Wired Story:
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights...08/wiki_tracker

Wikipedia Scanner website:
http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/

Have fun and be sure to copy any interesting results to the Wired as they have requested to be notified of any significant findings (which you can then vote on a la DIGG):
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/wikiwatch/

Also on WikiEN-l mailing list: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ust/079143.html

I have so many problems with this that I don't know where to begin.

It suggests massive privacy invasions, but then on the flip side there is an argument for it, as it suggests accountability. But then for all of those pluses, people simply have to create an account and the scanner is useless.

from the list:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ust/079143.html

Some just don't understand that people are curious who is writing the information.

I wonder what SlimVirgin, Jayjg, ElinorD, and Musical Linguist types think of this tool? Given their hypocritical stances in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if they liked it. But it is very clearly an attempt to "out" the "in real life" identity of editors.

Not that I am against that.

Nor should you be! This is precisely the sort of thing people like me should be doing, to be honest. Of course, it'll be used mostly against corporate and political types, and it'll just drive them further "into the shadows"... If I were a smart person, I'd interpret some of the trends I've been seeing as a good reason to invest in the "private proxy server" business. Maybe we should start calling it the "PPS Industry," just to get a head-start!

Still, I like the cut of this guy's jib, as they say.

Vir-GIL! Vir-GIL! Vir-GIL!

This tool makes it easy to stalk IP edits. I don't mean just track, but this thing goes all the way back to the beginning.

I'm missing something here. I enter my IP address and it returns the edits made under that IP address while not logged in. I thought the point was it would return all edits made from the IPs logged in of not? I could get the same information by entering User:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (my ip) and then clicking on "Users Contribs" on the blank users page. What new does this tool allow me to do?

This is an amazingly good thing, as it holds people accountable. If people don't act like conflict of interesting a-holes, they have nothing to hide.




It's not stalking, it's appropriate oversight.



Scan whole ranges of IPs. You can for example review all edits by known Whitehouse IPs, or known Central Intellegence Agency IPs, or known IPs belonging to a given corporation or foundation. That is invaluable.

I see. That makes the select by agency/business more valuable too. When a user has a dynamic IP address will it usually stay within the 256 possibilities of the same range or might it move to other ranges?

I thought it was a magic tool that would identify all user activity by IP, thus effectively eliminating anon/pseudonymous editing. But this is nice too.

I know that many of you Psyborgias probably have fixed IP chips implanted in your Wikipineal glands by now, but many of us old-fangled Yoomans do not. And many, many other Yoomans use all of the many, many IPs that I find myself willy nilly using, nor all of them anywhere near the same ranges.

Jonny

I think, in a nutshell, it would catch a lot of relatively innocent people, whilst doing absolutely nothing to harm the people who are seriously causing problems, but giving them a convenient scapegoat of the people who are not logged in.

I see this as a big negative.

I mean if all people had their IPs listed on every post, then it could be used with discretion and in the right way. But that's not the case. No, I don't like this tool at all.

Good for you. If someone that works for say, Senator Smith from Alaska whitewashes his account from a home AOL or Comcast IP, good for him. Let him go nuts.

The point is doing it from US Senate IPs is WRONG WRONG WRONG.




I see it as a big positive. If enough bad press happens then people will take corporate IP steps to prevent WP editing, or else all operatives from places like Hasbara et all will know to register always, causing chaos for WP and eventually leading to people having to disclose IPs anyway.

I'm more and more convinced that unless all IPs are naked for all edits, all users, at all times, the system will get progressively worse. Naked IPs and no open proxies allowed, period, at all, will keep things honest.

You don't seem to get what it means that many, many people may be using the same single IP.

For example, the other day some WR denizen, known 2b a WP admin, posted a WP edit link here — without looking at the target address, as I routinely do just for the sake of not getting pop-ups and pdf files, I clicked on it, and got one of those WP "You've Got Mail" stickers. After I recovered from the rampant wikiparanoia of it all, it turns out that the talk page message was evidently for someone who had been slotted two months earlier to the same IP that I got alotted the other day, only that person had never gotten back to the same IP again to pick up that message. That sort of thing is happening umpteen times a day at the naked IP level.

Now try to imagine what sort of chaos would ensue of people started attributing everything that's emitted from each IP to the last poor sucker that happens to be using it.

Jonny

Easy fix if that becomes a problem: EVERYONE must register to edit. No exceptions. Each IP used to make an edit is simply listed naked next to that edit/user name. Messages go then to the user name.

If someone happens to use the same IP on your username because of dynamics, it will be obvious as a dynamic range.

That will cut out all sockpuppetry instantly. People don't need ten fucking accounts. If you won't post something in your name, don't post it on WP. Let's see how many people libel others if they can get sued over it readily.

This seems to conflate editing with a pseudonymous account with editing under ones own name. In some ways pseudonymous accounts are more cloaked than an annon IP and may permit greater irresponsibility.

I would rephrase this to say, "...often permits much greater irresponsibility."

This tool can be useful, but it can also prove useful to people like Jayjg and SlimVirgin. The problem with it is that it perpetuates the myth that those who edit without registering are "anons" and those who edit with screen names are "good guys." It is in the interest of the Wikipedia ruling class to perpetuate this myth.

The correlation between screen name and IP address can only be done by a few admins with CheckUser access. And this access is only meaningful for a few weeks after the incident in question. The logs are rotated every few weeks, and the IP address-to-screen name correlation is no longer available if you're trying to go back further than that.

If Brian Chase had spent 30 seconds creating an account on Wikipedia before he did his famous edit on John Seigenthaler, then by the time Seigenthaler found it 132 days later, there would have been no record of his IP address. Without such a record, he would have never been indentified.

I would feel better about this tool if its creater had a blurb on top of his page explaining this situation, and criticized it as an abdication of responsibility. It's not a secret — as soon as you start editing as an anon, you see this blurb at the top of Wikipedia's edit page:

No, it's not that. But if every single edit by username is tagged in public for all time with the IP that did that edit, and you libel [[John Smith III]] from IP 71.54.98.189, even if thats not your IP anymore, then John Smith III's attorneys can pursue the owner of 71.54.98.189 as is their legal right.

We were talking about what good an IP scanner by itself would do.

We already know what sorts of changes to Wikipedia policies and especially practices would help with the problem — but that's beside the point of this thread — 'cause it ain't gonna happen while Wikipedia lives.

"Scanners live in vain …"

Jonny

See also, in related news:

Link: Wikipedia is only as anonymous as your IP

Unfortunately, this kind of press obscures the real problems on Wikipedia, and makes it seem that the editors are the problem. They aren't.

In some ways this is true.

However, as I noted in the blog post, most of the news headlines are "Wikipedia is corrupt" and words to that effect, when talking about this scanner. Whilst the scanner itself doesn't actually expose it, it gives the hint that it is true, and opens the door for further more serious investigation.