Treasury pulls plug on Wiki-cutback site

The Treasury has pulled the plug on its website created to crowdsource suggestions for government cutbacks. The site remains available but there are no longer any interactive features - if you have an idea for cutting government spending then you are invited to send them an email. The Treasury blamed malware attacks for the …

[Jimmy Floyd]

I believe...

I believe that final paragraph may have some connection with amanfromMars...

[Anonymous Coward]

alien frequency

In fact, it is the proximity of the alien ships causing some brands of phone to drop calls and lose signal.

[skellious]

See icon...

So much for a technologically sound future... Or maybe someone suggested cutting down on crowd sorcing of ideas for cutbacks and in their eagerness they jumped on the suggestion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Message Begins:

Inter-Stellar Ship to Earth Leaders: "Keep the proles quiet and uninformed or we'll torch the place!

Message Ends.

[Svantevid]

amanfrommars?

"Superior intelligences who exist outside of commonly accepted reality have been observing & occasionally interacting with human beings for some time now"

--------------------------

While I don't know about "superior", he's certainly communicating with us for some time now. Unsuccessfully, most of the time.

BTW, it's in the nature of governments to play sill buggers with the people. The French had a good idea in 1789. how to deal with that.

[Desk Jockey]

Not sure about Mars, but from a different planet anyway!

Haha, those comments made me spill my couscous lunch on my desk! Good job it wasn't sushi today...

I am not one for slagging off fellow posters, but damn right I cannot fathom what the hell he is saying. I get the impression he is a conspiracy theory buff which a real passion For Capitalising All the Wrong Words! However, I will be nice and abide by the recently published El Reg forum guidelines and just say, "each to their own.."

As for the Treasury having to pull this site, did anyone really expect it not to be filled to the brim with idiotic, racist, shallow and other commetard like musings? Politicians who make it to the top, are well aware that they rarely get to deal with normal people through this medium. This was just a trick to be able to claim that they are going to cut X project or Y Department because an un-verifiable percentage of people said it was a good idea! Welcome to democratic legitimacy web 2.0 in action!

I suppose it is better than the last lot who managed to ignore over a million anti-Iraq war protestors on the streets...

[Graham Bartlett]

"Superior intelligences"

Come off it. Anyone who's ever watched a government in action knows they're in no contact at all with superior intelligences. Hell, *any* intelligence at all is a matter of debate.

[Number6]

Look in the box

Preferably a blue one, with a flashing light on top and the word "Police" on in. There's your alien of superior intelligence.

[Ben 56]

So the few spoil it for the many...

So what happens to all of those good suggestions that were made? I added one to stop employing lollipop people who stand at pedestrian lights and instead bring back the green cross code and educate kids on road safety...

[David Buckle]

Well...

...I can still post suggestions. Just um, click the link at the top of their page.

[Richard Porter]

Unmoderated

Why?

[Robert E A Harvey]

Sir Humphry

>why?

The civil service wanted to discredit the whole thing as quickly as possible?

[Keith Doyle]

That's what you get for rolling your own suggestion box...

If you want a robust suggestion box or forum system, perhaps rather than rolling their own, if their IT guys don't have much experience with it, they ought to consider using an existing service that has a track record of dealing with such attacks, and may be a little better at keeping up with such things-- Yahoo groups, Google groups, Facebook-- while these are by no means perfect either, you can bet that "my first suggestion box program," is going to be festooned with security gaffes.

You may be able to get away with this sort of thing if you're Joe Schmoe and are putting together a personal site, or some rinky-dink small business page, but Treasury Dept? Get real. You need an IT network that has a 24/7 security staff and lots of experiencen dealing with attacks...

[Anonymous Coward]

no, more the...

...'sterilise the labour voters' type suggestions.

[Spoonguard]

This seems familar

I am reminded of the New Zealand legislation wiki. That got mysteriously shut down too after quite a few unorthodox revisions of the source material:

"For within these wikis was bound the strength and the will to govern each nation.

But they were, all of them, deceived; for another wiki was made. In the land of New Zealand, in the fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Helen Clark forged, in secret, a master wiki.

And into this wiki she poured her cruelty, her malice and her will to dominate all life.

One wiki to rule them all.

One by one, the free lands of earth fell to the power of the internet."

[Liam Pennington]

Flawed....

The site asking for cut back suggestions was always going to falter under the Wiki-format. They should have allowed only comments on a set of pre-determined headings, or a traditional questionnaire format. It /is/ encouraging to see such crowdsourcing from Government, but it appears both Coalition and Labour parties are unable to fathom how to use teh interwebz correctly.

[Andy Fletcher]

Failing to plan is...you get the idea

I take it the thought process behind this Government idea didn't come from anyone who actually wields power over us? We're truly up shit creak if this is a good indicator of the planning ability of our mighty overlords. I'd list the flaws in the plan if there wasn't a 2 million character limit in this box thing.

[s. pam]

So WTF happens to all the stuff input?

I don't have a bit of sympathy (inbetween sh*te and syphilis in the OED) for Gov't IT staff being made redundant if they can't even run a cruddy website!

Bbbuuutt -- WTF HAPPENS TO ALL THE STUFF WE INPUT AND COMMENTED ON????

[pengipete]

Ironic...

...that they wasted even more of our money on that site.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/fail_32.png