This week's activities really drove home for me the advantages as well as the potential pitfalls of open source information. The free, collaborative nature of open source makes it vibrant and exciting, but it will only be as good as the people who participate. And we all know that while some people are great, some are not so much. I posted questions to Askville, Yahoo Answers, and Answerbag about the wisdom of voting via absentee ballot in Florida. The responses I received ranged from the common sense (our elections aren't auditable so there's no way to really know if the vote will count) to the ridiculous (ROFL! Waaa haaa! You live in Floriduh)
It's wonderful that the internet gives us access to so many diverse viewpoints, but when I read the comments that people leave about articles they've read, I often find that those viewpoints are mean-spirited, pointless, or worse. Ah well, I guess we take the bad with the good, don't we?
Googling myself made me cringe! The first thing that came up was a link to my Facebook account--so far so good. Next came a people tracker website that listed the towns I've resided in for the past 10 years, promising a full background check, complete with criminal history, aliases, and associates, for the low price of $49.95. Not that a criminal check would reveal anything, but still, I thought it was kinda creepy. There was also a link to a blog by someone who apparently uses my name when they attend Renaissance festivals. Finally, there was a link to a blog where someone had signed their name (My name! My fairly unusual name!) to some rather desperate poetry about needing to be loved. If someone from my past Googles my name in an attempt to see what I've been up to, they could very well come across this and think it was me. How embarrassing.
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