone at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare was busted for editing the Japanese Wiki entry for Nanatsuiro Drops [wikipedia.org], a pornographic video game.
I will also note that the Japanese media reported this over a month ago.
ROW ROW FIGHT DAH POWAH (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
If they had gotten in trouble for doing it not during work hours I could see it being censorship, but they were doing it during work hours.
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Sure, some people were wasting their time doing that stuff, but it is an encyclopedia, for crying out loud. Disabling access to the site from the ministry because a handful few were obsessed about spending time on it during work? Definitely over the top.
It's like blocking Slashdot bec
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Censorship (Score:4, Interesting)
"It's like blocking Slashdot because a bunch of people were commenting obsessively."
Yeah, a lot of offices do that. Along with other potential time wasting web sites. Its not because of censorship, its because they want their employees doing their job instead of surfing the net. Plus it wastes network resources, which believe it or not are not free. Many employers ban employees from using their network for personal use.
And yes, surfing the Wikipedia is almost always personal use. It is not a legitimate resource that you would use while writing a proposal you intend to turn in to your boss. Yes it certainly has its uses, but that is not one of them.
Re:Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
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While I don't have specific knowledge of your job function, I'm going to assume you do some sort of customer service job and your responsibilities involve answering questions your clients may have. If I pay someone in customer service to answer a question for me and then find that they are looking up the answer in an encyclopedia (be it the Wikipedia or World Book), I'm not going to be very happy with them.
The Wikipedia (or World Book, or any other encyclopedia) is great for looking up a subject you hea
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Client, a fairly major bank, was actually very happy. They got the appropriate person quickly and with a minimum o
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"Interestingly, you assume wrongly. Perhaps rereading what I wrote might be nice?"
I did. The only hint you gave as to your job function was that you are asked questions by clients. If you get offended when people get the wrong idea regarding your job responsibilities, write more clearly.
"For instance, I was once asked if our product supported BPEL. I had no idea what that actually was, but a short look at Wikipedia helped point me in the right direction."
But you had a general idea of the domain he
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But, no, not really. I didn't need the sort of in-depth information required from a domain specific publication. All I needed was a basic understanding of what was being asked for, then I sent it to some
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" Again, you assume wrongly, as I'm not offended. Seems to be a bit of a pattern forming. It's probably best not to assume you know something based on very little information. The problem as I see it is not with what I wrote, but with the way you are reading the information set forth in a fairly brief comment."
Then WTF are you whining about? Clearly you are offended and are just making a poor attempt to hide that fact for some reason, or you are a whiny jackass. You pick which.
I had stated from the s
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Your expectations are too high. I've done customer service in the past. If I ever sound cynical about my employers it is largely do to my work in the customer service field. My professional experience has been inadequate product training with little or no resources available to the employees to refe
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Clients hell! (Score:2)
It works for me (Score:2)
> it'd work!" or "it gets gradually better!" or, worst of all, "it's popular, so it must be
> good!" So is Windows.
How about "it works for me".
When I first heard of Wikipedia, I immediately dismissed it as "totally unworkable", will be dominated by trolls, kooks and spammers, based on my experience with how Usenet was destroyed.
So I ignored it, until Google started directing me to Wikipedia articles, and I noti
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Not sure how to respond to your concerns, as they are just vague hand-waving, with no specific evidence to back up your arguments.
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1. Try reading the verifiability policy [wikipedia.org] before posting this sort of rubbish. Nowhere does it say that the verifiability of a particular topic can be satisfied by "sufficient Google hits indicate belief in Greek gods". If you can find reliable sources (e.g. the EB, or perhaps an encyclopaedia of mythology) then that will be more than enough. There seems to be confusion here between the "Google test" for notability of websites and other topics that can be referenced from other s
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Also note, that Wikipedia often violates its own rules. For an obscure topic, it could take days, weeks, even months for someone with sufficient knowledge to tag an article as having complete crap content. And even then the content probably wont be removed, but a generic "This article contains complete bullshit. We're not saying what part is crap, jus
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Wikipedia is a particularly good encyclopedia because its con
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With regards to this topic I'm kind of embarrassed to be so far behind the curve, since I live in Japan and I should have heard this story a day or two before it got to the
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Unless doing research on the Internet is part of your job description, then almost everything one does on the Internet (as opposed to an Intranet) is for personal use. It would make more sense for companies to not offer Internet access at all, or just have
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I'd suggest the only jobs that dont implicitly include doing research on the internet today would be those for whom you dont even need to have finished primary school to be qualified for.
Internet access has bypassed having an education in importance for how well educated and informed your workforce is. Educations fade, get outdated, and the human brain is notoriously bad at accurate recollection of rarely used data, things that internet
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"Unless doing research on the Internet is part of your job description, then almost everything one does on the Internet (as opposed to an Intranet) is for personal use."
I would disagree with that. There are plenty of legitimate resources on the net. For instance as a Java programmer, I often find myself accessing the official JDK Javadoc and related resources from SUN.
"And as for the censorship issue. Yep, it is censorship. It doesn't matter whether it may be justified or not, but it still is censors
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And as for the censorship issue. Yep, it is censorship. It doesn't matter whether it may be justified or not, but it still is censorship. You could look up that word on wikipedia.org if it is not being censored from you.
No, it would be censorship if the site were being blocked for its content. Instead, it's being blocked because it's wasting their employees' time. An extreme response, yes, but hardly censorship.
And why not through in one last rebuttal, even though it may seem quite redundant to the / community; Wikipedia and Slashdot are not bandwidth hogs. Sorry mate but your "wastes network resources" has not weight with me.
Good for you, but it does have weight with some network admins/employers. Whether it has weight with you is not the issue here.
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Redefining the meaning of words to match one's own tastes and standards is quite common and unfortunate.
From (the censored) Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
In the case of employees miss-using company time, well that is a completely different issue. Whether you agree
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Justifiable censorship (Score:2)
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But yeah, I suppose if you're willing to put up with them blocking your access to things instead of just quitting and going to work for an employer who is less of a nazi then they can get away with anything.
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To use a real world example. I work in the business equipment industry (copiers/printers/scanners/MFPs). The only kinds of scanning I was f
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I don't know how you came to this quite remarkable conclusion, but I think that there is a flaw in your thinking somewhere. Increasingly Wikipedia IS a legitimate resource for getting a first take on a subject that one is not familiar with. I wouldn't base an important decision entirely on what the Wikipedia says, but as a star
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"don't know how you came to this quite remarkable conclusion, but I think that there is a flaw in your thinking somewhere. Increasingly Wikipedia IS a legitimate resource for getting a first take on a subject that one is not familiar with. "
If your boss is paying you to write a proposal on something, you had better already be at least familiar with the subject. Or at least familiar enough with the general subject area to be able to find legitimate sources without its help.
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If your boss is paying you to write a proposal on something, you had better already be at least familiar with the subject. Or at least familiar enough with the general subject area to be able to find legitimate sources without its help.
Why? In all too many cases, if you're working on a proposal to be presented to management, the wikipedia articles on the topic will contain far more info
Area of expertice (Score:2)
And often what wo do (including writing proposals) is stuff that involves both our "area of expertise" and something we are less familiar with.
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Especially when you consider the fact that it is a bloody encyclopedia, not a porn site (it may amount to the same amount of time-wasted, but still, it would be of consequence to others in the ministry who may genuinely use Wikipedia as a resource).
We can't go having well-educated public servants!
Seriously, if they're that concerned about it-- run HTTP to Wikipedia through a proxy. Disable edits. I can see why they would just block it-- this is a knee-jerk reaction and blocking the whole site is fast and easy-- but it's still a stupid thing to do.
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To be fair, almost all Wikipedia content is available in non-editable form in various places. For example at answers.com (for the English edition at least). Blocking Wikipedia would ensure that people don't use time on editing.
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In TFA "the civil servants together made 408 entries ... since 2003".
So six civil servants made 408 entries in 3 years. An average of 22 entries per man-year.
Assume one hour per entry, they were goofing off for less than one hour every two weeks. Lots of workers goof off for at least that every day. Were these guys really worse than their colleagues? Or just unlucky
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The true irony being that they were editing trivial pages from work computers for fun. Whereas in all probability their bosses or agents are altering more serious pages from anonymous computers to avoid being seen as tampering w
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Man, with attitudes like this, no wonder the Japanese are overtaking Americans economically...
Hmm, this sounds familiar... (Score:3, Funny)
CmdrTaco said it best: Our uptime, your downtime
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Wait, the article is about the Japanese goofing off at work, and you find a way to point the finger at lazy Americans?
Oh, I see what you did there... [imageshack.us]
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they aren't prevented from doing the edits, they just have to do it in THEIR OWN TIME. government computers and resources are not there to contribute to wikipedia.
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Yeah, sure.
No, people are too quick to give up their rights without thinking back to the reasons. If there was a ministry-wide obsession, fine. But six people and everyone in the ministry (in a democracy, no less) is banned from accessing the website? And people do not think this is a bit ex
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They are at work.
I've never heard of the right to unfiltered internet access at the workplace...
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2. the work place is not a democracy 3. they haven't given up any rights at all - they can still edit to their hearts content FROM HOME.
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2. The work place may not be a democracy, but it is the *ministry* of a democratic country that's banned the site for everyone working at that ministry.
3. It is the fact that the actions of a few have caused them to block access to the encyclopedia to everyone else. If they did not want people editing, there are other ways of doing it, rather than instituting a ministry-wide ban.
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Obsessively? Just a few messages above yours, someone pointed out that if you did the math, these people were averaging about one edit every two weeks. That hardly qualifies as an obsession. It's more like "I don't have anything to do for the next few hours; how about I hop over to wikipedia and contribute a few paragraphs to something fun."
When
So which ministry is in charge of Gundam then? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why is this on the frontpage of slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I know: it really is that simple.
Because nerds waste plenty of time on the internet (Score:2)
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But wait until they're done correcting the "Seppuku" entry in Wikipedia to remove the death requirement.
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