FoI Trolls

sufi

sufi

lala
whoa this site is all over the place; http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/

i was checking re that foi mission from another thread (more news on that later) and am just amazed by how this sort of online interactive site is facilitating this mass trolling of foi officials

i'm just astonished and fascinated at the levels of cut'n'paste inanity on both sides, although there are some patient and humorous information bureacrats deal with a swarm of tinhatted greeninkers
and some genuinely interesting disclosures amongst heaving masses of obstructions and counter-obfuscations, (check attachments to here, for example - i mean wtf :eek::cool:: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/whole_system_model#outgoing-83003 ) there seem to be gigantic time-wasting single issue campaigns, so i'm having a misgiving about getting this tech to people with clearly too much time on the hands, some of whom seem to be pursuing some fairly misanthropic threads - e.g why so many requests about unaccompanied children asylum seekers?
 
sufi

sufi

lala
this is brung to y'all by mysociety.org, who are also responsible for these other sites which we may have heard of
- theyworkforyou.com/
- fixmystreet.com which seems ripe for some sort of locative art trolling - dump your 'found object installation' on some nimby's street and let them upload yr catalogue
- mapumental cool and groovy and all, but clearly due for commodification by estate agents

again i have misgivings abut any group that is this evasive and disingenuous:
http://www.mysociety.org/about/ said:
Do you have a political agenda?
No, we are not party political, and this project is neither left nor right wing. It is about building useful digital tools for anyone who wants to use them. And unlike most think tanks that say they’re non-partisan, we really are – none of that ‘It’s not official, but everybody knows they’re really close to party X’ nonsense here
Click to expand...
clearly the facility for allowing armchair activists actual agency has real life implications apart from party politix, the sites seem to appeal to and have been adopted by freeples from across the political spectrum
so what's the mysociety shtick really? - are they torykid big sociopaths, genuine idealist pro-democrats, asbo nihilists or what?

& yes i fully expect them as web-enabled 21st century nathan barleys to get in here and explain themselves pronto
 
M

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Curious... but also makes me a bit sad! Personal experiences in public service are that responses to this kind of stuff take time and the requests themselves can be completely counter-productive - people trying to call agencies out for not doing something, unaware that they're actually detracting from the feeble resources available to do that very thing...

I'm all for this stuff in principle, of course, just sad when it really does look like trolling in these days of pretty heavy cut-backs, etc. Seems bad enough here, must be agonising in the UK.
 
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