robwebb2k » Wikipedia

Sunstein on Wikipedia

Rob Webb — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:45:00 +0000

Last week, the Washington Post ran an interesting article by Cass Sunstein on Wikipedia. Sunstein is a tenured professor at my law school and is often referred to as the most cited living legal scholar, although I think Posner might have him beat. The article leads with a great stat:

In the past year, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that “anyone can edit,” has been cited four times as often as the Encyclopedia Britannica in judicial opinions, and the number is rapidly growing.

The article pulls much of its content from Sunstein’s most recent book Infotopia, which analyzes wikis, future markets, and crowd wisdom in a variety of arenas. I’m reading it and it’s great so far, although I think the article in The Post probably pulls the most salient points. I will put up a full review of the book when I have completed it. The most interesting thing I have gotten to so far is his statistical analysis of prediction markets and when they work and when they don’t. In short, they work nearly perfectly when the average respondent is more likely than not to be correct. As the number of respondents increases, the more accurate the market prediction will be, so long as each participant has on average more than a 50% chance of being correct. This is why prediction markets work for things like internal corporate polls about product releases but fail for stuff like Supreme Court nominations.

The beauty of the small size and intense focus of my law school is that Sunstein was one of my professors during my first quarter of my first year and I was lucky enough to have Epstein the following quarter as well. Both are brilliant and wonderfully quirky. Sunstein would always start each class with a 10 minute recap of what was discussed in the previous class and everyone would pound on their laptops to capture every word. Then he would launch into the new discussion for the day and the typing would quickly taper off, replaced by intense focus trying to follow him from point to point. He would cold call about five people every day and I bet 20% of the people called on in that class had any idea what was going on when they answered him. Definitely some of the hardest thinking I have ever done.

The benefits of due diligence

Rob Webb — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 17:09:00 +0000

Last night I helped out with the Chicagoland Entrepreneurship Center’s Fast Pitch Competition. The event was co-sponsored by The GSB, Kellogg, and De Paul and a bunch of my GSB classmates entered with hopes of winning the $5,000 prize. Each entrant in the contest had 3 minutes to pitch to a panel of 4 judges. I was the timekeeper in for the Web-Based Technologies group where one of the judges was Matt McCall of DFJ Portage Ventures and author of VC Confidential, a blog that I subscribe to. It was cool to meet him. It was also great to see GSB entry ParkWhiz win the Web-Based group and go on to win the whole competition. ParkWhiz wants to create a marketplace for buyers and sellers of parking spaces in urban areas where parking spaces can be hard to find.

I think the idea behind ParkWhiz has potential. However, ParkWhiz’ victory illuminates the flaws in these quick pitch types of contest, as well as the benefits of due diligence. This idea is not a new one – there is company out of MIT called SpotScout that is trying to tackle the same problem and has a mobile application that has substantial momentum. There is also a group called Spark Parking out of Northwestern that is taking a high tech approach to the same problem. There is likely room for multiple players in this marketplace, especially considering intensely regional nature of their products and services, however if the judges had not known about the other players (and they likely didn’t), the idea behind ParkWhiz probably seemed much more novel than it actually was. This reminded me of the coverage I saw of the CRV Entrepreneur Idol fast pitch contest held at Stanford GSB earlier this year where the winner pitched battery-less LED flashlights, a product that is already mass produced.

I’m not saying that these ideas wouldn’t have won if there was a diligence period, but as the New Venture Challenge is on the horizon here at The GSB, I am starting to realize the macro flaws inherent in business plan competitions, and lack of time for judges to research ideas is definitely one of them.

Fuzzy Zoeller sues IP address owner over Wikipedia entry

Rob Webb — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 21:06:00 +0000

Apparently golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is suing the owner of an IP address over defamatory comments made from the address via Wikipedia. Strangely, the IP address is owned by Josef Silny & Associates, a Miami education consulting firm, which means that one of the employees of the firm edited the Zoeller entry through a work IP connection. The entry allegedly stated that Zoeller went public with his alcoholism and prescription drug addiction, but that when he made those statements Zoeller was “in the process of polishing off a fifth of Jack (Daniels) after popping a handful of Vicodin.” The statement allegedly also stated that Zoeler “detailed the violent nature of his disease, recalling how he’d viciously beat his wife Dianne and their four children while under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.”

The complaint is available over at The Smoking Gun and makes defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims against the owner of the IP address. Wikipedia itself was not named in the complaint. The AP coverage of the story cited at Zoeller’s official site (www.fuz.com), quotes Zoeller’s attorney stating “courts have clearly said you have to go after the source of the information” which seems to be supporting the choice to sue the source of the edit, not Wikipedia itself. I have posted before on the DMCA and protections provided to Wikipedia-like entities in copyright infringement cases. It looks like the Communications Decency Act protects Wikipedia type entities from defamation suits, however I am not aware of any suits that have successfully targeted those that post defamatory remarks. If this suit is successful, it has potential to substantially change the Wikipedia landscape.