http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation/story/237775.html
The CIA, Vatican and others named by tracking software.
Wikipedia editors "outed"
Comments ... #
Only because your example pointed out the New York Time...
Fox News also made changes:
http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2007/08/14/fox-news-changes-wikipedia-to-smear-rivals-olbermann-and-franken-comprehensive-list-of-changes
Yeah, I saw the Wiki scanner with (professional) interest. All in all, it's a great tool.
I laugh when Wales touts that PR and related firms should not edit clients' entry. Heck, I'd lay a decent bet that the majority of Wikipedia entries are authored and/or edited by people with bias towards the topic.
So, Wales' policy is very hypocritical.
(Another examples of Wales' hyprocrisy about Wikipedia is numerous links to his own for-profit wiki venture.)
No entries should be edited to be unarguably slanted. If you can't justify the entry -- whether it's yours or not -- you deserve to be outed.
-- Mike
My example? What? SensitiveG, were you afraid that I was somehow attacking the NY Times? Yesterday was Aug 19, 2007, in case you forgot. The NY Times story, my alleged "example" of something, had the same date. A recent news story on the subject. That's why I posted the link. And it wasn't about what the NY Times did. The excerpts I posted from the NY Times and the Wired stories were more about Wikipedia's policies and a little about the programmer.
Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, says the site discourages such “conflict of interest” editing. “We don’t make it an absolute rule,” he said, “but it’s definitely a guideline.” Many Wikipedia entries are in a constant state of flux as they are edited and re-edited, and the site’s many regular volunteers and administrators tend to keep an eye out for bias. The company e-mailed Wikipedia administrators, who replied that the changes had been rejected because of a lack of objectivity.Perhaps interestingly, many of the most apparently self-interested changes come from before 2006, when news of the Congressional offices' edits reached the headlines. This may indicate a growing sophistication with the workings of Wikipedia over time, or even the rise of corporate Wikipedia policies.
This database is possible thanks to a combination of Wikipedia policies and (mostly) publicly available information. The organization also allows downloads of the complete Wikipedia, including records of all these changes.
The New York Times ratting on itself was nothing more than a humorous afterthought to me. And since it was the NY Times reporting on itself, that's why I included that blurb of info from its own article. So relax. The NY Times isn't going out of business because of Wikipedia edits.
Wikipedia is both an incredible innovation in information retrieval and a completely unreliable source of information beyond a basic overview on a subject. It can also be a significant time drain if you - like me - find yourself wanting to fix every poorly-written or inaccurate page you stumble across.
I have worked in the Wikipedia anti-vandalism campaign off and on for a few years, and I sometimes quip that the number one edit on the site is a page-blanking with the replacement of the following text, in 36-point font:
U R GAY
Yet I also have participated in a deliberate experiment (_a la_ Stephen Colbert) to introduce completely false information into Wikipedia. The funny thing about this gag is that there are now 993 Google references to this completely mythical Wiki entry, as thousands of websites simply pick up Wiki RSS feeds and update their sites, while other people take at face value everything they read on Wikipedia.
Some day I will write about the gag, but I want to see how far along it goes before I "out" myself.
:-}
posted by historymike on Aug 20, 2007 at 10:41:43 am #
Wikipedia is both an incredible innovation in information retrieval...
Agreed.
...and a completely unreliable source of information beyond a basic overview on a subject.
Agreed.
It can also be a significant time drain...
And Agreed.
posted by TheTalentedMrC on Aug 20, 2007 at 01:41:04 pm #
I didn't realize how many references there were in Wiki to links to your blog Mike.
:-)
Aug 19, 2007 NY Times story.
Most of the corporate revisions did not stay posted for long. Many Wikipedia entries are in a constant state of flux as they are edited and re-edited, and the site’s many regular volunteers and administrators tend to keep an eye out for bias.
The SCO Group, a software maker in Salt Lake City, made changes to product information in its own entry this year. The company has been involved in legal disputes over the rights to some open-source software. Craig Bushman, the company’s vice president for marketing, said he had told a public relations manager to make the changes. “The whole history of SCO had been written by someone who doesn’t know the history of SCO,” he said.
An hour after the changes were made, he said, they disappeared. The company e-mailed Wikipedia administrators, who replied that the changes had been rejected because of a lack of objectivity.
And The New York Times Company is among those whose employees have made, among hundreds of innocuous changes, a handful of questionable edits. A change to the page on President Bush, for instance, repeated the word “jerk” 12 times. And in the entry for Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, the word “pianist” was changed to “penis.”The "scanner" which is located at http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/ was made public last week.
Aug 14, 2007 Wired story
This database is possible thanks to a combination of Wikipedia policies and (mostly) publicly available information. The online encyclopedia allows anyone to make edits, but keeps detailed logs of all these changes. Users who are logged in are tracked only by their user name, but anonymous changes leave a public record of their IP address. The organization also allows downloads of the complete Wikipedia, including records of all these changes.
Griffith thus downloaded the entire encyclopedia, isolating the XML-based records of anonymous changes and IP addresses. He then correlated those IP addresses with public net-address lookup services such as ARIN, as well as private domain-name data provided by IP2Location.com.
The result: A database of 34.4 million edits, performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals ranging from the CIA to Microsoft to Congressional offices, now linked to the edits they or someone at their organization's net address has made.
Perhaps interestingly, many of the most apparently self-interested changes come from before 2006, when news of the Congressional offices' edits reached the headlines. This may indicate a growing sophistication with the workings of Wikipedia over time, or even the rise of corporate Wikipedia policies.
The vast majority of changes are fairly innocuous, however. Employees at the CIA's net address, for example, have been busy -- but with little that would indicate their place of apparent employment, or a particular bias. One entry on "Black September in Jordan" contains wholesale additions, with specific details that read like a popular history book or an eyewitness' memoir. Many more are simple copy edits, or additions to local town entries or school histories. One CIA entry deals with the details of lyrics sung in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode.posted by jr on Aug 19, 2007 at 10:03:53 pm #