Misplaced Pages

Andrew Orlowski

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Andrew Orlowski (born 1966 in Britain, currently based in San Francisco) has been an investigative journalist and columnist for The Register since 2000.

In 1992 he started an alternative newspaper in Manchester, England called "Badpress", and also wrote for Private Eye.

In April 2003, he coined the term Googlewashing to describe the potential for well-linked weblogs to obscure the original meaning of a controversial expression (e.g., "the Second Superpower").

He later classified this along with "absurd intellectual property claims" as an example of an unwarranted assumption of power or authority to gain sociological advantage on behalf of a particular lobby group. This factor is the core of what makes a story "great", he argues.

In December, 2004 he was invited to assemble a panel on techno-utopianism at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Orlowski argues that utopianism distracts attention and diverts capital away from solving real infrastructure problems "Technology can help us," he writes on his FAQ page. "But we venerate the machines we have, which aren't very good, and worse, limit ourselves to seeing the world through this machine metaphor. Technology is useful when it makes something we already like to do easier. Technology can't tell us something we don't know. Technology cannot solve problems that don't exist."

Criticism of Misplaced Pages

Orlowski has been described as a "professional troll" by Jimmy Wales with regard to several generally hostile articles about Misplaced Pages in the online IT newspaper The Register. In reply to one, Wales wrote, "Excellent article! Well balanced and thoughtful! Ok, well, entertaining anyway."

In these articles, Orlowski called Misplaced Pages editors "wikifiddlers", "wiki wankers" and "pediaphiles". (Although the meaning of the last - lover of (encyclo)pedias - is not in itself insulting, the word's resemblance to pedophiles is unlikely to be accidental.) Commenting on the Siegenthaler, Daniel Brandt and Adam Curry controversies, Orlowski wrote:

In fact, we can extend the metaphor further, by looking at Misplaced Pages as a massively scalable, online role-playing game, or RPG. Players can assume fictional online identities - and many "editors" do just that. And drive-by shootings are common. But the rules of the game are shifting, complex, and far from transparent.

Orlowski has been criticized and accused of unprofessional journalistic behavior.

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