It is a lot like if Google did magically create an empty lot next to every house, and filled the empty lot with whiteboards. Sure some people will just put up graffiti, but everyone ignores graffiti. People will also post valid complaints, suggestions, and praise!

And we will all know which houses to avoid.

The system is definitely not perfect yet. It is possible for users to abuse the system, if they choose.…. just like any system! Meanwhile it’s a great check to balance a lot of other abuses on the internet. If you get directed to a harmful webpage… you can now warn other users about exactly what happened to you! Hurrah!

“I request Sidewiki be abolished or be severely modified.

From the viewpoint of a visitor, sidewiki looks just like a part of a webmaster’s website. According to a survey done on Google and posted on YouTube, most people don’t even know what a browser is, let alone a browser addon.

A webmaster owns his domain and has the right to decide what appears on his webpages.

But, in effect, Sidewiki adds a section to a webmaster’s website which uses up his site real estate and which HE HAS NO CONTROL OVER.

The webmaster can not decide whether he wants to opt in to accept Sidewiki on his site. He is not given a choice.

He can not even moderate the comments which appear on his website.

This tool can be used for the following purposes:

- To blackmail a webmaster (if you don’t ___ I will write ___ on your sidewiki).

- To cause accidents, injury, and death (a “prankster” writes off-label instructions on a pharmaceutical website, saying to take X drug in such-and-such a fashion. Result: Visitors who think this is part of the actual official website can overdose, wrongly mix drugs, and worse. The visitor gets ill or dies, the webmaster get sued.)

- To control and bias the apparency of public opion — all one has to do is get control of the moderators. Comments of one viewpoint get deleted, comments of the opposing viewpoint get approved. Voila, the internet and the projected “viewpoints of the people” can now be controlled by vested interests.

- To steal — a webmaster creates a sales page for his product and drives traffic to it. The thief adds comments to the sidewiki, with a link to his own sales page for the same or similar product, and thus redirects some traffic to his own page to earn money as a parasite.

I could say more but I think anyone else could think of a myriad of other examples.

Until the day Sidewiki was created I had nothing but good things to say about Google … and all I can say now is, remember, don’t be evil. Whether intentionally or otherwise.”

I really recommend to all website owners to claim the ownership of their sidewiki and to go to the following google page and leave a comment:

http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/reque…

Here’s the comment I submitted to Google:

This tool can cause irreparable damage to reputations and businesses when used by spammers.
The opportunity for abuse is VERY HIGH with google sidewiki.
Google should give us a way to opt out our own websites OR the right to moderate comments related to our own domains.

Hope this will help!
I wish you all the best

It is irrelevant whether the author believes “it is now on the homepage” or that it will be seen as such. But the post is concerned with site owner liability for sidewiki entries, as it should be.

Litigation looms inevitable, lets hope *our* attorney takes the Big G to task, along with the responsible wiki poster for example’s sake.

It is sad, no, depressing, to know someone will have a catastrophic, life-threatening or worse event that might lead to some degree of correction for this situation. I hope I never have the opportunity to say “I told you so” (and I won’t). But the stage is set.

JEDs

It is irrelevant whether the author believes “it is now on the homepage” or that it will be seen as such. But the post is concerned with site owner liability for sidewiki entries, as it should be.

Litigation looms inevitable, lets hope *our* attorney takes the Big G to task, along with the responsible wiki poster for example’s sake.

It is sad, no, depressing, to know someone will have a catastrophic, life-threatening or worse event that might lead to some degree of correction for this situation. I hope I never have the opportunity to say “I told you so” (and I won’t). But the stage is set.

JEDs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

And now they expect people to know the difference between a website and Sidewiki???

Ugh.

For those of you who may still be saying that this isn’t a big deal and that “no one will end up using it anyway”, think again. Currently, the statistics are showing that over 14% of traffic is using it. 14%!!!

Do you not understand what this means?

14% have adopted this “feature”, and the tool has only been launched about a MONTH.

Wow. Even for Google, that sets a record.