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Wikipedia Edits Forecast Vice Presidential Picks
JimLane writes "The Washington Post reports on the findings of Cyveillance, a company that 'normally trawls the Internet for data on behalf of clients seeking open source information in advance of a corporate acquisition, an important executive hire, or brand awareness.' Cyveillance decided 'on a lark' to test its methods by monitoring the Wikipedia biographies of Vice-Presidential prospects. The conclusion? If you'd been watching Wikipedia you might have gotten an advance tipoff of Friday's announcement that McCain was selecting Sarah Palin. 'At approximately 5 p.m. ET (Thursday), the company's analysts noticed a spike in the editing traffic to Palin's Wiki page, and that some of the same Wiki users appeared to be making changes to McCain's page.'" The article goes on to say that watching Wikipedia pages for the Democratic VP hopefuls would have tipped Obama's choice of Biden, as well. NPR also has coverage (audio).
I predict that people will interpret the findings of this article as meaning more than they do.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
campaign organizations, as a whole, are still idiots.
Too late, the elections are already decided http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So what are they missing now? What's the opportunity cost of all this insufferable coverage of minor insects like Joe Biden and this Alaskan twit? What's the big story of the decade that we're not hearing about?
Your mom revealing that she really didn't mean to bring such an angry child into the world.
Indeed. They'll just have the staff whip up edits to several other distractor pages.
Think of the cable news effects.
Olberman: This just in: Oh My God! Traffic analysis on Wikipedia seems to indicate that Michael Moore might pick me to be his Vice President! I'm going to need a private moment, folks. Excuse me.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
And that edit could get picked up by tons of people and spread around, even if it's not accurate.[citation needed]
I touch computers in naughty places
I knew someone would make that point sooner or later.
I had a feeling someone would say that.
It's been a long time.
To commit suicide ?
Looks like McCain just wrapped up the election this year. I mean, he has all of Alaska's electors in the bag!
We can only hope...
Do away with our corrupt tax code. Support the Fair Tax
It is called traffic analysis. An old trick of what used to be called trade craft and probably is by the spooks
They could have figured out the same thing if they had paid attention to the increase in pizza-deliveries to the alaska governor's mansion for the two days beforehand too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.