Comments on: Link carefully in case people don’t read carefully

By: Chris Miller

Chris Miller — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 01:49:41 +0000

My son, currently in 8th grade, was doing a current events report last year on Katrina, in which he decided the locals did nothing and the feds responded very well indeed. One of the things he cited – he had to get two online sources – was the 2000 school buses Nagin failed to use. I can’t recall his source that showed how well the Feds did, but he finally decided that “those people” who suffered didn’t get out in time and it was their choice.

This was very difficult for me; I felt that showing him alternatives and digging into the sources wasn’t him learning, but more of an exercise of parental authority. He’s a teenager and it was his research – lazy, yes. Plus it put me in the position of challenging his teacher and – worst of all – making more work for him.

The 2000 school buses was easy enough, but the whole “choice” argument that he sucked in – that was toxic in a way for which he was unprepared conceptually.

The way you worked this out, I’m finding myself very unsympathetic to my son’s teacher who was assigning projects like this to all her students every week over the course of the school year.

By: Martha Bridegam

Martha Bridegam — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 07:06:09 +0000

For similar reasons, it’s troubling that Google continues to give high rankings to a weirdly bigoted Web site on George Orwell called “Orwell Today.” There is also a Holocaust-denying Orwell page. This is troubling especially because so many students are assigned to write about George Orwell before they’ve developed Internet sh—detectors.

Many honest Orwell sites are available as alternatives. (Disclosure: “Charles’ George Orwell Links,” is run by a friend and includes some of my own work.)

By: aaron

aaron — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:14:34 +0000

[instances where reading the source pays off]

By: aaron

aaron — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:04:56 +0000

I’ve experienced many instances like this on this blog. (see John Quiggin on Brig. General Ed Butler. Reading the article, it’s apparent that the general’s quotes contradic John’s claim. A deeper look shows that my interperatation of the general’s statement is likely correct. Also Chris Betram, dismissal of the fact that recent GW is driven by unusually high solar radiation. The linked report also states that historical analysis shows “a clear limit” to the effect of doubling CO2 concentrations of 1.5C.)

By: entlord

entlord — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:40:14 +0000

Little bit late to post but this came to mind with today’s story on the Virginia state legislator’s comments today that after 140 years, Blacks should just get over slavery. He then followed it up with the comment that for Whites to experience remorse is akin to expecting Jews to apologize for killing Jesus.
When a Jewish legislator protested, this paragon of race equality told him that he was being too thin skinned.
Your student has to be aware that recognizing unreconstructed Dixiecrats is easy; sites like she found are the insiduous ones because they masquerade as being reasonable.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 23:00:21 +0000

Portage,

Snopes deals with an email making what I assume are similar accusations in some detail here: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/mlking.asp

By: Eszter

Eszter — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:11:52 +0000

For the record, this was not a lazy student so it’s even a bit more complicated than Lazygal suggests. That is, it’s not so much that this student couldn’t have cared less about the assignment or the topic. She read through the site in detail. However, she did not think to look at who’s responsible for the material and that was a problem. So yes, Lazygal’s right that many people take the rankings for granted. I just wanted to add that it’s not necessarily a reflection of laziness.

By: harry b

harry b — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:11:42 +0000

On the issue of censoring the assignment: I don’t think we know enough about what the assignment was to comment on whether it would have been ok to censor. It sounds very open-ended, in which case I think you did exactly the right thing. If you’d been asking for some sort of “critical internet use” then I think you should have graded her down, since she evidently didn’t do much link-following (the first link I clicked got to David Duke’s very generous explanation of how Jews were in fact great heroes of the civil rights movement, not as important as Blacks, but certainly way ahead of Whites when it really mattered… well, you know, I’m paraphrasing). If it was on the substance of MLK’s life and work then I think the provenance of the site is irrelevant; whether what she found out was true or not, and whether she could find reliable sources, and how she treated them, matters. I don’t really think the potential for offense would be an issue in any of those cases, by the way; if the assingment was well executed, the fact that such exectution might have disturbed or offended others seems beside the point to me.

By: Lazygal

Lazygal — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:54:16 +0000

My argument for blogging the other links was that Larry Page’s Ranking algorithm is based on the number of times a site is links to, not on the quality or content of that site. It doesn’t make the site “disappear” if it’s no longer linked to as much, or if other sites attract more links, it simply changes the Page Rank. Teachers and librarians can tell you, students believe that clicking on the first link they see will give them the best answer – they don’t have time, nor do they want, to analyze the site for relevance, bias or any other criteria (I suspect that’s what happened in this case).

As long as there is Google, and as long as others can create whatever content they want on pages, there will be a need for this sort of discussion and action.

By: rea

rea — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 03:33:48 +0000

“Can you list the steps in detail whereby when one removes a link to a third-party site that site then somehow stops existing?”

A question for Bishop Berkeley . . .

By: portage

portage — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:58:10 +0000

Can anyone point to a site that debunks that site? I had read about the plagiarism accusations in a respected newspaper last year (I think?), and I’m having trouble telling to what extent the other accusations are true/false/unsubstantiated.

By: Eszter

Eszter — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 23:40:19 +0000

Roger, that’s an interesting example. Sounds like a situation in need of a Google bomb.

By: Eszter

Eszter — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 23:38:01 +0000

I figured people would take note of the fact that I even considered the possibility of asking her to remove any of the material. I think it’s an interesting topic for discussion and I welcome the chance to talk about it. I am curious to hear others’ opinions.

Please do keep in mind the context as that is very relevant. This is a teaching situation. That is, one has to consider how the post might affect other students. Richard, I think you’re right that if the post is carefully written and researched then that does add to the overall discussion so that’s fine. But where does one draw the line in terms of what is sufficiently carefully researched and argued and what is sufficiently disturbing and offensive that it might cause too much concern with others?

This was certainly not a super difficult case, but I can imagine scenarios that would be harder to handle.

Peter, there are lots and lots of sites much better than this one, the issue here is not lack of better material. The issue is that a site with such material comes up prominently as a result on some search engines to an obvious query on this topic and lots of users take the presented content for granted. And as Observer noted, none of the above concerned getting rid of the site.

By: Observer

Observer — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 23:09:45 +0000

So Peter, please tell us exactly how refusing to link to a site will affects the “freedom of a site to exist”.

Can you list the steps in detail whereby when one removes a link to a third-party site that site then somehow stops existing?

Please tell.

By: Roger Bigod

Roger Bigod — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 23:09:24 +0000

For an even more egregious example, try Google on “abortion breast cancer”. Without the quotes, of course.