WikiLeaks.org is a website that publishes
classified and otherwise secret information for the entire world to see. The
content of the classified information ranges from secret Iraq war footage and
information detailing the American prison at Guantanamo Bay, to diplomatic
cables and evidence of corruption in the Kenyan government. The stated purpose
of the site is to increase transparency, which they believe reduces corruption
and fosters stronger democracies. The site was evaluated primarily on its content,
usability, and functionality. Although WikiLeaks contains a startling large
amount of important documents and information that is easily accessible, it is
often bogged down by clunky web design and poor organization.
The content of WikiLeaks contains a large
amount of original source material, wherein lies its first major problem. Not
to be misunderstood, the site is a veritable wealth of information. It contains
articles and source material covering everything from spying and counter
intelligence to corruption and taxes. However, the data and information
presented by WikiLeaks is neither clear nor concise, and much of it remains in
its original state. This means that it has not been analyzed, no news stories
have been summarized from it, and it essentially exists as large and
unorganized text. This discrepancy results in other news sources (CNN, WSJ,
etc.) simply reporting the most shocking or important points of the data into a
concise and compelling piece. The content of WikiLeaks is indeed informative
and relevant to people all over the world, however, the content is only updated
every few months, with most of the information coming from a couple of highly
publicized leaks of classified documents. This lack of continuous content makes
WikiLeaks less relevant as a website. Without regular content updates, there is
not much incentive to keep returning to the site on a consistent basis. This is
demonstrated by the fact that WikiLeaks sees a large amount of traffic after a
large information leak, but significantly less in the time between. WikiLeaks
claims to pore over and analyze all of the documents it receives in order to
select the most important and relevant information. WikiLeaks also attempts to
redact information that could potentially endanger people’s lives and the
national security of other nations, but this only comprises a fraction of the
data they provide. Often, the data can be found in its unredacted form,
containing names and locations that could be potentially harmful to those
individuals. The content it receives is often illegally gained, but the site
itself is protected under first amendment rights as they relate to journalism
and free press. The content itself is wide-ranging and far-reaching, but it
lacks any type of organizational method. The content is organized by leak date
and analysis date, not on the nature of the leak or its contents. For example,
the U.S Embassy profile on the Icelandic Prime Minister is listed under leaks
and analyses from 2010, not under a separate section just for diplomatic
profiles and cables. This lack of organization prevents useful access to the
website’s content, and ultimately negatively impacts the sites usability and
functionality.
WikiLeaks declares that their purpose is
to bring important news and information into the public circle in order to
increase government transparency. On the surface it seems as if they have
accomplished their stated purpose. WikiLeaks has amassed thousands of megabytes
of classified data, but they have only read and released a fraction of that to
the public. By holding back this data, WikiLeaks is compromising its own stated
functionality. The service WikiLeaks provides is focused and largely unique, making
it the premier journalistic site in the publishing of leaks and other
classified documents. They have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to
publish and analyze classified documents, with the first major leak coming in
2006 with a document signed by a Somali Sheik authorizing the assassination of
government officials. Since then, the site has continually been at the center
of important news stories that have reached the greater public. WikiLeaks also demonstrates
basic web functionality, as there are no broken links or other non-functioning
parts of the website. This appears to extend through all portions of the site,
indicating basic quality assurance is being conducted. The site has not
functioned this well all the time, however. Since the site’s inception, there
have been many occasions of hackers bringing the website down as well as
governments pressuring domain hosting providers to stop harboring WikiLeaks. The
website has been compromised in the past through the use of Denial of Service
attacks, which bombard a server with so many requests that it cannot respond to
real traffic. These types of attacks ultimately result in the site being unavailable
to users. This has resulted in numerous occasions where the site has been
inaccessible for long periods of time. However, it appears that WikiLeaks has now
settled in a secure place with a Swedish company that fully supports its
endeavor. This company hosts the website on servers housed in an old abandoned
nuclear bunker. According to WikiLeaks, they are based in Sweden because that
country provides complete journalistic protection. Despite these reassurances
and protections, the past indicates that WikiLeaks cannot always be trusted to
be functional. Although WikiLeaks fulfills its stated purpose and demonstrates
basic functionality, the site ultimately stumbles in providing reliable
functionality.
The site’s usability benefits from
some smart and savvy features, but it’s mostly bogged down from some critical
flaws. If someone was to come into the site knowing exactly what he or she is
looking for, they could just use a search box to find exactly what they’re
looking for. In regards to simple perusal of site, it suffers from a lack of
simplicity. It is immediately unclear where to find certain information when
not using the search bar. As observed previously, the sites organization is
poor and frankly bewildering. Rather than archive information and their
corresponding news stories together and based on the content of those stories, they
are instead archived according to date. This approach is largely unintuitive
and creates an unnecessary learning curve that negatively impacts the usability
of the site for the average internet-goer. The site’s pages load fast and there
are no large images or anything else of a large file size that could cause
visitors to lag when trying to load a page, keeping visitors continuously reading
and engaged. The main page is too large, as the archive links that extend from
the left side of the page extend downwards very far and require a large amount
of scrolling. This layout is text heavy and largely unintuitive, however. The
design and organization appears to be several years behind the newest and most
cutting edge web design. Most of WikiLeaks pages have a similar design, partially
maintaining consistency. However, when accessing the archives from the main
page, you are jarringly transported to a differently formatted page, and the
links at the top of the page that maintained consistency were conspicuously
absent. This dual format serves little identifiable purpose and introduces
confusion to the reader. Overall, the links on the site are a mixed bag, as
some are descriptive and some are not. For example, most of the main links from
articles are obviously linked to the original source material, but some obscure
links such as “Translate” are unintuitive and don’t make sense in their current
location. The site itself is very easy to find, as search engine optimization
is stellar and search inquiries for “WikiLeaks” on most popular search engines
always result in WikiLeaks.org being in the top five results. In the practice
of maintaining the site’s stated goal of exposing government secrets and
increasing transparency, the website is accessible in all countries around the
globe, regardless of firewalls used to prevent access its access in countries
such as China. This feat is accomplished through a complex set of mirrored
domain names and reroutes, such that knowing the web address of the secret
mirror will allow a user to circumvent their nation’s firewalls and enable
access to the site.
In WikiLeaks mind, its work appeals
to all people across the globe that value freedom and transparency. This would
naturally appeal to engaged and savvy college students as well, but WikiLeaks
has left us unconvinced. While the content is thought provoking and engaging,
its poor usability is a non-starter for the young Web 2.0 generation. Although
the site displays fundamental functionality and fulfillment of intended goals, its
reliability is a legitimate concern given past events. The poorly defined
interface and web design is jarring and out of place, and results in an
unrefined browsing experience. The lack of effective organization is
frustrating and most often results in confusion than a successful search of the
content. While it is remarkable that the site is available in so many countries
with firewalls attempting to block it, it’s largely for naught considering that
the lack of regularly updated content discourages frequent use. Although
WikiLeaks provides a unique and worthwhile service, the discussed issues
greatly hinder its stated functionality, and results in an ambitious site with unfortunate
design and organizational decisions that overshadow its wealth of information.
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