See Who Is Whitewashing Wikipedia

Decius6i5 writes "Caltech grad student Virgil Griffith has launched a search tool that uncovers whitewashing and other self-interested editing of Wikipedia. Users can generate lists of every edit to Wikipedia which has been made from a particular IP address range. The tool has already uncovered a number of interesting edits, such as one from the corporate offices of Diebold which removed large sections of content critical of their electronic voting machines. A Wired story provides more detail and Threat Level is running a contest to see who can come up with the most interesting Wikipedia spin job."

TFA Interesting

I was fascinated by the CIA's edits... mostly adding details... and this:

"One CIA entry deals with the details of lyrics sung in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode."

Nerds.

Re:TFA Interesting

As much as it may astound us, even CIA agents are real people with real feelings and interests. (Well, to the extent that Buffy epsidoe music lyrics can count as a "real interest"...)

Mod Parent Up

Not for his partisan political opinions, but for his explanation of "evil". He's perfectly correct. Evil is basically a religious construct, and deserves just as much of a place in our understanding of our world as other religious concepts, like creationism, and the will of God, etc, etc.

Re:TFA Interesting

So you're saying CIA agents can get mod points too?

Re:TFA Interesting

I didn't imply that you said torturing people was justified. That's a real strawman. I was using it as an example.

Ok fair enough....

Does the fact that they like Buffy excuse any immoral actions they take? I think you are being disingenuous and trying to do a little propagandizing yourself. It looks as though you are trying to build sympathy for Big Brother.

Wait, what? You just said....

Give it a rest. Implying that its not surprising for CIA employees to have interests outside of work.

I'm saying, why even mention that people in the CIA are real people? Do you really think we are all so childish as to completely demonize everyone we disagree with?

Yes, absolutely 100%, I do believe that the average Slashdot user is childish enough to demonize people they disagree with. Are you new here? Peruse any political or Microsoft related topic for examples. Or how about the Novell thing? Or hell, the team working on Mono.

Hell, to some degree, dehumanization of those who differ from you is pretty common. See: racism, classism, nationalism, religion, etc. In that vein, I think its valuable to have reminders that if you prick them, they'll bleed just like you.

"I'm just saying, don't be surprised if the same guy who tries to manipulate the public's understanding, also likes Buffy." Why even point out the blazingly obvious like that? What is your motivation?

His motivation was that someone thought that it was odd that the CIA had interests outside of the CIA, and this was silly.

If you want to dig deeper than that, don't you think its valuable to understand that these people are doing their jobs for some reason other than simply enjoying doing unethical things? Its not about building sympathy for people who do bad things, but challenging the whole "Well they're just different from us mentality. Its been pretty much bullshit ever since it was first used. People are complex, and its far too often that people simplify them and dehumanize them as a way of coping with the lack of understanding and empathy. People also like to think that people that do bad things are simply different than them on some fundamental level, because otherwise they have the potential for evil within them.

"Criminals are just bad people." "Republicans are greedy and evil!" "They deserved to get bombed because they support terrorism." And so on, and so on. Hell, even Hitler wanted to help his country, yet most people just assume he was satan incarnate. This may seem obvious to you, but to a lot of people, like many Slashdot users, its not.

You're reading a hell of a lot into his post that just isn't there. What's your motivation?

Re:TFA Interesting

> Do you really think we are all so childish as to completely demonize everyone we disagree with?

Judging by the typical traffic on slashdot, yeah, pretty much.

Re:TFA Interesting

Uhh, we should also remember that there are some people at these places that make legitimate edits to Wikipedia. Just because an IP changes one or two things controversial, doesn't mean that all of their edits are BS. Also it is reason for someone to watch that users edits in the future to check for NPOV

Re:TFA Interesting

Uhh, we should also remember that there are some people at these places that make legitimate edits to Wikipedia. Just because an IP changes one or two things controversial, doesn't mean that all of their edits are BS.

Not to mention that one IP can cover a LOT of people.

My work IP is currently banned from wikipedia for vandalism. I've investigated this, and it was apparently some idiot in another building that's not even in the same zip code but who happens to work at another subsidiary under the same parent company that shares my IP. There are probably more than 10,000 people that share this same IP spread across New York City. Some of us work at the same company he does, some of us don't.

You really cannot take any of the IP's on this list and directly connect it to anyone at any company or organization, any more than the RIAA can take an IP of an alleged music pirate and say they individually are the ones that did it.

My IP, for example, says I work at a completely different company than the one that signs my paychecks. That's the way it is in the age of conglomerates.

National Softball Ass'n

Almost as funny was someone at the NSA (the security organization) adding the "National Softball Association" to the disambiguation page for "NSA" :-)

Maybe they work in the mail room and were tired of sorting through all the softball-related catalogs they receive?

Re:TFA Interesting

Disclaimer: I certainly don't want to turn the CIA as an entity into a bunch of nice guys, but

have you checked out there Factbook? [cia.gov]

It's arguably one of the best country resources for years, alas with an US slant (i.e. illicit drugs are very mymy in just about every country).

Nevertheless, it would be a shame if such a resource was to be pulled for "security reasons").

Re:TFA Interesting

One CIA entry deals with the details of lyrics sung in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode.

[citation needed]

Re:How are they different from groupthink?

> The only checks and balances in place are reviews by scientific peers!

As opposed to the alternative, which has no methodology and no review whatsoever. Show me one case where science has been wrong where it was corrected by something not science.

Re:How are they different from groupthink?

I don't think Batman was trying to say that the methodology of science was wrong, but trying to draw parallels between that methodology and that of Wikipedia.

I'm not sure if its an apt comparison, however. My mother could edit an article on computer programming that I wrote, but she is by no means my peer in this area. In science, the people reviewing you generally have the background required to be able to accurately and meaningfully judge your results. The same isn't necessarily true of Wikipedia. In the same way, however, its better than the alternative. Wikipedia isn't perfect, but not much in life is.

Re:How are they different from groupthink?

How is Science any different from groupthink?

Scientists perform experiments.

The experiment is the be all and end all of science. I think the reason that scientists get a lot of flack like the parent post nowadays is because there are so many pseudo-scientists around that claim to be using the scientific method but really aren't. Psychologists, sociologists, eugenicists, data miners, etc, etc. There's a lot of news articles these days claims that "scientists" have conducted an "experiment" supposedly proving some claim. Nine times out of ten, it turns out that cargo-cult scientists have performed another ritual with the appearance, but none of the substance of a proper experiment.

I've ranted long enough. The answer to your question is that scientists subject their theories to experimental verification/falsification. Peer review doesn't even enter into the equation. Freud was peer reviewed.

Re:How are they different from groupthink?

Besides missing the point (WHOOSH!), experiments have to be interpreted. Who interprets the results of the experiments? Scientists and their peers. There *is* a framework in place that science is supposed to follow. That's why no one can successfully claim that "I lit a match, therefore it's cold fusion." But at the end of the day, it's the people committed to following that framework that make it work.

Freud wasn't the only one who was peer reviewed. Einstein, for example, was also peer reviewed. And there was a lot of resistance to his theories in the day. The key is that his peers held themselves to the ideals of the scientific method. They poked, prodded, and tested his theory (both logically and empirically) until they were forced to accept it.

Re:How are they different from groupthink?

The experiment is the be all and end all of science.

Reality and physics doesn't care what the results of the experiment are, but the groupthink comes from sciences interpretation on the results.

As in... "I put leaches on my scurvy patients and they get better so it must have been the leaches kind" of thinking.

In itself, trying the leaches isn't wrong, but I've failed to noticed other issue due to pre-conceived notion such as the fact that the eating of lemons and limes had nothing to do with my patients getting better.

The scientific method usually tries to minimize this as much as possible, but often times we are still left with the debate of "Does dark matter exist?" or "Can we prove black hole exists?"

Right now, its still groupthink and anyone who would say "There are no blackholes!" would get shunned even if he had a compelling argument. Those in the community that had an open mind would of course review his material in a peer review.

As it is now... The things that have the hardest time with controlled experiements (like black holes) are the ones that groupthink gets applies to since we can't create a black hole in a lab and see what it does.

Wikipedia can already do this

Mediawiki has already added the capability to look at the Special:Contributions for an IP range. I'm not sure if it's been enabled yet on EN.

The encyclopedia ANYONE can edit.

What did you expect? Everyone has different truths.

Re:The encyclopedia ANYONE can edit.

First of all, calm down. Picasso was a painter, not a philosopher or an engineer. He's not telling you how to do your job.

Second of all, the value of this quote helps a person to understand a commonly misunderstood by computer geeks. Computers are basically abacuses. They do boolean logic. They create answers. However, intelligence asks questions. We don't have a tool yet that can ask a question, and until we do, the only intelligent system in the universe that know of will be the human mind. Too often, people, both programmers and non-programmers alike, think that a computer can solve all the problem. However, that doesn't reflect reality. Human intellect needs to perceive and pose the question, and then use a tool to solve that problem, such as progamming a computer to solve that problem.

But back in the working world, practical answers to real questions are quite valuable

You have just shown exactly what Picasso was trying to enlighten you to. You need to have a good question first, in order to get a good answer. Or any answer, for that matter.

That quote just strikes me as one of those pseudo-intellectual sayings that seems brilliant until subjected to a moment of rational thought.

So you have no use for questions? That tells me you haven't spent a moments time thinking about the implications of this quote.

Re:The encyclopedia ANYONE can edit.

Painters are usless. They can only paint pictures.

Re:The encyclopedia ANYONE can edit.

Truth is pipedream. For the most part truth is unattainable. It always relies on someones perception of events. Even if verified from other sources you cannot know for sure. I long ago accepted that truth does not exist, there is only the accepted "truth" and what I see, and I can't trust either.

While you can call truth "unattainable" it is also infinitely approachable. Truth does not rely on anyone's perception of it; only our understanding relies on perception. If you convince yourself that truth does not exist, you have given up on the approach to truth and the gradual perfection of your own understanding. "Accepted truth" has very little value. Raw experience has very little value. The gradual eternal approach to Truth through reason, perception, revelation and humility has great value. And Truth itself has infinite value.

Re:The encyclopedia ANYONE can edit.

No. Quote, or quote not. There is no credit.

That's ridiculous

Or, more politely, I think you're mistaken.

There's no magical incantation that makes an "open, transparent" information editing environment inheirently better. You just get a different bias, and it's more difficult to figure out where that bias is coming into play.

With Brittanica, you have a (known) establishment bias. With a Boeing sales brochure, you have a (known) "areospace is the ultimate industry" bias. What you generally see on Wikipedia are astounding examples of groupthink. Wikipedia's NPOV is a bias, make no mistake. And just because you can "see" the bias of article editors, that doesn't mean that the bias of the "Wikipedians" is easier to find, define, or overcome. All this does is make one type of bias more obvious. That doesn't solve the problem.

All content contains a bias. Knowing that is a good starting point for interpreting the content. This project is fine, as far as it goes. But implying (as you seem to) that somehow Wikipedia wonks are more trustworthy and less biased than other editors is, well, silly.

There's no "bonus" here

Re:That's ridiculous

You just get a different bias, and it's more difficult to figure out where that bias is coming into play.

Do you understand what TFA is about?

The whole point of a community resource like Wikipedia is to allow for multiple points of view, and by implication, multiple biases. As long as that's transparent and understood, it IS a bonus.

Don't you mean . . .

. . . their own truthiness?

Re:TOR

They don't need Tor, they could just create sockpuppet accounts like everyone else who trolls Wikipedia, and hide their IP that way.

Checkuser [wikipedia.org] anyone?

Re:TOR

The above comment is a troll, but I'll bite anyway. TOR is a huge time waster for Wikipedians. It basically gives vandals an unlimited stock of IP addresses from which to vandalize. The proximate reason that caused me to block TOR was that one particularly tenacious vandal (Enviroknot) was cycling through ranges of TOR IPs, vandalizing the Arbitration Committee page.

Roger Dingledine (the guy who invented TOR) came to Wikimania '06 and I was luckly enough to have dinner with him. We had a long talk about TOR - he explained the technical underpinnings of TOR to me and what he's doing next (to get around the Chinese firewall). His position was that he's not happy that TOR is blocked, but he understands why we do it, and he thinks we're going in the right direction. He also thinks that we need a trust metric - at which point, editing Wikipedia through TOR will become possible.

Re:TOR

I don't call you cynical, I call you honest. Of course companies are expected to edit anything that affects their image. It's called "mitigation". If someone libels you by entering garbage about you into a wiki, if you are going to sue them effectively, you need to show how you mitigated the damage. If you don't do something simple that you can do, it looks like you really didn't care.

Before wiki-anything can be considered more than just another biased source of info, the attitude that it is unethical for people to edit information about themselves (including companies) will have to change.

BS

Yet another case of anti-Wikipedia prejudice. Diebold has been editing the content of Encyclopedia Britannica since at least the 7th edition, but the mainstream press never even bothers to report on *that* kind of thing!

Re:BS

Regarding Britannica, I'd like to see a source for your claims. Whenever a person spouts off a conspiracy theory like that without a source to back it up, it remains just that, a conspiracy theory.

You do realize that the 7th Edition came out in 1827 [wikipedia.org], right? Its funny. Laugh.

Re:BS

You do realize that the 7th Edition came out in 1827, right? Its funny. Laugh.

No, I didn't and now I feel like an idiot. Its times like this that I'm glad my slashdot name isn't linked to my real identity

Re:BS

and even more amusing is the way he used wikipedia to look it up. little does he know, that the encyclopedia britannica has been editing wikipedia since 1964 to make it's own books look older and more authoritative.

I battle this from time to time

One of the pages on my watchlist is Adrian Smith [wikipedia.org] (R - Nebraska, third district). About once a month, an anon IP or recently-created user account tries to whitewash his WP article by removing unflattering sourced details about his campaign contributors.

If you want to follow along in the fun, view the article history [wikipedia.org].

Re:I battle this from time to time

Why is there nothing on the discussion page? If you're fighting someone on the main page, you need to document it on the discussion page.

Re:I battle this from time to time

Slashdotters, please tell me how I should edit this posting and make it disappear? If you don't want to post details publicly, please send me an email, to [e-mail] , thanks a bunch.

Victim of their own success

It's a bit of a pity that the more successful a source of information like Wikipedia becomes, the more likely it is that some twat is going to try and adopt it for their own ends.

Peter

open

in many ways the wikipedia vs britannica debate is a lot like open vs closed source. One you know what changes are being made and can decipher intent, the other is anyone's guess. Wikipedia may have its shortcomings-- but at least we can see them.

It's the iron law of bureaucracy, not outside IPs

How about instead of going after corporate IP addresses, a study of the corrupted power structure, administrator abuses, and Linda Mack/Jayjg? The problems are not from IP address on the outside. The problem is that there are not and have never been any objective criteria for delegating power to accounts, and while I don't know if it's a majority or not, a very good plurality of administrators believe their purpose is to use their power to ensure articles reflect only their point of view, and anyone that tries to change that, even with multiple citations and sources, find themselves personally attacked wikilawyered, and often blocked. There is no system separate from the administrators to handle this kind of abuse, so it almost never is addressed. Sure, edits from organizational IP addresses can be annoying, but they wield no power in the system, and cannot hurt anyone. Administrators and bureaucrats, they have a bad habit of supporting vandals and trolls that are later banned by Wikipedia, and harassing users that have not been able to protect themselves by becoming administrators, as being elevated to administrator largely depends on the desires of the current administrators, who are very adept at gaming the system. It is almost impossible to become an administrator unless you have the same character flaws as those in power. It's the iron law of bureaucracy; those that seek power and only power, to the detriment of the organization, seize and hold power. Wikipedia is a failed experiment, it failed a long time ago due to structural deficiencies, and the attention it continues to receive is like a bad addiction on the part of internet users.

Failed?

By what standard?

It has, in fact, become a generally useful source of information. It's useful as a starting point for real research. It is, in short, not at all a bad encyclopedia.

It's influenced by its own organizational culture and editorial bias. Welcome to the story of every publication on the planet.

Re:It's the iron law of bureaucracy, not outside I

For those who are interested, the author of the above comment (MSTCrow5429) has been blocked several times [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia for making personal attacks on other editors.

His current project appears to be shilling for Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma)'s [wikipedia.org] position denying anthropogenic climate change by citing out-of-date and rejected journal articles [wikipedia.org]. By so doing, he appears to be neglecting important Wikipedia policies demanding reliable sources [wikipedia.org] and requiring material be presented from a neutral point of view [wikipedia.org].

Sour grapes much? While I certainly agree that there are aspects of Wikipedia that deserve both criticism and scrutiny, I am somewhat disinclined to trust the judgement of MSTCrow on this.

What's with the path?!?!

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Too many connections in /jizz4/web/wikipedia/docs/name2ip.php on line 154

?!?!?!

Meta-encyclopedia

When I was in college, I took a history course in which we read three different books on slavery in the United States — one from the 1860s, one from the 1950s, and another from the 1990s. Obviously, they all had completely different spins on the reality of slavery. The goal of the assignment wasn't so much to learn about slavery as it was to learn about the three different time periods perception of slavery.

I think that these "edits" can provide us an interesting insight into the real issues, and how the public perceives them, and how various invested parties would like the public to perceive them. As long as there is transparency to the edits (and clearly, there is), I think a lot can be learned from the edits themselves.

—brian

slashdotliberalwhining

I'm glad someone added the slashdotliberalwhining tag.

I can't tell you how much it bothers me when some whiny liberal drags out another tinfoil-hat theory about how "Big Business" is trying to manipulate public opinion by obfuscating facts, or how some (ooh!) big, scary police state is abusing its powers.

We're an established first-world country with a tradition of freedom, and it's not as if we're ever going to slip into fascism like the Germany or Italy of last century, or into a police state like modern China or Russia, or into a gilded age aristocracy like every country in the Americas except the United States and Canada.

So relax, whiny liberals. Such dangers are unheard of. If we seem to be slipping in any of those directions, just shut up and take it like a conservative - silently and complacently, without a doubt in your mind that no matter how badly things seem to be going, our superiors have things well in hand. Only losers whine about truth and decency. If you're a winner, you'll cheer for the winning side, no matter how repugnant its aims.

Re:slashdotliberalwhining

I'm glad someone added the slashdotliberalwhining tag.

I can't tell you how much it bothers me when some whiny liberal drags out another tinfoil-hat theory about how "Big Business" is trying to manipulate public opinion by obfuscating facts, or how some (ooh!) big, scary police state is abusing its powers.

The scary thing is I'm not 100% convinced this is satire.

I caught SCO whitewashing their article

I submitted it to the Wired blog, but it's worth sharing here: in March, I caught two SCO editors whitewashing Wikipedia. One did a massive chop-and-run [wikipedia.org] on the SCO article. The other was complaining [wikipedia.org] about the article on SCO's CEO, Darl McBride. I have checkuser - the ability to find the IP addressed used by logged in users. I found out that both of those users originated from SCO corporate IP addresses.

Wikipedia whitewashing won't matter...

...and for the record, everyone in Germany from 1939-1945 was out on holiday.

Clarifying the NSA

Now this was just silly . . .

Someone deep inside the National Security Agency helpfully adds a line to the disambiguation page for "NSA." The addition: "National Softball Association".

Discovery Institute

Does anyone happen to know the IP address range used by the Discovery Institute? They're constantly complaining about Wikipedia's Intelligent Design article, and related articles. I'd love to find out if they've been editing.

Re:Discovery Institute

Why don't you ping their web server (Ping resolves the name to an IP address immediately). And do a NSLOOKUP on their mail server (MX record for the domain). Use dnsstuff.com to show the IPs that way. Then you'll get an idea of some of their IP's although they can be offsite, too.

then do a tracrt to the IP addresses found. Add and subtract one, and see if it tracert's to approximately the same place. You may be able to get a good idea that way of the names and locations with reverse DNS being returned on the tracert. You should be able to compile a good guess at the range(s) that way. Then use the article in question to see if you can find any correlation.

It is all spin.

Just about every Wikipedia article has a spin to it. People feel that it is unbiased only when it shares their bias. Even if it is 100% factual odds are that the author will present those facts the way that he or she sees them.

Company Pride

It's possible that many of the edits are NOT deliberate corporate acts. Rather, I would imagine a prideful employee may see some controversial items in the article and would rather see them removed. I can see a situation where I uncover a defamatory comment about my company in wikipedia. I would likely interpret it as sensationalism or determine it to be minor compared to the accomplishments of my company. After all, why focus on a few minor negatives when the positives should shine through? Some may call it spin, but I could argue the "controversy" sections fit into the same category. So how does this relate to the article? Even dedicated employees need 15 min. break to browse wikipedia once in a while. So a random employee edits at work without any real company input and voila, slashdot labels the company as corrupt for having whitewashed the article.

Diploma mill article are subject to a lot of this

Diploma mills [wikipedia.org] are frauds who give out realist looking university diplomas, complete with grade and course itemization, to anyone who will pay for them. No need to have any real knowledge or take any real courses, just as long as you can pay.

Many of them try to justify it by saying that they evaluate the persons "life experience" to judge whether the person is worthy of the diploma, but in reality most of them just give the diplomas to anyone who pays the fees [wikipedia.org].

It is pretty obvious that the diplomas are used by their buyers to get jobs for lying about their abilities, i.e. pretty much plain fraud.

I noticed that the articles of diploma mills are frequent targets of whitewash (see fx this [wikipedia.org]). I don't know for certain who the whitewashers are, but I assume it is either the diploma mills themselves (most like), or people holding the diplomas and afraid to be exposed. Many of Wikipedia's articles rank highly in Google, so they are an important target.

I have a number of diploma mills in my watchlist, and sometimes I have to revert whitewashing every day...

Brown Brothers Harriman

Here's one that I found a while back. Brown Brothers Harriman, an investment bank, removed information linking them to Nazi Germany around 1940. They also removed information linking them to Prescott Bush, grandfather of G.W.Bush.

edit 1 [wikipedia.org]
edit 2 [wikipedia.org]

The IP addresses can be confirmed to be from BBH with whois:

OrgName: Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.
OrgID: BBH
NetRange: 204.136.16.0 - 204.136.31.255
CIDR: 204.136.16.0/20
NetName: BBHNET

-molo

Who ISNT interested in what they edit?

Ok let's think about this for a minute. I edit Wikipedia. I'm editing an article on ... which is a likely title

A. Legend of Zelda

B. The mating habits of beetles.

C. The list of solar systems that begin with B discovered in 1945.

Well A. is the most likely, and that's my point. The people editing these articles HAVE interest in them. So Diebold got caught? No let's look at the edit and decide if it was acceptable (and likely it wasn't) but just because someone removes something that is related to them doesn't mean it's not a correct edit.

It's not ok for Diebold to remove the offensive article's text, but if an employee of Diebold who got fired "unfairly" put it there that's ok? Are we now going to decide that a person having an interest in a topic is wrong. If all I edit is information about lockpicking does that mean I work at a lock manufacturer and thus can't be trusted?

The whole point I'm trying to make is we need to look at the EDIT not the editor to decide if changes are fair. Wikipedia is community edited and some people are trying to say that if you're involved with the article's target you're not able to edit. So really should wikipedia be "community edited except for people who work with the article" or should we reevaluate the standards by which we point out "partisanship".

Btw if you choose the second choice above that means we can't have any experienced people talk about the article which is the problem. If I own an iPhone I can't write about in wikipedia so all we then have is second hand experience with products and PR postings. Like I said the solution is to stop worrying about WHO edits wikipedia and instead focus on edits being done to wikipedia.

Re:Jews

Wow. You make that sound almost as bad as the Anonymous Coward's on slashdot...

Re:The Free Encyc. Any Schmo Can Edit!

Tools like this provided much-needed transparency to the process.

One tool that I am missing very much is to download the history of a given page into some version control format (git, svn, cvs, etc).

If I want to look at say the last 100 edits of a page, doing so manually clicking in the history page would be way too much work and too cumbersome to the point that I would never do that. If on the other hand it was possible to download the history and use a local version control tool to get a list of the last 100 edits shown as a continuous list of patches it would be easy to look through all changes and I would do so often I guess.

More transparency of editing history can only be good, and I think such a tool is much needed.