…and then grew quite a bit more somber. Wired Magazine has started a “watchdog” page that shows who’s been editing Wikipedia entries to suit their own agendas. Before you go there, though, I strongly recommend getting a stiff drink, sitting down, and calming the beef min. I was laughing long and hard at a few of them, and then the smile faded from my face as I faced yet another sobering reminder that political discourse in this country is dead. Okay, if it’s not dead, it’s barely twitching and rasping Pee-Wee Herman’s “I know you are, but what am I?” line over and over again in a ghastly, barely-audible back-of-the-throat rattle. The Wired page reveals no angels: Democrats are just as guilty of cowardly, pin-“kick me”-signs-on-someone’s-back tactics as Republicans. And then you get into corporate smear jobs and whitewashes that are just as disturbing. By the time I see yet another instance of the Church of Scientology editing its own entries, it’s not even startling anymore. Just coldly numbing.
Now, I’m aware that one edit coming from a place that may have hundreds of people in the building doesn’t mean the whole building participated. But that doesn’t change the “disturbing” factor significantly for me. Those whose interests are threatened by the public being able to distribute information are trying to find the closest things that the internet has to a “hub” for that information, and they’re trying to bend it to their own will. This points out a great weakness in the whole “social media” movement. I hope there will always be at least some people who have enough time to take on the thankless task of fighting for the integrity of the user-content-driven side of the web.
In the meantime, marvel at what government officials are doing with their on-the-clock time, and what those who would have that power are doing with theirs in the meantime. This kind of stuff makes me lean a little more libertarian every day.
But now that it’s “out in the open”, so to speak, do you think this will curb this type of behavior, or just make it more covert…?
I’ve recently read about this from Crooksandliars.com. And that’s because somebody discovered someone at Fox News Channel had edited their entries to make themselves look good and their “targets”; Al Franken, Keith Olbermann et al. look bad.
Naturally, when their skullduggery was uncovered Fox News turned around and blamed Wikipedia (which, as I’m sure everyone knows by now is one of that channel’s favorite tactics).
Personally, I think it will only make those with axes to grind even more circumspect in how they try to get their message across.
I’d trust Fox News about as far as I could throw it. They’re about as hard news as Entertainment Tonight.
And to answer the first question – I fear that the “outing” of this tactic will drive the parties responsible more toward what the corporate marketing world calls “viral” marketing. Only on a much, much more sinister level.
Keeping in line with the Wikipedia editing theme, I saw this today as well:
CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits
The link to the WIki Scanner in the article is here and also links back to the page Earl references:
https://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/
I don’t think the behavior will be curbed, I think they’ll just try to be more careful about what source IP is reflected.
I have my doubts about any news organization, no matter what side they play on. Yep, I think there is plenty o’ bias in all outlets, not just FOX or CNN. Corporations play to win and they will all play as dirty as any other, in my opinion.
I’m not bitter today at all. 😉
No, just jaded and cynical – I think for today, that’s pretty healthy. 😆
Our tax dollars at work, people. Our tax dollars at work.
I just visited the web page for “Countdown w/Keith Olbermann” and sure enough he did a piece on the whole Wikipedia mess.
Even though it covers a lot of ground we already know about it’s still worth a look…
Go to http://www.countdown.msnbc.com and click on “Tampering with Wikipedia”.
timeflyer: thanks for the link. Interesting story!
The senior editor of Wired magazine pointed out that most of these insidious changes were detected and corrected within 90 minutes by honest and legitimate Wikipedia members. So I’m not too worried about it.
These criminals, revisionists, vandals – whatever you want to call them are only making fools of themselves right now. Sure they may be able to mask their cyber-skullduggery by spoofing or using a public internet system but if they continue to make radical changes to the Wiki entries, legitimate users will just as quickly rollback the changes. If these organizations continue to make these radical Wikipedia changes – even with a spoofed IP – it won’t change things too much, methinks. We’d know someone was making changes, we just won’t know who. However, now that these organizations have been caught red handed, we’ll suspect them of future changes even if they were innocent.
The next step, I think, is that Wikipedia articles will have only slight changes made to the articles. These Wiki bad boys will try to fly under the radar using spoofed IP addresses in order to move their agenda forward.