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Google killed me

amywilentz.tumblr.com

71–80 of 99 posts

Re: Google killed me

#72

Great article, really well written! This is what happens when the world is ruled by a robot I take it OP hasn't had the delightful pleasure of dealing with old-fashioned human bureaucracy. My uncle tells some great stories about his time in East Berlin, before the Wall fell. A great example is the post office that did some renovations, and so delivered the old copper and other materials for reutilization. From then o…

To look at popular culture, the entire article reminded me of the plot of brazil, and the protagonist struggling with the rigid human beaurocracy that refused to accept that it had made an error.

Re: Google killed me

#73
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even if the hole knowledge graph would be filled out by humans, there would still be errors in it, thats just how it works with this sort of big data. No way you could design a computer algorithm which does this job without a single error

I find perverse pleasure in your ironic error, i.e. a hole in your knowledge (or potentially typing skills) related to the distinction between "hole" and "whole".

I actually tried to imagine a hole-based knowledge graph... it sounds really interesting.

Re: Google killed me

#74

> It all comes down to Google’s algorithm (a word I use carelessly, and frequently, but whose meaning is obscure to me, though I feel it is something mathematical) Loved this. Amusing reminder of the fact that most people do not speak our language. :)

the one that startled me was "can only be corrected when Google re-indexes (whatever that means) the information that will update the search". it would never have struck me that "reindex" was an overly jargonny term, but in retrospect i guess it is.

Re: Google killed me

#75

I believe this has been fixed for a while now. It was fixed by the time I reported this over a week ago, for example. If you see an error in a Knowledge Panel (the box on the right-hand side), look for the "Feedback / More info" link at the bottom of the box and then you can click next to a fact to report a problem. People do review those reports, and that's the fastest way to report an issue.

Apologies. I posted this because it came up recently in a media blog [insert joke about media being slow].

So it was a manual fix that corrected the issue? I guess that makes since given that her Wikipedia entry didn't have the standardized birthdate listing (at least in the first line) until today (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amy_Wilentz&ol...). Would that fix alone been enough to fix her snippet?

Re: Google killed me

#76

I wonder if this would suit the criterion for defamation. That would be a really interesting case to see.

To get damages she would need to demonstrate harm. But if she could, this becomes interesting, as Google can not hide behind the usual search-engine defense: they are not merely linking to sites here, but making up their own facts. (IANAL.)

I think Google would be fine in this case, if we're assuming American law. Wilentz arguably qualifies as a "public figure" and so Google would have to be proven to show gross negligence and/or malicious intent in getting the dates wrong. Assuming the googlebot did as it normally does, Google has an even stronger case that they aren't intentionally being bad actors, as the googlebot gets so many other things correct with its algorithm.

Re: Google killed me

#77
post #30

Is she not aware that anyone can edit Wikipedia?

I believe she's referring to the fact that if you are the owner of the domain with the erroneous information, you can make a request to Google to re-crawl the information using Google's Webmaster Tools. Regular users can't make that request, so under normal circumstances, she would've had to wait until Google gets around to it on their own schedule.

Re: Google killed me

#78
I wonder if natural language parsing will pick up this article and soon her profile will read that she was killed by Google. RIP Amy Wilentz, you will be missed.

Re: Google killed me

#79
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source code for those kinds of systems is commonly referred to as, "policy."

Policy is the documentation, not the source code. You can read policy. It may not be accurate.

Some analogies can only be taken so far

Re: Google killed me

#80
post #75

I believe this has been fixed for a while now. It was fixed by the time I reported this over a week ago, for example. If you see an error in a Knowledge Panel (the box on the right-hand side), look for the "Feedback / More info" link at the bottom of the box and then you can click next to a fact to report a problem. People do review those reports, and that's the fastest way to report an issue.

Apologies. I posted this because it came up recently in a media blog [insert joke about media being slow]. So it was a manual fix that corrected the issue? I guess that makes since given that her Wikipedia entry didn't have the standardized birthdate listing (at least in the first line) until today ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amy_Wilentz&ol... ). Would that fix alone been enough to fix her snippet?

I wonder how many of these items are manual fixes? It would be interesting to see the number of them adjusting the index.
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