I loved this:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2006/11/01/1778615.htm

So now the CIA is going to have their own version of Wikipedia. Presumably all of the other agencies are going to do the same thing. I loved this quote:



Of course, that is assuming that that was an accidental mistake, and not a deliberate lie, which seems extaordinarily unlikely. Deliberate lie, mate, deliberate lie.

Of course, if all of the agencies have their own versions of Wikipedia, does that mean that they are going to be editing Wikipedia, once they've sorted it out on their own versions? Or will they stop using Wikipedia and instead use their own ones?

What do you guys think of this?

It looks like it'll just be an internal wiki style database. The comparisons to wikipedia by the press look misleading.

Yeah, a hidden one. No comparison, you think?

Kato: I blogged about it (old news but it's new news to me) and essentially came to the same conclusion:

Yes, I see your point. Its a wiki for the intelligence community.

The problem is that the word "wiki" isn't understood in the public, yet they do know what "Wikipedia" is. Hence if they'd said "wiki" people would be like "huh? whats a wiki?" and then they'd have to explain "Like Wikipedia". Its kind of like missing a step.

They do plan to write articles using their wiki though, but I am sure that over time they will alter the structure to specifically suit their purposes.

Nonetheless, this is new for the intelligence community.

And I would be interested to learn how they thought that using a wiki would be useful.

I would suggest that they "experimented" on Wikipedia first. But now, with Wiki Scanner and the like, they may feel that it is somewhat risky to use Wikipedia, so are using their own version instead.

You know how the space shuttle has a fabric layer underneath the heat shield tiles? It would be like the press reporting that "Astronauts are concerned about the cracked heat tile, but Mission Control feels confident that the Kleenex layer underneath will be sufficient protection for re-entry."

Kleenex:fabric :: Wikipedia:wiki database

By the by, did you guys know that Wikipedia is actually only the world's fourth-largest wiki database, in terms of article count?

Greg

English Qweki: 8 million articles, 1 admin, 83 users.

Something fishy there.

http://en.qweki.com/Main_Page

Richdex: 8 million articles, 2 admins, 8 users:

http://www.richdex.com/index.php/Main_Page

About Us: 3 million articles, 49 admins, 42,000 users:

http://www.aboutus.org/

While the About Us one sounds slightly more believable than the others, that's still 100 articles each, which is a bit of a stretch of the imagination.

My Norton AntiVirus warns of a "malicious script" at that Qweki site.

Jonny

They've obviously got a copy of "Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus" somewhere.

I'd say that at a bare minimum the top 2, and possibly the top 3, are all just abusing the hell out of Google AdSense to make megabucks through advertising on every single one of their millions of articles. Actually, probably not AboutUs. I'd be interested to learn how they can afford to have all that on there.

I was guessin' maybe DaVinci Code …

Jonny

The wikipedia article on intellipedia was started 16:56, 27 September 2006, was interestingly enough edited by a USA Department of State IP early on, and it's rumored (no citation!) that at least one wikipedia admin is also a intellipedia admin.

I have no idea how you'd check, though.

You could start by quoting links to the intellipedia article on Wikipedia, when it was created, who it was created by, and why you think that the USA Department of State edited it (links, links, links). Also if you have heard of any rumours, then to quote links to anyone saying them.

If a Wikipedia admin is an Intellipedia admin, then it is very significant.

They're all bot-generated. With the exception of About Us, which was bot-seeded with about 2 million articles, but (as far as I know) grown from there with real contributors.

Centiare would be on that list of largest wikis, except that most of our content is parceled off in "Directory" space, which then don't count toward the automated "good" articles tally.

Greg

Yes, that's right.

Ah, sorry, once I'm off wikipedia, I choose to forget about WP:RS and WP:V.

Earliest history page for the Intellipedia article.

Diffs of 169.253.4.21 editing: 1 2 3

WHOIS results from NetworkSolutions showing the IP belongs to the US Department of State

Another fun IP is 70.35.194.225 which doesn't seem to resolve to anything (perhaps it's no longer routed) yet has edited three times also: 1 2 3

Lastly, before I stop searching, I noticed an IP edit that belonged to Maxwell AFB out of Alabama. You'll notice that not too long after, Testpilot edits the article too. I imagine that editor decided it was a bad idea to IP edit.

One of the admins on Wikipedia (who asked to be nameless) mentioned that one of the other admins had admitted to being an admin on Intellipedia. Other than the person in question being female, I don't know who it might be. I notice Elonka has edited it: given her area of interest, that's not surprising, yet she's not an admin.

Nah, IPs don't have to resolve at all. It happens in a lot of countries.

It doesn't show up on WHOIS and you can't traceroute to it. I thought that was a bit odd.

Don't know about admins, but:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Acadac

D. Calvin Andrus, Ph.D.

http://members.aol.com/acadac/bio.html

Wow. Good catch! At least one CIA member who is happy to admit it on Wikipedia - not directly though. His userpage doesn't say it, but it does say his real name and then you can search for it to find out that he's a CIA member.

Super Fine Find !!!

Keep Up The Good Work, All !!!

Yer Tom Cruise Director,

Jonny