The Mail has failed to shake off its Jan Moir Sidewikis by moving URL. But it seems that the power of Carter Ruck may prevail where the Mail cannot.

The error message for Carter Ruck's original homepage Sidewiki

I pointed out the other day that someone had Sidewikied the Carter Ruck homepage. But the original Carter Ruck Sidewiki has now vanished. Go to the homepage and it's not there. Try and read it directly and you get an error page. (Note to Google - work on your 404s).

It used to say this:

R.I.P Carter-Ruck In loving memory of the people that gagged the Guardian reporting on the British parliament. Was brought down by Twitter on the 13th October 2009.

It was up to 21 yeses last week - but it has now vanished.

Someone has now added another Sidewiki to the Carter Ruck homepage, that I'm not going to link to as (a) it's rude and (b) it references the Minton report which were not supposed to talk about beyond acknowledging its existence. I can't believe that it is going to stay up there for much longer ...

When are Sidewikis removed?

What reasons are there for a sidewiki vanishing?

The author may have removed it themselves. Or someone may have clicked 'report abuse', in which case Google lists the following ways a Sidewiki may violate its policies:

• Spam,
• illegal content,
• advocates hate or violence, or
• other.

Google goes on to say the following:

Our Comment posting policy is as follows:

• Don't spam or post fake reviews intended to boost or lower ratings.
• Don't post or link to content that is sexually explicit or contains profanity.
• Don't post or link to content that is abusive or hateful or threatens or harasses others.
• Don't post or or link to any file that contains viruses, corrupted files, "Trojan Horses," or any other contaminating or destructive features that may damage someone else's computer.
• Don't post any material that violates the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of others.
• Don't impersonate any person, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity.
• Don't violate any other applicable law or regulation.
• Don't use comments as a forum for advertisement.

You might also like to follow these guidelines and tips:

• Make your comments useful and informative.
• Post clear, valuable, and honest information specificic to the content which you are reviewing.
• Try to include both positives and drawbacks.
• Be nice to others; don't attack others.
• Keep it readable; don't use excessive capitalization and punctuation.
• Use good grammar and check your spelling.

Please note that we reserve the right to review and remove commentary that violates our policies.

Do you think any of those applied?

As part of the fuss over Jan Moir, the Daily Mail ended up changing the headline and the URL of its story and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new one.

Message about the original page on the new URL

I wondered what would happen to the Sidewikis written on the original URL, such as this one.

The original headline and URL were:

• Why there was nothing natural about Stephen Gately's death
• /femail/article-1220756/Why-natural-Stephen-Gatelys-death.html

The new headline and URL became:

• A strange, lonely and troubling death...
• /femail/article-1220756/A-strange-lonely-troubling-death--.html

The answer is that Google keeps the Sidewiki, and adds a message at the bottom saying "Originally about: Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death | Mail Online"

So you can't defeat Sidewiki by just redirecting an old URL to a new one.

Update 2: The Carter Ruck sidewiki now has 21 yeses. And the sidewiki on the Trafigura site has 11.

Update The Carter Ruck sidewiki now has 12 yeses. And there is a sidewiki on the Trafigura site now (with only one yes - hint, hint) that says:

Guardian Controversy

On Tuesday 13 October, 2009, Trafigura was caught up in a controversial gagging order against The Guardian newspaper in the UK in relation to a parliamentary question that was due to be asked by Paul Farrelly about the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste on the Ivory Coast.

The issue became something of a cause celebre on social networks including Twitter and Facebook, and is considered to be an exemplar of what has come to be know as the Streisand Effect - ie the act of attempting to surpress information leads to its widespread distribution.

(Thanks to Jo Wadsworth for the tipoff).

Original post I won't rehearse the Trafigura injunction story - google it if you haven't heard about it. But I thought that google's sidewiki could provide some fun - I could go and add comments to the home page of both the Carter Ruck website and the Trafigura site.

Sidewiki and Carter Ruck

Somewhere had got there first (you'll need the google toolbar to see the sidewiki) with Carter Ruck. Josh Dayson has written:

R.I.P Carter-Ruck In loving memory of the people that gagged the Guardian reporting on the British parliament. Was brought down by Twitter on the 13th October 2009.

After I tweeted a link to it, it went up to 8 'yeses' so I guess it'll stay for a while.

Sidewiki and Trafigura

No one had written anything on the Trafigura site, so I quickly wrote a sidewiki that described the background to the injunction and linked to:

• the Guardian's Trafigura pages,
• the Spectator's original, deliberate breach of the injunction,
• the OJB's excellent roundup of today's online coverage of the injunction, and
• the Minton report on wikileaks.

And then I completely chickened out and deleted it.

I guess this is what their lawyers want - even on a day when Trafigura ostensibly lost, the UK libel laws worry me too much to (a) leave the sidewiki there or (b) link to the Minton report from this blog.

As I've pointed out  before, reporting restrictions and bloggers don't really mix. I don't have any way to find out what the other injunctions around this case are (the BBC says that "the injunction on reporting the contents of the Minton report remains in place.")

Is it OK to mention the Minton report? Clearly. Is it OK to describe what's in it? It would seem not. Can I link to it? I guess not - but who knows? I have no way to see the injunction.

And while everyone jumps up and down about how Twitter beat Carter Ruck, the ability for these injunctions to be put in place remains. There are clearly others affecting other people or companies that we don't know about. And there are clearly further injunctions about Trafigura we don't know about.

Now, who's got nothing to lose and fancies writing a sidewiki?

Carphone Warehouse has slammed Microsoft as 'useless' and 'crap' - making use of Google's new sidewiki feature to make sure that everyone visiting the Microsoft site knows it too.

At least, I assume that's what's going on (yes, it's obviously not what's going on, but people should be careful...) from the fact that the Unix administrator of Carphone Warehouse has left the following Sidewiki:

Sidewiki abusers - it says who you are ...

That quote in full is:

One of the biggest IT companies on the web - One of the most useless websites I have ever visited.. Has been consistantly crap since I first started using the Internet.. Its just overly bloated without any real direction.. Only time I ever use it is via deep links from search engines..

I've blocked out his name to spare his blushes. If you do this, remember that it says who you are. Unless you use a fake account to slag off the daily mail.

I just tweeted that I was finding it hard to resist the temptation to be the first to sidewiki the home page of UK newspapers. (Sidewiki is Google's new way to let you see what other users have said about a page while you look at it).

The first sidewiki entry on the Mail homepage

It looks like I'm too late as the Mail already has been sidewikied as this picture shows.

Why??

..would you read this sad toss? Don't you have more important things to do? Seriously.. you'll find better/proper news here: http://www.guardian.co.uk

Have a great day! : )

I can't imagine the Mail will be impressed by this sort of thing. It'll be interesting - worrying for the brands in question - how google and websites end up dealing with this sort of issue ...

This one will probably get reported as 'abuse' - but other negative comments will probably end up staying on some sites. They've already started slagging off Microsoft.