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Comment Virgil Griffith and Wikipedia (Score 1) 478

At the top of the wired blog comments right now is this one: Wikimedia Foundation employee removes source about Wiki Scanner funding by Anonymous Vishal-WMF, an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, has removed evidence from a news story that uncovered that Virgil, the scanner's creator, was HIRED by the Wikimedia Foundation! News story that was removed by Wikipedia Employee (not admin, EMPLOYEE): http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?at_code=428814 Backup archive link in case the WMF 'vanishes' the evidence: http://www.webcitation.org/5RAEP2kAl Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virgil_G riffith&diff=prev&oldid=151814656 Yet Wired has claimed that this is a "false claim": "Update: 8/17/2007 A Wikimedia Foundation employee really did edit Virgil Griffith's entry today, but only to cut a false claim that Griffith was employed by the foundation to create the scanner. " So what makes Wired assume that it is a false claim? This is the same guy that brought us Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services, and he is stating something as fact, not as an opinion. "On July 26, OhmyNews alleged that Wikipedia may have been infiltrated by Intelligence Agencies. The story attracted more than 50,000 readers in just three days, was highly debated on the Web, and translated in several languages. Wikipedia quickly reacted to the news and hired Virgil Griffith, one of the best known American hacker, to investigate the matter." Yet Wikipedia claims its "unreliable". Wikipedia has used ohmynews as a source in 192 of their articles: and has been used in Google news 460 times: http://news.google.com.au/news?hl=en&ned=au&q=ohmy news&btnG=Search+News Virgil Griffith does claim that he wasn't paid by Wikipedia: http://virgil.gr/31.html and the Wikipedia staff went so far as to remove the links, and then ban the IP address of the person who had inserted them: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special: Log&type=block&page=User:123.2.168.215 Daniel Brandt claims that it is far too expensive for him to have done it himself: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic= 11853&view=findpost&p=43697 But perhaps he really did do all of this just to make himself popular. Spend a few thousand dollars, including the $349 to do the reverse IP lookups: http://www.ip2location.com/ip-country-region-city- isp.aspx , saved presumably through his time as an unemployed student and spent several hundred hours creating something that does nothing more than make him well-known. Perhaps it'll help him to get a job sometime in the future? And perhaps its all one almighty coincidence that all this has happened just a week after Wikipedia was reeling after the massive censorship about the SlimVirgin scandal. Oh, and also note that another IP that reverted edits to the article belonged to Jayjg, the person most closely related to SlimVirgin: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic= 11853&view=findpost&p=43641 Coincidence, coincidence, coincidence. And this over an issue in which we've proven that the CIA edits Wikipedia with a definite aim, as have many other industries. Are we so quick to assume that Wikipedia weren't behind this all along? After all, Jimbo Wales himself is "incredibly happy" at the idea of the Wikipedia Scanner: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/58856.html Are we all that naive? Do we really think that this is a scandal? Or is this an anti-scandal, to hide the real problems on Wikipedia?

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