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Corporate Networks Continue to Vandalize Wikipedia
nytimes.com — ince Wired News first wrote about WikiScanner last week, Internet users have spotted plenty of interesting changes to Wikipedia by people at nonprofit groups and government entities like the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of the most obviously self-interested edits have come from corporate networks.
msaleem- 1008 diggs
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- Error601, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5Conspiracy! Stupid.
- bitcloud, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3I wonder how many conspiracies will be required before people stop quoting bush's "conspiracy theorist" line...
- fkr3, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8YES IT'S A CONSPIRACY!!!! OMG PEOPLE AT WORK EDIT WIKIPEDIA!!! OMG COMPANIES WANT WIKIPEDIA TO SAY GOOD THINGS ABOUT THEM!!!!
Anyone who's surprised that people edit Wikipedia crap at work needs to think outside the box.... most grown ups spend a big chunk of their week at work. It's also stunningly unsurprising that companies want Wikipedia articles about them to say good things. If anything I would guess that balances the "fanboy vendetta" affect. - TubaTechno, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Funny, those employees can edit Wikipedia to favor their own company during off hours, but NEVER while their on their corporate network! This article shows the ignorance and the immaturity of the Digg community today.
- hexydes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Additionally, what about people that work at companies that use or make a technology that has an entry at Wikipedia, who then edit the entry for that technology (while at work, on the corporate network) to correct true factual errors about said technology? You have to remember that often, these people are just as valuable and accurate a resource to providing factual information as "impartial" scientists and researchers from public universities...
- m2bord, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0you see...there is the truth then there is pr.
pr is not the truth nor is it exactly a lie. pr is just that...borderline truth manipulation. instead of saying that the green product may kill you...it will be spun to say something like, "there have been unsubstantiated reports of side effects however we have not been able to duplicate the issue so the product is still safe.
- jollyholly, on 10/10/2007, -7/+13Did Wikipedia not expect everyone to make changes since that is the core feature, by design? Everyone has an agenda..
- bitcloud, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7There are terms of service that disallow conflicts of interests.
- thcobbs, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6Yeah... just like EULAs disallow copyright infringement.
- rblancarte, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5Just like it stops regular joes from posting their own angles on stories etc (which "never" happens, right?)
Please, this points out the major flaw of Wikipedia. Anyone, at any time, can go in and edit pages. Sure you aren't supposed to break the rules, but it happens. Now that wikipedia has gotten so large, eventually they are going to have to realize that the open editing model will fail at some point. It has a usefulness, to a point, but saturation will cause issues such as these to arise. - elvisjulep, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4I just anonymously changed Wiki's TOS, so now it's cool.
- bitcloud, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7There are terms of service that disallow conflicts of interests.
- DjLoTi, on 10/10/2007, -3/+6It's good that these people are being exposed. Dugg for relevence
- southernmagnus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Absolutley, as with most corporate propoganda, changing the "facts" on wikipedia will have the opposite intended effect. People will wonder why someone would change facts about products, recalls, company histories, etc.
More power to those with the haxor skills to track and expose these people as they 9the corporations) will eventually try to hide their tracks.
- southernmagnus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Absolutley, as with most corporate propoganda, changing the "facts" on wikipedia will have the opposite intended effect. People will wonder why someone would change facts about products, recalls, company histories, etc.
- MikeonTV, on 10/10/2007, -4/+27Why can't these retards just edit wikipedia from home?????
- ani625, on 10/10/2007, -5/+4Don't you get it.. it IS their home!
- Millsee, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1You can't edit wiki from home because they have your IP address and if you were going to do something 'deceptive' they can trace you.
- rkuchiki, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Why would you do something for your employer off the clock anyway?
- Millsee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Some people have little in their lives outside work, and are workaholics.
- bitcloud, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3Another Free-Market success... Unchecked Deception™
- ani625, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3vandalize wikipedia.. that is not an oxymoron
- Thadster, on 10/10/2007, -7/+5Whats funny to me is that everyone assumes that the IP info to be accurate. Anyone hear of IP spoofing?
- JohnFlux, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6I haven't. Please explain how you could edit a wikipedia page via tcp while spoofing your IP address as a different company, and assuming that you're not the companies ISP.
- wolferz, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2It works a lot like email spoofing. Email headers and TCP/IP packet headers both have the the "from" address in them which is used to identify the originating sender. In email the from address is changed after the email client attempts to send the email to a smtp server but before it actually leaves the computer. IP Spoofing works the same way.
There are some systems in place these days to detect and prevent spoofing of email address's and IP address', but they can be beaten.- spikes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4If you spoof your IP in a TCP stream, how is the return packets going to end back up at its rightful spoofing sender? It will return to the spoofed IP which didn't actually make the connection. DUH!
- wolferz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Your assuming some one capable of spoofing an ip address in this manner would be using a standard browser. Most likely the spoofer would browse to the edit page and then input the information into another program or a plug in for the browser which then sends the information to the form similar to the way the browser does but follows that by altering the packet info. In the case of http return packets consist of it loading the next page in your browser but with wikis you can simply go back to the article page in your browser to see if the changes took. In http the return packets aren't actually needed unless some of the packets become corrupted along the way. In which case whatever software you use expects to receive a message back from the server asking for the same packet to be sent again. Software written with spoofing in mind could account for this to a limited extent. Again the email analogy holds, in email spoofing you don't actually expect and email back. IP spoofing is good for the same situations.
- thcobbs, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4
Proxies- wolferz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2proxies wont work in this situation unless the proxy is being run by the company in question. Technically proxies and IP spoofing are not the same thing ether. Infecting the company with a bot could allow you to proxy through them but would also leave a trail back to you unless you were to place another proxy between you and the one set up inside the company.
- wolferz, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2It works a lot like email spoofing. Email headers and TCP/IP packet headers both have the the "from" address in them which is used to identify the originating sender. In email the from address is changed after the email client attempts to send the email to a smtp server but before it actually leaves the computer. IP Spoofing works the same way.
- rubyeyes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0sheer brilliance a conspiracy against the conspirators on a mass scale!
- JohnFlux, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6I haven't. Please explain how you could edit a wikipedia page via tcp while spoofing your IP address as a different company, and assuming that you're not the companies ISP.
- CoreyBaehman, on 10/10/2007, -8/+5Figures.
Kind of sad that they do this, but it's corporate America.
***** slimes. - MattInChicago, on 10/10/2007, -4/+12Who cares! If the edit is false or misleading, AND, has something to do with the company in question, there's an issue. But the fact is millions of people waste time at work on the net and so what if someone edits an article while at work? People really need to focus on REAL issues and not BS fluff. Dugg down for lame.
- zulhadm, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1dugg MattlnChicago down for being dumb
- Monk22, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1dugg down for what? being to civil or level headed?
- zulhadm, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1dugg MattlnChicago down for being dumb
- duke1776, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10I find it very hard to believe that the United States government and big business would misrepresent facts.
- kirk444, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Why is it so hard to imagine that the edit was done by someone slacking off at work? Just because it came out of a corporate network (used by thousands) doesn't mean it's some form of vandalizing or marketing.
- zulhadm, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Of course its marketing dude. Marketing and PR. Companies can now gain better PR with an audience in the millions and it costs nothing. It's not right. This is the start of a really major issue. For most people the Internet *IS* the truth. If the truth is altered then it becomes the new truth and people will just read it once and believe it. The average person doesn't take time to research multiple sources. This is chaos
- bushisterrorist, on 10/10/2007, -8/+1Can you imagine the public school teachers directing their students to obtain their information from Wikipedia?
United States Government are the world's greatest terrorists, war criminals, and horrific liars.
9-11 was an inside job! What happened to building 7?
Depleted uranium is a weapon of mass destruction!
Would you let your children go to Iraq to be poisoned for life with depleted uranium?
Don't let these terrorists (USGov) harm your children!- DrvThruPnk, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0you should never use Wikipedia for academic research
even if it couldn't be edited by anyone, it's still an encyclopedia - which is also not a valid source of research
teachers should not direct students to use Wikipedia and should, in fact, mark down anything with Wikipedia listed as a "source" - Murdats, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1uh, please show us where these things are in wiki articles.
- DrvThruPnk, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0you should never use Wikipedia for academic research
- easy4lif, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2come on, who didn't see this coming. if anyone can edit wikipedia then that means EVERYONE (including people who work for companies)can edit wikipedia. I'm just surprised it took the groups so long to figure this out.
- Elohir, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Well someone has to maintain the truthiness.
- moracity, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Why is anyone surprised by this? When something is open to everyone, it's open to everyone. And to suggest that organizations are vandalizing it anymore than the rest of the Joe Schmoes out there is absurd. Wikipedia is full of biased information because most people are simply incapable of being truly objective. The temptation to pontificate is simply to strong. I'm not saying it's a faulty, it's just the way it is.
- elvisjulep, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Amen, brother! A wiki is good for sharing tips on Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 or documenting the history of The Simpsons, but for a record of fact it is useless, particularly when anyone can make a change. Why is it that people are upset when someone biased toward a corporation maked favorable entries, but are cool when a ***** off person with little more than a scrap of information she read on a blog makes unfavorable entries?
- billmccartney, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2For instance, check out Raytheon, they have editted all the scandal out of their pages. They even use a username called RayCompany. Since the article, the scandals have been added back by users. See the history page :)
- juckru, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3I find it very hard to believe that the United States government and big business would misrepresent facts.
- ThrottledU, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2yet another reason why wikipedia is useless for quoting anything as a reference... and why universities do not accept quotes from wikipedia as reference in collegiate work.
- ThrottledU, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4just one more reason not to trust wikipedia as a reference source, and why universities do not accept reference material coming from wiki sites in general....
- MarkOfTheDead, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5actually i have to disagree, wikipedia was known to be far more accurate than brittanica or funk and wagnalls. schools don't like it because it isn't printed and copyrighted.
- elvisjulep, on 10/10/2007, -3/+0Comments like this with specious, vague statements (Wikipedia was known...can you quantify that?) are exactly why Wikipedia is an unacceptable reference source.
- MarkOfTheDead, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Sorry I didn't bookmark it since I didn't think it would be really important to throw on digg one day to back me up. Do some research on your own. I'd say start with google.
And umm..... paper encyclopedias don't have a dispute forum. chances are the pulishers would laugh and tell you to ***** off if you said they were wrong. that or they'd shrug their shoulders and say "yeah? so what?"
So.... my comments prove how inaccurate wikipedia really is? that sounds like a vague statement to me. Way to solve a problem with a problem.
- MarkOfTheDead, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Sorry I didn't bookmark it since I didn't think it would be really important to throw on digg one day to back me up. Do some research on your own. I'd say start with google.
- elvisjulep, on 10/10/2007, -3/+0Comments like this with specious, vague statements (Wikipedia was known...can you quantify that?) are exactly why Wikipedia is an unacceptable reference source.
- MarkOfTheDead, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5actually i have to disagree, wikipedia was known to be far more accurate than brittanica or funk and wagnalls. schools don't like it because it isn't printed and copyrighted.
- MarkOfTheDead, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2sure must hurt when you can't buy your own history like in the olden days of printed encyclopedias. no wonder net neutrality is such an issue, they're scared ***** what people can do when they band together for truth instead of being led around like lemmings believing things because they were printed in a book.
- luxette, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Oh for crying out loud, that "all corporations are evil soulless beings and all truth is false unless promulgated by THE PEOPLE" stuff went out with patchouli and the 1960s.
And all of them will act in their own self-interest in order to survive as an entity. Just like you. Does that make you evil too?- MarkOfTheDead, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1No, laughing when people fall is what makes me evil.
- luxette, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Oh for crying out loud, that "all corporations are evil soulless beings and all truth is false unless promulgated by THE PEOPLE" stuff went out with patchouli and the 1960s.
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4( - UNRELATED - )
"In general, changes to a Wikipedia page cannot be traced to an individual, only to the owner of a particular network." Yet that doesn't stop the RIAA from assuming they can pinpoint the specific individual based on the same information...- fjc8, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1There's a difference... the RIAA mainly targets residental IPs, which tend to be one per residence with one listed owner, with a few users max (similar to how one person might be the registered owner for a few cars, yet only ever drive one of them). Corporate networks tend to use NAT so a single IP address might be the source address for all Internet traffic out of a single building or campus.
- ozydingo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Good point
- fjc8, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1There's a difference... the RIAA mainly targets residental IPs, which tend to be one per residence with one listed owner, with a few users max (similar to how one person might be the registered owner for a few cars, yet only ever drive one of them). Corporate networks tend to use NAT so a single IP address might be the source address for all Internet traffic out of a single building or campus.
- ChiliMac, on 10/10/2007, -3/+0I'd love to read this but I have boycotted the New York Times since they did the early review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
- umbriago, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0oh please, please, please, get a life, please. it's wonderful out here. you'll love it.
- elvisjulep, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1When will someone do a piece on the collusion between Google and Wikipedia? Given that Google is the de facto search engine of choice, it's interesting that on just about any search, the Wikipedia entry is in the first three selections. Of course, most of the Wiki articles are unresearched and full of opinion and prejudice, making them almost useless, but people still take them as fact, leading to Google's complicity in the spreading of false information. You know something is wrong when you Google "George Bush" and the (incredibly biased) Wikipedia entry comes up before the White House. When 100,000 amateurs consider themselves experts, then there is no expertise.
- dougmc, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Collusion? Google's job (the way they make their money, or at least what brings you to their site anyways) is to find you the answers you seek, fast. And they're good at this, which is why they're by the most popular search engine nowadays.
Well, slam wikipedia all you like, but a wikipedia page is quite likely to have exactly the answer you're looking for if it contains your search terms. And it's quite likely to be accurate.
Sure, your example is `George Bush' and many `facts' regarding him are in dispute. Allow me to retort with `silver nitrate' -- I was reading a page on hurricanes, then weather modification, and I wanted to know more about this stuff. So I googled for it, and the first link was wikipedia -- and it told me exactly what I wanted to know.
Call it collusion, but I call it making searches more likely to give you the anwers you need faster.
Wikipedia bashing seems very popular nowadays. I'm hoping it'll pass soon so we can get back to finding it to be a useful resource. Oh wait, we haven't stopped ...
- dougmc, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Collusion? Google's job (the way they make their money, or at least what brings you to their site anyways) is to find you the answers you seek, fast. And they're good at this, which is why they're by the most popular search engine nowadays.
- lkms, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1only a fool would trust wikipedia over political and historical (same thing in fact) stuff. even if some vandal/biased edits and removals will be spotted because they originate from corresponding networks, what about the same kind of edits coming from proxies, or from the homes of corporation workers? these wouldn't be spotted as fast and thus the damage is unlikely to be undone in time.
However Wikipedia is still good source for the "pure information" like science and technology. Well, at least for now.- UWake911, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I agree totally, the only value in Wikipedia is pure science, not history. With the Israeli Lobby and other societies, the documentation of past events is so tainted.
- icarusancalion, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Hey, I want to know what the CIA changed.
- UWake911, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2Israeli lobby groups have destroyed any chance of Wikipedia being creditable, regarding history.
- Digi2112, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Wikipedia has and always will be a joke!
- betasp, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Marked an inaccurate. You can't make it freely editable and then say it was "vandalized."
- edwartica, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0I for one hope this happens more. Wikipedia is not a credible source, and has never been a credible source. Too many people rely on it. They don't even care about using primary sources for heaven's sake!
- dougmc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Students have never cared about using primary sources, at least not until they were forced to. How many papers did you write throughout school (especially in the earlier grades) based only on what you found in the encyclopedia? Hell, it wasn't until late high school that teachers told me to (gasp!) cite my sources! (Which I still today whenever appropriate, 20+ years later! It's possibly one of the most useful things I learned in high school.)
WIkipedia is incredibly useful, and it's usually accurate. It's not 100% accurate. Neither is your printed encyclopedia. Neither is any other non-trivial work, for that matter. Writing a report based only on Wikipedia is a bad idea -- just like it's a bad idea to write one only based on Encyclopedia Britannia. But both are fine resources for getting started, for looking for other things to read, etc.
As for companies editing pages about themselves, you have to expect this. And it's not always bad -- often employees of a company are the `subject matter experts' about that company. Now, they shouldn't be turning the Wikipedia page into a PR piece for themselves, and so they shouldn't remove information about scandals and such, but some do. Of course, all that this increased scrutiny will do is make people edit pages about their companies from their home connection, or via proxies.
- dougmc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Students have never cared about using primary sources, at least not until they were forced to. How many papers did you write throughout school (especially in the earlier grades) based only on what you found in the encyclopedia? Hell, it wasn't until late high school that teachers told me to (gasp!) cite my sources! (Which I still today whenever appropriate, 20+ years later! It's possibly one of the most useful things I learned in high school.)
- rhinopig, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2"Corporate Networks CONTINUE to Vandalize Wikipedia"
Marked as inaccurate. This article is entirely about edits that happened before the scanner was released, not continuing edits. - ReinMasamuri, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1So... Just because I'm at the USDA at the moment, if I change something on Wikipedia it means I have/had an ulterior motive?
- CourtesyFlush, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Is Wiki open to everyone, or not?
Or just people we like and with whom we agree? - mohrt, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Dang, this page was vandalized too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism - V1ncent, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1LOOK - if it wasn't for Colbert the elephants would be no more!
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