Wikipedia Editing Bots

Read full article below at link (excerpt follows):

The Shadowy World of Wikipedia's Editing Bots | MIT Technology Review: "An interesting corollary is that bots are becoming much more capable at producing articles of all kinds. The first Wikipedia bot, which was developed in 2002, automatically created entries for U.S. towns using a simple text template. Today, there are automated feeds that produce stories about financial results and sporting results using simple templates: “Team A” beat “Team B” by “X amount” today in a match played at “Venue Y.” All that’s required is to cut and paste the relevant information into the correct places. It’s not hard to see how this could become much more sophisticated. And while this kind of automated writing can be hugely useful, particularly for Wikipedia and its well documented problems with manpower, it could also be used maliciously too. So ways of monitoring automated changes to text are likely to become more important in future."

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1402.0412: Bots vs. Wikipedians, Anons vs. Logged-Ins

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Search Engines, Smartphones, Data Collection, Privacy

From Search Engines to Smartphones, Technology Gets a Privacy Overhaul | MIT Technology Review: "...Some small companies are now redesigning smartphones and Web browsers to give people more control over that kind of data collection. The founders of these startups claim that many people want an alternative to the data-slurping status quo, and that services such as search engines can be run profitably without harvesting much data...."

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New York Times Chief Data Scientist, Machine Learning, Subscriptions

The New York Times Hires a Chief Data Scientist and Hopes Machine Learning Can Boost Subscriptions | MIT Technology Review: "....The Times doesn’t lack for data—its readers make nine million visits a day to its home page. “But we really needed someone to give us insights about why people subscribe and how to retain them,” says Frons. “Before they pick up the phone and say ‘I want to cancel,’ you could predict by the patterns of their behavior, like not logging in as much, that they might do that.”..."

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Lifelogging, Digital Autobiography

10 things you need to know about – lifelogging | Technology | The Observer: "New apps for smartphones, fitness trackers and wearable cameras make up your own digital autobiography . . . Storing details of everything you do isn't a new concept, but a new breed of apps and gadgets is helping…" (read more at link above)

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Beyond the Data, Data and Analytics

Going beyond the data 2014 from kpmg

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