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You think there's a conspiracy to maliciously alter Wikipedia and to obscure those public edits under a mountain of seemingly innocent changes? But also that th

by eli 9y ago

You think there's a conspiracy to maliciously alter Wikipedia and to obscure those public edits under a mountain of seemingly innocent changes? But also that the conspirators are so naive they make the changes from their work computers without a VPN? People who intern on the Hill tend to have strong feelings about politics. Makes sense that some of the pages the edit are political.

godelski 9y ago
>You think there's a conspiracy to maliciously alter Wikipedia > People who intern on the Hill tend to have strong feelings about politics. Probably. I think there is enough evidence to question it. It would take a lot of analysis that I'm not bored enough to perform to prove it. But the few times that I have checked this over the years I see a lot of junk and then edits on hot topics where things keep getting added and removed. I remember one on the Dakota pipelines that completely removed the mention of protestors. 1) They are clearly editing things that are politically motivating. See my examples and scroll through more. This can be attributed to embarrassment or trying the sling mud at opponents. Can you honestly tell me that you wouldn't put these types of editing above politicians? And this is really all I'm suggesting that is happening in terms of "maliciously alter Wikipedia." (I don't think it is really malicious) 2) Most probably don't realize this twitter account exists let alone that their IPs can be tracked. 2.1) Their name isn't attached anyway. 2.2) How often do people actually check this Twitter or Wiki logs? 2.3) Why are they making extremely dumb edits like adding a space at the end of a paragraph? I'm sure that some edits are bored interns/politicians, but there are definitely weird edits that look more like obscurification than worthwhile edits. There is no incentive for them to mask their IP, because it still can't be traced back to them. And people knowing "someone" changed a wiki entry in a misleading way just gets people to think "politicians are corrupt". Which is nothing new. So why would they even bother?
totalZero 9y ago
Perhaps not all malicious people are sophisticated.

by eli 9y ago

godelski 9y ago

>You think there's a conspiracy to maliciously alter Wikipedia > People who intern on the Hill tend to have strong feelings about politics. Probably. I think there is enough evidence to question it. It would take a lot of analysis that I'm not bored enough to perform to prove it. But the few times that I have checked this over the years I see a lot of junk and then edits on hot topics where things keep getting added and removed. I remember one on the Dakota pipelines that completely removed the mention of protestors. 1) They are clearly editing things that are politically motivating. See my examples and scroll through more. This can be attributed to embarrassment or trying the sling mud at opponents. Can you honestly tell me that you wouldn't put these types of editing above politicians? And this is really all I'm suggesting that is happening in terms of "maliciously alter Wikipedia." (I don't think it is really malicious) 2) Most probably don't realize this twitter account exists let alone that their IPs can be tracked. 2.1) Their name isn't attached anyway. 2.2) How often do people actually check this Twitter or Wiki logs? 2.3) Why are they making extremely dumb edits like adding a space at the end of a paragraph? I'm sure that some edits are bored interns/politicians, but there are definitely weird edits that look more like obscurification than worthwhile edits. There is no incentive for them to mask their IP, because it still can't be traced back to them. And people knowing "someone" changed a wiki entry in a misleading way just gets people to think "politicians are corrupt". Which is nothing new. So why would they even bother?

totalZero 9y ago

Perhaps not all malicious people are sophisticated.