Is Xanga a good internet neighbor?
Xanga.com: The Conclusion (2), a follow-up story to Xanga.com: A Plagiarism Nightmare? (1) , suggests otherwise:
"In the end, we can not count on Xanga as an ally against plagiarism or, sadly, other kinds of abuse. This could mean bad things for the future of Xanga, especially as splogging branches out to new services, and certainly means nothing good for the rest of the Web." (2)
The problem? According to the Plagiarismtoday.com, Xanga could do be doing some things better. Like registering itself according to the requirements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act:
“First, I discovered that they were not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, a requirement of the DMCA (PDF), and then sought out to contact their abuse team, the typical next step when official contact information isn’t available.” (1)
And mention is made that the fax number that Xanga has registered with its domain is misleading:
“It was then that I began to consider sending a fax to Xanga in hopes that leaving a paper trail my garter more attention. I returned to the whois page and made a startling discovery: The fax number is false. Instead of a legitimate fax number, Xanga listed simply "123 123 1234".
While a fax number is not a requirement to register a domain name and private registrations are common (Plagiarismtoday.com uses one for that matter) all contact information provided is supposed to be a valid means of getting in touch with the individuals in charge. So long as the service that handles my private registration is functioning properly, all information in my whois serves as valid contact data.
Large companies, generally, are held to a higher standard than private individuals when it comes to registering domains. Since they host content for other people, they have a higher responsibility to be transparent for the sake of copyright holders, law enforcement and anyone else that might need to contact them.” (1)
But the core trouble, according to Plagiarism.com, is that Xanga lacks the manpower to deal with reports of abuse. Too many millions of accounts (45 million by some estimates) and too few employees (12 to 20 according to estimates) to investigate reports of abuse.
Let’s look at these claims.
It does appear that Xanga is not listed with the Directory of Service Provider Agents for Notification of Claims of Infringement. Is it really a legal requirement? I don’t know for sure. But it’s also clear that not all other major blogs and social networks are registered either. MySpace is but Friendster isn’t. LiveJournal is but Blogger isn’t. So what is a realistic expectation for use of this resource?
And, yes, Xanga has a phoney fax number. Personally, I don’t care! But I suppose for some it might be more helpful either to remove it or provide a good number.
And the manpower issue? Undoubtedly true. Xanga is absolutely overwhelmed by abuse reports and violation of terms of use reports and concerned-with-my-child’s-safety reports. But is the solution just to throw more ‘manpower’ at the problem? Or, as John is hoping, will the “Wisdom of Xangans” , that is, the Xanga community en masse rating and flagging itself, provide enough concise intelligence so that current staff (or just a modestly expanded staff) can come to grips with this controversy of non- or untimely response to complaints?
Technically speaking, I believe that John and the Xanga programming team can close some serious loopholes and make the Flag and Ratings systems viable. But the real question is: how many Xangans will actually make use of these feedback systems?
In talking of the wisdom of crowds, John mentions an example where 800 people collectively and accurately guess the weight of an ox. But 800, statistically speaking, is a large number! Large sample numbers, like 800, especially if they represent a random sample of an even larger population are, indeed, accurate predictors of true population parameters. But small sample numbers, like 1 or 10 or 20, are questionable as accurate predictors or indicators.
Will the average Xanga site get 800 ratings? Or 80? Or 8?
(The remaining discussion here below refers to the Rating System only. The Flagging System has related but not precisely the same issues with response numbers.)
As a statistician (I was a stats prof in a college graduate program for many years), I knew and taught how response size has huge implications for statistical significance. Really small sample numbers (most statisticians suggest this means less than 30) are notoriously less reliable for inferring accurate indications of values or trends from a large population. So if only an occasional self-selected blogger leaves a rating, then ratings will not be accurate indicators of anything.
Hence, the whole Rating System scheme is hedged on a huge (big number) response to it.
I’ve only gotten 2 site ratings so far and that is statistically useless. And if it takes me 2 or 3 years to amass 30 ratings or more, then that’s useless, too, since then you are averaging “too old” ratings with “too new” ones and, over that 2 or 3 years time, I might have transformed myself from current meekness to future EXplictness.
Can Xanga expect a huge response to Ratings? As currently constructed, I don’t believe so. The Rating module is hidden (only linked, not presented on the page) and 1 too many clicks away to ever really be popular.
Can Xanga structure a huger response to Ratings? Well, yes, I suppose it could force you to rate a site and/or a post before you comment upon it. That undoubtedly would make Ratings responses hugely more numerous, but would compulsory ratings seem too imposing and heavy-handed?
As a compromise between the current ‘hidden’ Ratings module and a compulsory one, perhaps Xanga will decide to make the Ratings module a non-compulsory nag: something like a pop-up that says “You haven’t rated this site yet. Please rate it now and contribute to the Wisdom of the Xangans.”
There’s a lot at stake here. If there’s going to be any Wisdom, there’s got to be a huge response. If there’s an insufficient response, Xanga will remain mired with too many complaints, too little staff, and not enough intelligence to deal expediently with the situation.
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