This would be a blog post, if only I had the time.

I've noticed a few things that the media has mostly failed to address regarding the WikiScanner:

(1) All of the information in the WikiScanner has always been available. This tool was simply a convenient mash-up to lessen the legwork of matching IP owner lookups to Wikipedia edit histories.

(2) Most of the edits made from corporate IP addresses have absolutely nothing to do with the corporation. (E.g., many edits from General Motors were about various books of the Bible.)

(3a) Very few of the edits that had anything to do with the corporation or its line of business made any attempt to conceal facts or subvert the encyclopedic message of the Wikipedia article. We simply notice the rare few that did.

(3b) ...and this is the one I'm truly dawning on now... Most of the corporate IP edits that had anything to do with the corporation or its line of business were actually quite helpful in improving the factual basis of Wikipedia. In my scans of many corporate editing patterns, I'm seeing things like product descriptions being updated to reflect annual model changes; I'm seeing spelling and grammatical errors being fixed; I'm seeing incorrect conclusions being remedied (such as when a General Motors author changed "power" to "torque" to more accurately describe the physics of a motor).

However, we don't see any news stories or WikiEN-l list threads with the headline, "Corporate America also enjoys improving Wikipedia", or perhaps "While the rare scandals are fun to wikisleuth, Wikipedia should extend its thanks to most corporate IP editors". I doubt we'll see those headlines, though.

And, just so this pot isn't entirely calling the kettle black... Yes, I admit that digging up JzG's fetish with busty models was much more fun than pointing out his mundane yet meritorious edits.

The dirt rises to the top on the nightly news, as it does on WikiScanner.

Greg

Greg,

I know that ∃ members of the Public — well, ≥ 1 member of the Public — is not really that naive. We know that if a hiway cop looks up from his or her doughnut long enough to catch ∃1 going 80 mph, then that's probably just the median speed on the hiway that day.


We also know that Wikipedia COI-ness is deliberately crafted to abuse the honest citizen and up the ratings of the Judge Jimbo Show with Showy Show Trails that make a Big Shew of Wikipedia's Dumbest Crooks, while letting the Great Mass of ½-way crafty crooks steal the wikipharm with wikimpunity.

We also know that the main purpose of the CIA is to provide Hollywood with thrilling but not too scary picture shows about spies, and so they spend most of their time distracting the DejaViewing Public with cute but dumb antics, while the [Name Sleightly Anonymized] does all the real work of espionage. As in gubermint, so it goes in all big corpulations, most of which out-gravitas any gubermint you might name, including [Nation Redacted].

So what does the person of median intelligence reasonably project from the sample of devils he knows?

Waddayu Think?

Jonny

Once you compile enough information, it might make a worthy blog post. As Somey was highlighting, we don't want to be behind the mainstream media. Such a revelation would put us ahead of them.

Perhaps you could also highlight that any subverting is more likely to be behind actual logged in users, who can't as easily be traced back to their company. Ted Frank for example.

Great suggestion, Bliss !!!

Go 4 It !!!

Jonny

Yeah, but blog posts should be what we want the public to see, while this is more of a discussion, kind of working things out as we go along. So wait a bit on the blog post perhaps.

I agree, but not too long... In fact, I might take a crack at it myself in the next couple of days. It could use a "light touch," I suspecky!

What the mainstream media seems to be largely missing, in addition to the fact that most corporate edits have been perfectly constructive (or at least innocuous), is the effect this is all going to have on how the WP Faithful views the outside world. When the Wikiscanner was first announced, remember they mostly shrugged it off - except for a few of them who pointed out how it would actually be a good thing because it would help ward off corporate/government influence. Now they're just going to be more suspicious of everyone, since the assumption will be that people with "conflicts of interest" (by their definition) will make themselves harder to catch... That's going to make the whole site less pleasant to deal with, and it will affect the content, too. Probably in a mostly negative way, of course.

It's true that the information was there all along, but it's the coverage the Wikiscanner has received that makes it significant. This may be another of those "pre/post" events, i.e., the "pre-Wikiscanner era" and the "post-Wikiscanner era"... Suddenly everyone cares now about who's actually editing Wikipedia, and we might find that most of the world preferred it back when they could assume it was all a bunch of teenagers in their parents' basements, instead of, I dunno, 90 percent teenagers in basements and 10 percent CIA agents and people looking to fix elections. Seems to me that our job is to point out how that 90 percent is still causing 90 percent of the problems.

I think that we need to get all angles, and make a balanced report, if we can. The mass media has already covered all of the scandals, and we've already said the other side of the scandals, about the logged in edits.

The thing is that with people who aren't logged in, edits are going to be something like this break down:

- 10% stupid vandalism and test edits
- 50% constructive edits having nothing to do with their work
- 30% constructive edits to do with their work
- 10% manipulative edits to do with their work

Around about those kinds of figures are going to be normal. And the media are focussing right now on the 10% of manipulative edits, ignoring that most of the edits to do with their work are constructive, and indeed that most of their edits overall are constructive.

I could break down my edits on Wikipedia too. On articles, about 60% were to do with issues that were of great relevance to me, most of them very constructive. But I also edited about a lot of issues that had nothing to do with me, things that I knew practically nothing about. I'm sure that that is pretty typical, whether you're logged in or not.

But there are some individuals, and perhaps some companies (you'd expect government and spy agencies to be the worst) who do some very manipulative things.

I mean I'd be surprised if Exxon did all that much, or Fox News, but CIA I would be expecting to do manipulative things, or the Australian federal government, or Congress staffers, because that's related to their work.

Wikiphreakin hopeless …

Jonny

But Greg, if they admit that, then they might have to seriously consider relaxing/removing the COI policy!

Please. Wikipedia will never admit that because of the same reason the mainstream media will never cover it - they believe corporations are big, scary, and evil, and only act with malicious intent.

I think I already stated, perhaps about x number of times elsewhere, that this does not appear to be the case based on article content and registered users. I think Greg's original post implied that the IP addresses revealed by the scanner were not doing particularly manipulative things either. In fact, that was the point of the post.

The people who are doing manipulative things on WP are people like you and me, SV and Jayjg, Poetlister and Grace Note, Herschel or JzG. Either by intention, or due to innocence and ignorance. The system encourages it.

I guess that we can take this to go down to the silliness of NPOV and how it should be replaced with an expert editors policy, whereby experts, or at least knowledgeable people, are encouraged to write about areas that they are most knowledgeable about, and just have some neutral party then view the knowledge from a neutral perspective. Then they'd have some kind of quality to the articles. But to do that, people need to identify their areas of expertise. They don't necessarily need to prove it, as their writing should prove it. But things like userboxes and personal stories in your user pages should be encouraged.

I never hid my bias. I never hid what my areas of expertise were. I spent very little time editing articles that I didn't have expertise in. Was I manipulating articles? No of course not. Was I expressing bias? Of course I was. Its just that my bias was more obvious because I never tried to hide it.

I do get worried when I hear people suggesting that the CIA and secret service organisations are paid to tell the truth about things and to be open and honest about things. NO THEY ARE NOT. Secret service organisations are paid to lie. That's their job. That's the whole point in their existence. They are paid to gather information, and then to keep that information to themselves. That's what being a spy is all about. It's about lying and finding out what is really true. So if you think that somehow-or-other the CIA managed to get away from all of that lying to secretly tell the truth, just for Wikipedia, then I think that you are SEVERELY misinformed.

"

Jonny

That's because most journalists aren't as smart as you Greg, or as IT proficient to look at the bigger picture (remember, a "clever journalist" just believed your arch nemisisisis that she's God's gift to SEOmanity. Also because scam and scandal is more newsy. Like: " Local boy and local girl work to create social harmony in Smallville", sells less than "Local boy and local girl make hot dirty love on Smallville city council lawn, yesterday, at noon "

Yeah, well, you're a red blooded hetero guy. (besides the joy of catching JzG with his skivvies around his knees, lol).



The plebians think that (including Floflo) but the bigboss knows who breads his butter.
What's a kick is Floflo thinking that they'll donate, just "because we're who we are".
She's so green she's green.

Oh, and before I forget....

I don't think anyone is disputing that, B (though they do seem to be yawning over it a bit). But all we ever do around here is point out how various corporate and governmental interests are removing facts, inserting lies, yada yada yada. That's obviously bad, but it's not something of epidemic proportions, no matter what the media is telling us.

What has reached epidemic proportions is the way admins and clique-members, who are not necessarily spies or political operatives, shape policy to fit their own agendas and use admin tools to enforce their will. The point here is to get the media to stop focusing on the spooks and PR men, and start focusing on their enablers. The spooks and PR men are playing precisely by the rules, after all! "Stay anonymous, be nice to us, and obey the admins." That's the only way they can get the job done, and those rules are set up by anonymous nobodies, not by them.

The danger here is that you've already got the foxes guarding the chicken coop. If people start yelling "OMG spies and CEO's are pwning my encyclopedia!!!11!", and the WP admin community rides in to take all the credit for cleaning it all up, the people are going to be even worse off than they were before.

I think we can agree that the current administrative structure is, frankly, shit.

However, ultimately Wikipedia could be run by Kim Jong Il, but so long as its articles were a) well written comprehensive c) honest about their biases (much better than NPOV) then other criticisms really wouldn't matter.

I think that you could make a credible case that many of Wikipedia's problems stem from abusive admins, but that issue isn't as important as it may appear at first imo.

All the Big Problems are intertwined, interrelated, and interdependent. The main role of the high-ranking admins is to prevent solutions from being applied, in the interest of maintaining their position, and it's a crucial role in keeping things shitty...

But regardless, we're still just talking about one blog post (albeit a significant one). We're not trying to decide the Future Direction of Wikipedia Criticism In General™, and we would all be wise to remember that. The fact is, the issue of "Who Are the Editors" is hot right now, and IMO we should be able to adequately respond to hot issues - and if necessary, keep them warm longer than they might stay otherwise.

Not that this is anybody's job or anything!

Again with the anonymous stuff? Somey, you are an anon. There have been theories about who you are (On Wikiinfo, or Wikitruth, one WP admin accused you of being a banned user, but who cares?). Bottom line is Somey isn't anyone identifiable.

I've been on chat boards, etc. where anonymity wasn't a problem (and when admin problems arose, as they will, the site owning company stepped up, unlike our favorite WP). And on a large level, Wikipedia is a chat board. The whole community concept is right in line with that. Abuse wouldn't be curbed by revealing everyone's id. It would make it worse, depending on who could slime the other worse, in the current state of things. What needs to be dealt with is the limits, of which there are currently none.

The whole world, outside wikipeida is a sock puppet any way...

I think that firstly people should be aware that amongst other things spies are involved in Wikipedia. There are 3 roles for a spy - to find out secrets, to stop secrets from being discovered by others (other spies and general members of the public) and to act on these secrets to help to protect the people. Now, it may well be that they discover occasional secrets through Wikipedia - they probably do find the odd terrorist (I am sure that they monitor certain articles like hawks), and so forth. And I am sure that we are all quite happy for them to do this. But on top of that they spread disinformation. Yes, it is their job to do it. And yes, they also add in regular information, as we've seen. Because that is their job too. But we've seen clear cut proof, just based on Wiki Scanner evidence, that they are adding disinformation with a set agenda. This shouldn't be a shock, but it is a reality. People need to be aware of this, that some of the information on Wikipedia is going to be deliberately altered.

Similarly, some of the information is going to be deliberately altered by companies, by politicians, and indeed by individuals with a particular bias. This is a reality, and it is going to keep on happening. We should be informed of this, and accept this as fact. It does happen. It is natural and normal for it to happen. So information should be treated with a grain of salt. No, we shouldn't be boycotting Fox News or anything stupid like this - we should instead just accept that everyone does it.

And then we need to get in to the serious issues, which is that Wikipedia cannot deal with such things, because their structure does not allow it. They shape policy, which is their business, but they do it sneakily.

Once we've accepted what the media is saying, we then need to focus on the major issues. Truth-changing. It doesn't matter whether its truth-changing by the CIA, by a corporation, by an individual, or with Wikimedia's permission. All that matters is that it is there. We've seen how they handled their own history, how they handled their former lawyer Brad Patrick, and how Jimbo Wales refers to himself. Even if you disregard everything else, we've seen that. We've seen how if you get a job at Wikipedia you automatically get a page about you on there, as a reward it seems. And if you have a page about you on Wikipedia, you either get bashed and hence banned, or else you get priveleged treatment, and get to change truth to your liking. Look at Adam Carr, Chip Berlet, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters (I forget his real name) and Ted Frank for a moment. They suddenly get some respect, and get to do what they like because they get their own article. Whilst others get banned for having their own article. They take sides on such issues, and decide either to let you change truth, or else to ban you, and it is very much down the middle.

Truth-changing is always going to be the issue, and is the main issue behind anything here. There are side issues, complementary issues, and additional issues. But that is always going to be the main one. Whilst Wikipedia is taken seriously, its ability and willingness to change truth is always going to be the main issue. And this is a structural problem.

Bliss,

The reason why some of us — anyways, ≥ 1 of us — are so deadly bored with this topic is not that there isn't a compelling issue there somewhere. Speaking for myself, my reasons and I break down this way:

1. I've pretty much already said and written all of the most intelligent things I can think of to say about it, and I can't think of anything new to say.
2. Indeed, people far more intelligent and vastly more articulate than I have already said what can be said, some of it going back to the days when I read 1984 and Animal Farm and Brave New World and Lord of the Flies and all that stuff by Marshall McLuhan and Noam Chomsky and the required reading list goes on.
3. There's a persistent, systematic error that preveils over all, and I've pointed to it a gadshillion time just this year, but it's apparently a persistent, systematic error for a reason — 'cause every time you point it out the crowd just says, Is That A Mace In The Emperor's Pocket, Or Is He Just Glad To See Us?

So I for one have given up for now, and will just have to wait until a few more people start to see it for themselves.

It's not like they haven't been told.

Jonny

Well, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire!

What I meant, though, was that the rules are such that government and corporate types who edit Wikipedia are supposed to not identify themselves as such. That rocks the boat, and makes people think they're being manipulated - which they are, of course, but the trick is to make people not think that.

Obviously that means they have to remain anonymous. The exception proved the rule: That was our own Greg Kohs, who was completely open about what he wanted to do and how WP could benefit from it. And look what happened to him, eh?

I'm not saying anonymity is the problem with Wikipedia, I'm just saying it's a vital condition - without which the problem would probably go away eventually.

As for me, well... I'm not trying to write an encyclopedia.

Okay fair point.

So then perhaps going on to the new focus, that in fact Wiki Scanner is only picking up the 10% or so and misrepresenting the edits, or indeed the edits of logged in users too?

I guess that IS a new thing, hence can be highlighted.