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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).
Hindsight is 20/20. Now try using this to _predict_ something correctly.
I do want to point out that because this article is being read by thousands and thousands of people, the assorted political groups are likely to not make the same mistake again. They will most likely compensate for this in the future.
Only way around this is of course to make sure that the inner circle doesn't use the web for a while before official announcements are done.
The problem is of course that they want the biographies "updated" for all the press and other interested parties that are going to hit Google in the first hour after the announcement.
So much more likely will be that before such announcements, they will update like ten or twenty biographies, to mask which is the real one.
That of course if they care enough.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
This may be an example of a reverse troll. By taking an extreme opposite position, it makes your position look more reasonable.
Republicans did this about 10 years ago, by pretending to be really annoying Democrats, calling people at inopportune hours, etc.
..........FULL STOP.