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See Who Is Whitewashing Wikipedia

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the who-isn't-these-days dept.

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."

5 of 478 comments (clear)

  1. Wikipedia can already do this by InvisblePinkUnicorn · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:TFA Interesting by CaptainZapp · · Score: 4, Informative
    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?

    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").

    --
    ich bin der musikant

    mit taschenrechner in der hand

    kraftwerk

  3. Re:I expect that people will talk about this by Pyrroc · · Score: 3, Informative
    Cynicism... now if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black...

    You use the word truth as if it were not related to objective, external reality.

    Whose "objective, external reality" are you referring to? Our wonderfully objective media? All of the oh-so objective Slashdotters?

    There is no such thing as an "objective, external reality". All things viewed and/or reported by a human being are subjective.

    --
    "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
  4. Re:Discovery Institute by Chapter80 · · Score: 3, Informative
    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.

  5. Re:It's the iron law of bureaucracy, not outside I by Idarubicin · · Score: 3, Informative

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

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project appears to be shilling for Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma)'s position denying anthropogenic climate change by citing out-of-date and rejected journal articles.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

    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.

    --
    ~Idarubicin