wikipedia edits

[Lothar]

this site tracks various wikipedia edits made by \"interested\" parties. Common themes:

- political name-calling. NYT editor calls Condi a \"concert penis\", dems call Rush Limbaugh a \"poopie head\", BBC staffer modifies GWB's middle name to \"Wanker\", senator rags on Helen Thomas; Fox News edits Al Franken's entry; someone from the UN calls Oriana Fallaci a \"racist whore\". (Amazing how often Fox and the NYT show up.)

- corporate coverups. Diebold deletes sections on voting machine controversies; Dell removes complaints about their customer service; Starbucks removes anti-Starbucks links; Fox News removes various criticisms; MLBPA removes criticisms of itself.

- political slant. Al-Jazeera says nasty things about Israel; Israeli government deletes references to \"the wall\"; Republican party changes wording in Iraq War section.

- religious scandals. Scientology tries to hide the Xenu story. Bishop removes references to abuse scandal. Mormons delete references to Joseph Smith having a gun when he was killed. Creationists add \"some scientists remain unconvinced\" to evolution-related articles.

- corporate rivalries/pranks. WaPo says Washington Examiner owned by Charles Manson. Apple edits Microsoft entries.

... and so on, and so on, and so on.

I lurb this website. When you have a huge community contributing to a knowledge database, it's nice to be able to see what groups/individuals are doing, especially regarding their own image and that of their enemies.

[Dakatsu]

I am so glad they have a revert function!

Although I have to admit, I laughed my ass off when I read George Bushes name once \"George Walker Texas Ranger Bush\"

[Lothar]

Also see this site (may go down on occasion due to extreme traffic.)

[roid]

hmm, this must be getting increased news everywhere.
boingboing has mentioned some big disney and fox ones 2 days ago.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/14/di ... _whit.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/14/ca ... news_.html

good to know someone's keeping track of it ALL though. Almost makes me want to get popcorn , afterall this is like some kindof PROFESSIONAL internet drama - why would you want to ever go back to watching the small-game if we can watch the big-wigs battle it out?

[Lothar]

hmm, this must be getting increased news everywhere.

Quite possibly because the second link I posted is what makes it possible, and it only went live about 36 hours ago.

As soon as people found out about it, news spread like wildfire.

[Testiculese]

Glad I don't waste my time reading those sections. I keep off the mainstream trail.

[Kyouryuu]

Y'know what annoys me on Wikipedia? The zealous \"anti-trivia\" group. A page gets a single bullet point of trivia and up goes a large five-line block of text decrying it. They are awfully good about plastering warnings all over the place, but act like it is someone else's responsibility to do the integration.

Myself, I find the trivia sections interesting. While some entries are definitely out there, the fact of the matter is that trivia is a byproduct of the unique advantage Wikipedia has over the traditional encyclopedia - instantaneous cross-referencing.

[TIGERassault]

Ok, I'l bite:
How exactly do you know that those edits were by those people?

[Sirius]

Y'know what annoys me on Wikipedia? The zealous "anti-trivia" group. A page gets a single bullet point of trivia and up goes a large five-line block of text decrying it. They are awfully good about plastering warnings all over the place, but act like it is someone else's responsibility to do the integration.

Myself, I find the trivia sections interesting. While some entries are definitely out there, the fact of the matter is that trivia is a byproduct of the unique advantage Wikipedia has over the traditional encyclopedia - instantaneous cross-referencing.

Perhaps that would make good material for suggesting to the administrators... if they actually read it, anyway.

[Zuruck]

Hah...I love the fact that people go to wikipedia like it's an actual encyclopedia. It's people like you and me making those articles...everything you read on there should be taken with a grain on salt.

Good notion though...some fun info but shouldn't be taken seriously.

[Foil]

Ok, I'l bite:
How exactly do you know that those edits were by those people?

From what I gather, they don't always know the individuals, but they can usually trace the editor's IP back to an organization.

(It's a bit like the way us D3 server-ops keep track of who is who, even when people are under alias. )

[Sirius]

The idea is that someone who has a clue what this physics thing is will eventually come on, and will be annoyed at the crap and inaccuracies in the current article that they want to correct it. Doesn't always happen that way - and Wikipedia articles are often not written in a way that is easy to follow for someone unfamiliar with parts of the subject matter - but it is useful for most \"what is this\"-type questions.

I still remember the Descent page though... it's amazing how much people think they know about this game, but don't...

[Jeff250]

I imagine that a lot of this could just be bored, low-level employees on their lunch break.

[roid]

Ok, I'l bite:
How exactly do you know that those edits were by those people?

every edit done by an "anonymous" user (ie: someone who hasn't registered an account) get's their IP address recorded for all to see.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... on=history
note the ip addresses on some edits - those are "anonymous" edits.

Also, there are databases online that you can use to lookup what IP address belongs to what organisation.
Organisations generally have their own static IP range.

therefore it seems easy enough to write a script to systematically crossreference these 2 publicly available information databases - and voilà! You can tag every anonymous edit with the organisation that owns the IP it came from.