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).

Comments

Re:Pre hoc, ergo propter hoc

[ptbarnett]

So basically, TFS says that wikipedia edits are made to a relevant article prior to an event, and therefore, these wikipedia articles were caused by the event.

The tip-off seems to be that the same people were editing both the Presidental and (eventual) Vice-Presidential candidate pages. The same pattern was observed with Obama/Biden.

Re:Another indicator

[smittyoneeach]

Actually, it was the Gulf War at the Pentagon with the 'za:
http://tafkac.org/politics/pentagon_pizza.html

Re:What's This?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Just one more example of wikipedia's "neutrality" NPOV policy being used to promote exactly 1 point of view, silencing all others.

As has been the point of half the comments on this story ... I don't think anyone's surprised at all.

Re:Leaks to Wikipedia

[ericspinder]

I was one of the people who viewed (didn't edit) her page that morning, I did so, because I had heard that there was a private jet that had just landed in Dayton, OH, apparently under a great deal of secrecy, which had a fight plan from Alaska. That fact was replicated at the bottom of her wikipedia page. Otherwise the page looked like a fair, short, biography of the Governor. It even included information about her Troopergate scandal, however, it was just a short blurb. I didn't check the history page, one should always check the history page for a fast moving story.