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This is really cool! But the approach seems a little flawed, as edits are attributed based on IP address. If I understand correctly that means it: - doesn't

This is really cool! But the approach seems a little flawed, as edits are attributed based on IP address. If I understand correctly that means it: - doesn't capture edits made using Wikipedia accounts - doesn't distinguish personal activity of individuals from those of the organization - relies on a couple of third-party IP databases which aren't authoritative and may be out of date (one of them hasn't been updated in 6 years) - can be circumvented by organizations using "unlisted" IP's or a VPN Of course, the landing page is fairly transparent about these limitations. It doesn't mean the results are uninteresting, but when I looked at the most active month for the Government of Canada, it was clearly just an individual that happened to work there who's interested in TV and music (particularly The Robonic Stooges and Madonna). https://wikiwho.ailef.tech/organization/46a20a0820d609f90314ea85462e9205 https://wikiwho.ailef.tech/organization/46a20a0820d609f90314...

bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I believe this flawed approach is the only possible approach. As far as the individual interested in music the edits that are just individual edits on government time or IP address are a different problem than the other three. I guess could have some sort of analyzer to rank how likely the edits are to be of organizational interest and not just individual interest. But that would probably also require enough work to need to be monetizable for someone to put in that work.
- rkagerer 7y ago
  Granted. I wonder if communities who maintain certain pages become aware over time of accounts known or strongly suspected to be associated with interested institutions. Per Wikipedia policy anyone paid to make contributions must disclose the fact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations) but I'm not sure how vigilantly that's enforced. It would be interesting if Wikimedia released a transparency report about this, or even if organizations themselves did so (i.e. "here's a dump of all our social media activity last year").
  - ailef 7y ago
    This page might be interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_o... It lists several cases that have been discovered of accounts editing Wikipedia for PR purposes or similar.
ailef 7y ago
You are totally right. I was thinking the IP address issue could be solved by adding a feature to crowdsource information about IP addresses from users, or maybe using APIs like ipinfo.io to create an updated database. (Didn't have time/money to implement it and wanted to avoid procrastinating the launch again and again...) But unfortunately one just needs to create an account on Wikipedia (or use a VPN) to circumvent this kind of approach. This is really the main flaw, and I don't think there's a workaround to it.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

I believe this flawed approach is the only possible approach. As far as the individual interested in music the edits that are just individual edits on government time or IP address are a different problem than the other three. I guess could have some sort of analyzer to rank how likely the edits are to be of organizational interest and not just individual interest. But that would probably also require enough work to need to be monetizable for someone to put in that work.

rkagerer 7y ago
Granted. I wonder if communities who maintain certain pages become aware over time of accounts known or strongly suspected to be associated with interested institutions. Per Wikipedia policy anyone paid to make contributions must disclose the fact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations) but I'm not sure how vigilantly that's enforced. It would be interesting if Wikimedia released a transparency report about this, or even if organizations themselves did so (i.e. "here's a dump of all our social media activity last year").
- ailef 7y ago
  This page might be interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_o... It lists several cases that have been discovered of accounts editing Wikipedia for PR purposes or similar.

ailef 7y ago

You are totally right. I was thinking the IP address issue could be solved by adding a feature to crowdsource information about IP addresses from users, or maybe using APIs like ipinfo.io to create an updated database. (Didn't have time/money to implement it and wanted to avoid procrastinating the launch again and again...) But unfortunately one just needs to create an account on Wikipedia (or use a VPN) to circumvent this kind of approach. This is really the main flaw, and I don't think there's a workaround to it.