I thought this was interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=348854665

The list was generated last month. It's looking at Levenshtein distances and ratios. The selected values for this specific list are rather arbitrary and there are some clear false positives. Still, interesting.

What are you hoping to do with this list, out of curiosity? I went through and PROD'd a couple and deleted one then I realized just how enormous it is. Sure they probably need a lot of work and double checking, but so do a lot of blps.

It's a rudimentary method of detecting potential conflicts of interest. I have no real intentions for the list.

It's also a mean to find articles that need to be "rescued". I just sourced Lyn_Hancock. (#12 in that list) Thanks for doing the list, man.

I thought this was interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=348854665

The list was generated last month. It's looking at Levenshtein distances and ratios. The selected values for this specific list are rather arbitrary and there are some clear false positives. Still, interesting.

[...]

So, Enric Naval, one down and one thousand, six huncred and eighty to go!

Very nice. Is this more or less what COIbot does, except limited to articles identified as BLPs?

This is a great list. Thank you for creating it.

I clicked one at random and applied PROD. Many to follow, I'm sure.

Take for example Ash (T-C-L-K-R-D) , who likes to create and expand biographies of minor pornographic actors. On his user page he declares "I am not aware of any conflict of interest with regard to the articles I edit"...

You'd think he wouldn't do so much work on porn actors, given the fact that he makes no secret of his identity... Though I suppose they'll probably delete that photo now that we've pointed it out to them. (I'm guessing he's also this guy? )

This list identifies a fraction of the biographies that are started by the subject, a friend or a family member because the creator chose to use an account name that is similar to the article subject. Those accounts may have a "conflict of interest" as the phrase is defined by wikipedians but it would seem they are declaring that "COI" by their choice of user names. What is more disturbing are those users who do not disclose their conflicts and are actively deceptive about them.

Take for example Ash (T-C-L-K-R-D) , who likes to create and expand biographies of minor pornographic actors. On his user page he declares "I am not aware of any conflict of interest with regard to the articles I edit". This statement is demonstrably false. Ashley van Haeften helps maintain the database of Projet Volterra. Ashley wrote the wikipedia article on his husband Simon Corcoran (T-H-L-K-D), who is a fellow of Projet Volterra. He also wrote the articles on some of his other colleagues.

By coincidence, Project Volterra, in the person of one Simon Corcoran, supplied a quote for The Guardian's article on how useful Wikipedia is to academics.

The idea that the group would spend a lot of time just generally editing pages is "not realistic", he says, but with a specific need it made sense.

And from the Guardian article:


In other words, they put their own purposes for editing ahead of the "good of the project" overall. This is exactly the sort of conflicted editing that Jimmy Wales has vehemently opposed.

Is this going into your codex, Greg?

[edit] Welcome!
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Welcome to Wikipedia, Benet Salway! I am Ash and have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time. I just wanted to say hi and welcome you to Wikipedia! If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on my talk page or by typing {{helpme}} at the bottom of this page. I love to help new users, so don't be afraid to leave a message! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Oh yeah, I almost forgot, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome!

Ash (talk) 10:27, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh the irony :



My, that's awfully cozy to welcome your husband's colleague to Wikipedia....I suppose that Mr Salway was happy that Ash wrote his biography too...

Here they all are on the bottom of this page.

(Ash is confined to the footnotes....)

Ash also seems to have massaged the Michael Crawford (historian) article pretty well. The fourth guy doesn't have a Wikipedia article yet...

So do you think anyone was paid for any of these edits?

A COI doesn't necessarily have to involve paid editing. He's married to one of those four fellows. It would seem that all of this would be beneficial to his husband's career. So, even if money didn't change hands, it's not exactly ethical either...