[okfn-coord] WhoKnowsWho @ the OKF (confidential)

Fri Dec 11 14:13:39 UTC 2009

Dear All (sorry to clog up people's inboxes!),

I am writing to seek guidance from the Board on an important question.
I think we shall need to discuss this at next week's board meeting but
any comments in advance would be appreciated.

Some background: In a previous email I mentioned that 4IP had some
interest in OKF being a home for some (public-interest) projects that
did not sit well at Channel 4. They had one particular project in
mind: http://whoknowswho.channel4.com/. This was built by people at
http://www.tui.co.uk/.

On Wednesday I had a call with Neil (Tui's founder) and the main chap
behind WKW (seemed incredibly nice on the phone!). They are looking
for a home for WKW outside of C4 and outside of TUI and we discussed
possibility of coming to OKF. I should emphasize they want to continue
actively developing project but want a formal home/website not
associated with them or C4 (doesn't fit with their image/brand and is
restricted at C4 due to broadcasting regulations).

Project would seem to provide an excellent fit with the OKF philosophy
and Apache-like structure and model and it appears a) project would be
able to fund any associated infrastructure b) would be high-profile
and interesting.

Only concern is that project is potentially politically controversial
and, more seriously, may raise libel issues. More information on this
can be found below.

### The question for the board

Should we consider accepting this project into the OKF Network? If so
should we take steps to insulate it from the Foundation? (A disclaimer
along the lines of ISP liability? Having it owned by a separate
company limited by guarantee? etc).

Regards

Rufus

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Neil Aberdeen <neil at tui.co.uk>
Date: 2009/12/10
Subject: FOAF2 - The Map of Power
To: rufus.pollock at okfn.org
Cc: Matt Robinson <matt at tui.co.uk>, Russ Hendy <russ at tui.co.uk>,
Graeme Crowley <graeme at tui.co.uk>

Rufus
Good to talk last night - hope we get to meet next Wednesday - you
should come to lunch. We're at 47 Greek Street, Soho, W1D 4EE
I know you asked me to jot down our perceived issues, threats and
other concerns relating to FOAF/WhoKnowsWho/ whatever we decide to
call it. - here they are in long-winded cinemascope:

Facts in FOAF
FOAF is built from facts - facts are substantiated and verifiable by
reference to sources. Not all sources are equal, which is the start of
our problems. Problematising facts has been a post-modern past-time
for anyone who has lived through the raging global export success of
French theory, but we are comfortable with the crude materialism that
some facts are trustworthy and some are less so. We are seeding FOAF
with facts from Theyworkforyou and Wikipedia and intend to use (less
open) data from Companies House. Another source of facts will be from
OpenCalais analysis of news feeds. OpenCalais will help us change news
documents into data. A major issue for us in automating the process is
disambiguation - how can we be sure that the entity (person,
institution event) identified is the right entity for that entry? We
intend to use crowd-sourcing (people) to help do this work. We also
have some sophisticated proposals about how we might use OpenCalais to
help disambiguate. However, clearly things can and will go wrong...

When things go wrong we need to be able to act promptly to correct
errors or take down false information. We may only plan reactive
moderation. This is a risk from the point of view of false even
libellous postings especially because the main part of this next
iteration will be to open up the database to the public. Registered
users will be able to post facts (with substantiations) and also make
connections between new and existing entities. Whether or how these
posts and connections are moderated is something we are actively
considering. Facts will be contested by those who are subject to this
involuntary Facebook process. For instance someone might post:

In 1987 Tessa Blackstone was made a Life Peer under New Labour
http://www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk/rolls/peerage/lifebaronesses.htm
Dame Tessa Blackstone became New Labour Secretary of State for
Eduction and Employment in the first Blair administration 1997-2001
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peer/baroness_blackstone
When she left that post she became Vice Chancellor of Greenwich
University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessa_Blackstone,_Baroness_Blackstone
http://www.gre.ac.uk/governance/senior_staff/vice-chancellor
Greenwich is the historic home of the Navy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Royal_Naval_College
Vosper Thornycroft built the Navy's surface fleet until subsumed into
BAE systems in 2002 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT_Group
Vosper Thornycroft plc won the competition to run Education services
in Greenwich under the Government's Building Schools for the Future
programme http://www.vtplc.com/Media/Pressreleases/VTGROUPSIGNSCONTR1/
Dame Tessa Blackstone currently sits on the board of Vosper
Thornycroft plc
http://www.vtplc.com/Whoweare/Managementteam/BoardofDirectors/
Dame Tessa Blackstone is Dame Tessa Vosper Blackstone
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait.php?search=ap&npgno=6157

You can see that these are verifiable facts but threading them
together produces a narrative with an implication. How far we draw out
implications is something that we constantly debate and we're not
decided on our strategy but PR companies and lawyers acting on behalf
of the rich and powerful may not want these factual connections to be
published and may try to use British libel law to gag or otherwise
subvert transparency.

There is more complexity in the way intend to enable bloggers and
others to embed and augment the maps of connections on their sites -
we have to consider how those connections contribute the main site -
we don't want to restrict use but we need to make sure that
unsubstantiated connections and facts do not pollute the public
resource.

Essentially we believe that facts will be contested, Our response to
something that is provably false will be to take it down, it is our
response to something more attenuated, or less securely substantiated
or just implied that that causes us concern and we are still
considering in terms of how to take appropriate action. Threats
include:

An uneducated but public-spirited user might draw libellous
conclusions from a source
A vandal might make spurious claims and make their source something
inappropriate
Spammers could link to their products with real or auto-generated content
A group could make actionable claims about people they're opposed to
A group could make false claims about people they support
A group could overload the site with so much trivia that it drowns out
the pertinent facts and drives users away
The author of a source may object to its use on the site, particularly
if someone uses it to support a fact that they disagree with.

Apologies for wittering on at length.
Best
N