August 15, 2007

See Who's Editing

Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith just launched an unofficial Wikipedia search tool that threatens to lay bare the ego-editing and anonymous flacking on the site. Enter the name of a corporation, organization or government entity and you get a list of IP addresses assigned to it. Then with one or two clicks, you can see all the anonymous edits made from those addresses anywhere in Wikipedia's pages.

Griffith's work is a neat example of what can be uncovered just by reorganizing public information.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/wikiwatch/

i strongly recommend that you click through the link .. they have a list of submissions by readers of wiki-editing they have discovered .. it's rather amusing .. some of the editors include the church of scientology, electronic arts, sony, the mormon church, and fox news .. as you might have guessed, most of the editing is done to remove "negative" information

** According to the BBC, Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that CIA computers made edits to the page of Iran's president. It also purportedly shows that the Vatican has edited entries about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. (source)

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