10 ms·

Show HN: Explore Wikipedia edits made by institutions, companies and governments

261 points by ailef 4y ago

Hi HN! Wikiwho is a tool that scans Wikipedia edits and extracts those coming from specific IP ranges associated to known organizations. I've made this as a for-fun side project two years ago. If you want to read more on how it works I've written a short blog article about it here: https://ailef.tech/2020/04/18/discovering-wikipedia-edits-made-by-institutions-companies-and-government-agencies/ https://ailef.tech/2020/04/18/discovering-wikipedia-edits-ma... I had already posted it here at the time (previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22907200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22907200) but I've now decided to release the code openly, hence the repost. If you're insterested, you can check the repo here: https://github.com/aileftech/wikiwho https://github.com/aileftech/wikiwho (disclaimer: the code is a bit clumsy). Cheers!

ailef 4y ago
One amusing edit: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/7d674d710c8d1328f0f74f6b351ffe1f http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/7d674d710c8d1328f0f74f6b351ff... IPs from the European Parliament editing out connections to Cambridge Analytica from Alex Phillips' (member of the European Parliament) page: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/584f4588ec12334300a448f39ae4ce12 http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/584f4588ec12334300a448f39ae4c...
- jl6 4y ago
  Good to see that the latter was reverted within 5 minutes, and the removed content remains there to this day.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  My wife's best friend used to work for Wikipedia and said they had to block any edits made from the IP range belonging to the US capitol building. Maybe they need to just do this for all legislative offices of all countries. Not that it stops the same people from just making these edits from home or learning to use a VPN.
  - layer8 4y ago
    It seems that such blocks would mostly just reduce transparency.
- erie 4y ago
  Virgil Griffith had earlier done a similar tool and paid dearly for it after exposing CIA and FBI edits" 16 Aug 2007 — CIA and FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits ... The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute https://www.reuters.com/article/oukin-uk-security-wikipedia-idUKN1642896020070816 https://www.reuters.com/article/oukin-uk-security-wikipedia-...
  - loxias 4y ago
    Came here to mention Virgil, glad someone beat me to it. =) It's truly amazing how much can be gleaned from a perusal of the edit history for a page from the beginning. I assume much goes undetected.
  - ailef 4y ago
    Yes, I've mentioned it also in my original blog post. What do you mean though by "paid dearly for it"? I was not aware of anything particular happening.
    - whythre 4y ago
      Maybe pertaining to persecution like this: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2020/12/11/virgil-griffith-still-doesnt-know-what-exact-crimes-he-is-accused-of-attorneys-say/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2020/12/11/virgil-griffith-s...
      - ailef 4y ago
        It's possible, but as much as I dislike what's happened to him I think it seems a bit far-fetched to see it as retribution for creating WikiScanner.
culi 4y ago
One of the Navy Network Information Center (NNIC)'s top edits is the Subic rape case.[0] Predictably and, unfortunately, it's essentially all edits trying to play down the case or cast doubt I've been a Wikipedia editor for a few years now (mostly botany-related pages) and I've been quite the pessimist about the platform for almost as long. But browsing this website has gotten me really demoralized to be honest. Many of these edits seem like individual contributors, but some of these look downright coordinated [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subic_rape_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subic_rape_case
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  I completely lost trust in Wikipedia once I realized recent history is literally being rewritten by biased editors. For one, check the edit history of anything Russia/Ukraine war related, it's a complete shitshow.
  - prox 4y ago
    History was always written by the victors, we only see it happen in real time now.
    - trasz2 4y ago
      And with revision log.
    - 411111111111111 4y ago
      ...and to a much greater degree then people realize, really. As a simple example, WW2. There where several polls over the decades in Germany which country contributed the most to the fall of Nazi Germany. In the beginning, it was mostly attributed to Russia (something like 80%) with the USA mostly protecting Europe from getting integrated into Russia after the fall. But over time this opinion has been overturned to being mostly the USA with Russia playing a minor role... And the fact that Russia could've likely just taken over Europe completely has been forgotten entirely.
kube-system 4y ago
I am surprised how many people goof off at work writing wikipedia pages about their favorite TV shows. Especially you, Canadians... lol: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/organization/46a20a0820d609f90314ea85462e9205 http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/organization/46a20a0820d609f90314e...
- jraph 4y ago
  Someone is a fan of Madonna in there.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  It’s a good thing to remember… just because it comes from a corporate IP doesn’t mean much. It is highly likely most of these edits were done by employees goofing around on Wikipedia while on their employer’s network. If you broke down comments on HN by IP, I bet the distribution would be highly concentrated to tech companies IP ranges. Assuming that every comment was posted for nefarious reason would be flawed. The truth is much less exciting. It’s just dudes goofing around at work…
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  It might be the case that government employees are mostly just goofing off at work on Wikipedia. That's a perfectly normal, likely, and very plausible explanation of reality. Another potential explanation is a practice of obfuscation. There might be one critical edit of some government corruption or something else buried in a list that looks like 99% tv shows. Those TV shows might have been edited solely to bury the 1 critical edit they needed to make that will be ignored because it's surrounded by hundreds of other benign looking edits. Without examining each and every edit, it's hard to completely dismiss this kind of explanation.
skilled 4y ago
I have to say, this is depressing to see just how corrupt brands and institutions are to protect their own bullshit. Nevertheless, great work and a very useful project.
- SapporoChris 4y ago
  A more charitable conclusion would be that brands and institutions want to ensure that accurate information is available. If a company is 5th largest yet they're shown as 6th then of course they want to correct the entry. However, I agree it's probably abused to remove any unflattering information. Wikipedia does have a number of editing guidelines, dispute resolutions, etc. It appears they have tried to combat abuse, but I'm sure HN readers can find many failures :)
- passwordoops 4y ago
  You really want to feel depressed? Look up Unusual Whales [1], a day trading app focusing on investment flows in the markets who does an annual report on insider trading by US officials, including Congress and SCOTUS. Even went so far as to create a congressional ETF. The focus is US pols, but no reason to suspect other jurisdictions are any better. There's a reason both parties put a HUUGE emphasis on culture war - it distracts us from their true crimes that just happen to transcend party lines. [1] https://unusualwhales.com/politics https://unusualwhales.com/politics
  - hackernewds 4y ago
    What is one to infer from these? That congresspeople, like others that are afforded the right, also execute trades?
    - reallydontask 4y ago
      The inference is that they use insider information
    - passwordoops 4y ago
      That congresspeople use insider information gained from sitting on various committees to execute suspiciously-timed trades [1], such as: -heavy buying of semiconductors in the lead up to passage of the CHIPS act -mass sell-off by members and their families within the day of the first briefing on the coming COVID policy mandates -purchase of defense stocks by members who were briefed on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One member was particularly brazen, purchasing Lockheed Martin a day before the invasion, then tweeting "War can be profitable" in an attempted swipe at media [2] -regular returns exceeding 100% on companies that directly stand to benefit from policy decisions made by Congress people, on purchases usually executed shortly before public policy votes are held This is not normal [1] https://unusualwhales.com/politics/article/conflicts https://unusualwhales.com/politics/article/conflicts [2] https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-bought-defense-stock-day-before-slamming-profitable-war-ukraine-russia-1685780 https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-bought-defen...
Sophira 4y ago
This is amazing. Thank you for making this! I want to highlight one part from the About page[0], as it's important enough to bear repeating: > Any information that you find with this tool must be independently verified. The mapping between IP ranges and organizations has been compiled from multiple sources and has not been manually verified so it is certain that it contains inaccuracies. I do have a question about this tool. Is there a page that lists all the organizations in the dataset? [0] http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/about.html http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/about.html [edited to ask a question]
- ailef 4y ago
  Thanks, I'm glad you liked this! It's not exactly a page but there's this JSON file in the repo https://github.com/aileftech/wikiwho/blob/master/resources/ranges/ranges.json https://github.com/aileftech/wikiwho/blob/master/resources/r...
thedudeabides5 4y ago
Org/Page Search not working here fwi. Great transparency, now where are the foreign service firm and their proxies. You are telling me the FSB and the United Front aren't editing Wiki? I've had them edit my stuff, so know it's happening. Just not sure the scale.
- elashri 4y ago
  You said their proxies, which is not providing an easy to identify method. No one is going to do this in russia on a kermlin computer. They will let their boys do that.
- ailef 4y ago
  > Org/Page Search not working here fwi. I think it was because the server was overloaded due to it being on the front page. It seems to be working for me now (you need to enter at least two characters for suggestions to appear). As for the rest, I just collected some IP ranges on the internet. The might include foreign service firms or not, it wasn't feasible to check them manually. If you know about any IP range though I'll be glad to merge it into the repo.
SmileyJames 4y ago
Hugged to death?
- ailef 4y ago
  Yes, indeed. It should be working fine now, though.
  - aussieguy1234 4y ago
    You might want to consider using a CDN like CloudFlare. The information on your site looks very cacheable. That would reduce load because requests for the same content would get served by them rather than hitting your server directly.
ailef 4y ago
It seems my poor VM was hugged to death! I just resized it to hopefully sustain the load.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
LastPass are very good at deleting their security incidents https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756044
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  Apologies - the references are now outdated and I’m too lazy to find them again
akolbe 4y ago
Of course, this only catches the relative "amateurs". Proper professionals change IP address before making their edits, or they register a "volunteer" account (this also prevents routine disclosure of the IP address, but still makes the IP address potentially discoverable by higher-ranking Wikipedia functionaries).
- ailef 4y ago
  Yes, this is unfortunately a very big issue and one of the reasons I didn't develop it further.
  - layer8 4y ago
    Why are you posting it again then?
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      In case you don't realize, I want to let you know that your post comes off as entitled and hostile. It might not be a perfect tool, but it is interesting and freely given. Tools need not be perfect to be shared freely
      - layer8 4y ago
        I found it bewildering that, if they see a “very big issue” with it, so much that they abandoned the project for that reason, that they would repost it again on HN without mentioning that upfront. One thing I missed is that the project hadn’t been open previously, which does explain the repost now, but still it would have been appropriate to mention the insight about its limitations in the submission. Personally I felt misled by the submission text upon reading the GP comment, hence my reaction.
        akolbe 4y ago
        An IP-based tool is still useful to catch casual malfeasance. The various Twitter bots logging edits from various government IP address ranges for example did highlight interesting edits sometimes. It's just important to remember that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately it's the structural weakness of Wikipedia that limits how much you can know about the contributors.
mhitza 4y ago
Pretty cool, please make it run under HTTPS
- LoganDark 4y ago
  Seconded. My browser won't even connect over HTTP. This should be a must these days! It's so easy, Let's Encrypt makes it take 5 minutes to get a cert trusted by all modern browsers.
mlindner 4y ago
I'm not sure why people are so downhearted by this kind of thing. It's well known that anything controversial on Wikipedia is going to have a lot of edit warring and people trying to control a narrative. What Wikipedia is best at is non-controversial topics. And that has always been the case. Even for controversial topics it's honestly surprising how more or less correct the articles tend to be. Wikipedia is not where you read up on the war crimes that may have or may not have been committed by some country or the views of a politician on immigration. Wikipedia is where you read up on Mars's atmosphere or how solar wind works.
- totalZero 4y ago
  When it comes to current events, I think the advantage that Wikipedia has over traditional encyclopedias is not authoritative but rather referential. With most articles (such as historical events or scientific breakthroughs), Wikipedia converges to a pretty authoritative treatment of the subject and can be more accurate than a singe-source encyclopedia. With current events articles, Wikipedia provides a starting point for further reading (including via the citation pointers) whereas a single-source encyclopedia may be out of date and completely devoid of content on the subject.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    I agree. When you look at the sources used for controversial topics and dive down to the original primary sources (Wikipedia has rules against using primary sources for many subjects) you find that the actual information isn't what was reported.
iso1631 4y ago
How is "institutiion" or "company" defined? I couldn't find any international news providers for example, Newscorp, BBC, Daily Mail Probably not a major issue though. As companies move more to remote and/or cloud based access from service providers - zscaler etc - that IP data is lost (or rather hidden by the provider), it certainly becomes easier to be anonymous to sites like wikipedia.
11235813213455 4y ago
You could link to the wikipedia article in each page
slackfan 4y ago
Remember when Wikipedia was never to be used as an authoritative source on any subject? Pepperidge Farms remembers. Interesting how that suddenly changes around the time that smith-mundt was repealed. But don't listen to me, I suffer from realistic dreams and an imperfect memory, that never happened, we have always been at war with eastasia.
arminiusreturns 4y ago
In the conspiracy community, wikipedia articles relevant to conspiracy theories often have extremely revealing edits and have been known as a source of checking for coverup for a while. The truth, I've found, is often so shocking that many if not most people, would rather reject it (attack the messenger, bury head in sand, etc) than admit their worldview has been so wrong for so long. I've even seen sections in the edits go poof for very big stuff.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  What do you mean by 'revealing edit'? Is that an edit that goes against a conspiracy theory? Do you have grounds for suspecting those edits originate on behalf of affiliated persons instead of someone trying to present a balanced viewpoint but whom you happen to disagree with? I used to look only occasionally at edit sections for sensitive articles involving crimes by powerful players but stopped because I never spotted any suspicious changes. (Also, if removing edits from page history on Wikipedia was actually common I don't believe no one in the editor community blew the whistle yet. Of course some people would claim such whistleblowers are tracked and eliminated by omnipresent evil illuminati before they go public... and at that point I can't take this line of argument seriously)
elgar1212 4y ago
Some interesting ones: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c10db?pageid=26033941#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c... http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c10db?pageid=27630477#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c... http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/ca44a9a42489ede43a5f58ccbd0d1d69?pageid=5183633#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/ca44a9a42489ede43a5f58ccbd0d...
- Helmut10001 4y ago
  Crazy (your last link): > The reality is that waterboarding is not a form of torture and is in fact used in the training of US forces. Much of the debate surrounding the use of torture stems from politically motivated individuals who do not understand the techniques themselves or the complex nature of military operations.
  - elgar1212 4y ago
    Here's another one about waterboarding, very odd... http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/156bbb833d79c589d7791bc8d02fa7ae?pageid=747573#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/156bbb833d79c589d7791bc8d02f...
hardlianotion 4y ago
You have to check out the malcontents who made edits to the USAF base at Alconbury: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/0db36f4f426c89e6fb7d41e007470471?pageid=1858944#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/0db36f4f426c89e6fb7d41e00747...
bad416f1f5a2 4y ago
The US Army has made six hundred contributions to a list of ethnic slurs: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/11014515 http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/11014515 They appear as “PEO STAMIS” here, which appears to be an IT group?
- the-printer 4y ago
  When I think about it, a lot of ethnic slurs that were introduced to me were in a context that was militarily adjacent.
  - gibspaulding 4y ago
    I suppose that makes sense considering most conflicts involve groups who (accurately or not) wouldn't consider their enemies members of their own race.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Sujeto 4y ago
Why did Pfizer do all these edits on a musical? http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c1b9f1c2d5cc1361ccf28b0108bd7179?pageid=1878304#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c1b9f1c2d5cc1361ccf28b0108bd...
- TobTobXX 4y ago
  It probably was an employee working for Pfizer.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  Because people do non-work things on their work computers. This is one of the reasons I think the statement "edits made by companies" is a bit too strong... these are edits made from company owned IPs, but we have no idea if these were made based on direction from the company leadership or just by employees doing non-work related things from work computers.
ibejoeb 4y ago
This is a great idea. Thanks for making and sharing.
v0idptrptr 4y ago
My favourite would have to be Eli Lilly bullying some random American school. http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/6209781691e7fdc225681c784850413f http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/6209781691e7fdc225681c7848504...
anyfactor 4y ago
This is really a hobby of mine. I will sometimes go through articles and see if I can find suspicious edits. It grew out from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840671 But now, I realized I can 10x this stupid hobby with ipinfo.io You can get company name and VPN detection from IP address. I work for IPinfo, so not plugging the API service. Use the search box on the homepage to check individual IPs for free.
- anyfactor 4y ago
  Posted this on our Slack. If OP needs a company database or something, I can ask my team. I heard that we collaborated with Wikipedia on a project like this before.
sushiburps 4y ago
This is an amazing tool, but I'd caution it's using IP lists for groups of specific organizations. One of the 2 IP lists provided by the author is just the US military: https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231 https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231 The section "MOST ACTIVE ORGANIZATIONS" shouldn't be taken as a list of the most active organizations in the world editing Wikipedia, just the most active organizations that made an IP list the tool is using. Anyone using the very large number of static IP addresses on these lists will be pooled as an edit by the organization that maintains that IP range. This means a seaman in the Navy editing a TV show article on their free time may be pooled into the "Navy Network Information Center (NNIC)". It doesn't necessary mean the NNIC has a special interest in editing 'Breaking Bad' episode synopses.
karaterobot 4y ago
This tool is interesting and useful, but it's important to remember that it is constrained by the lists of mapped IP addresses. It will only show edits made by these specific sources, and no others: https://github.com/ruebot/gccaedits-ip-address-ranges/blob/main/gccaedits.json https://github.com/ruebot/gccaedits-ip-address-ranges/blob/m... https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231 https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231 It would be a very basic mistake conclude that these are the only groups editing Wikipedia articles to control the narrative, just because they're the only ones being sampled.
grensley 4y ago
I think I'm most puzzled why the Navy is making so many edits on Boys II Men founding member Marc Nelson. The read I'm getting is they are by Marc Nelson himself since a lot of them seem to reflect his personal regrets about leaving right before they blew up. Incredibly odd.
rainbowdash 4y ago
There was fun time when Ed Summers made a tool to monitor Wikipedia edits from some IPs pool realtime, and it turned into worldwide effort with Twitter bots monitoring many governments and big corporations, highlighting a lot of cringe edits and poor attempts to remove some info from Wikipedia. Many bots are still active, you can find source code and list of bots here https://github.com/edsu/anon https://github.com/edsu/anon Also there is analysis of old edits (2002-2014) using IP ranges collected for bots https://jarib.github.io/anon-history/ https://jarib.github.io/anon-history/, source code: https://github.com/jarib/anon-history https://github.com/jarib/anon-history
Sujeto 4y ago
Right now the site is not loading.
jmprspret 4y ago
No TLS? Really? What year is this?
thetis 4y ago
wow, it looks that someone from Air Force Materiel Command was very hot on Mireille Mathieu http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/154437 http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/154437 Mireille Mathieu is a french -old school- singer https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mireille_Mathieu https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mireille_Mathieu

261 points by ailef 4y ago

ailef 4y ago

One amusing edit: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/7d674d710c8d1328f0f74f6b351ffe1f http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/7d674d710c8d1328f0f74f6b351ff... IPs from the European Parliament editing out connections to Cambridge Analytica from Alex Phillips' (member of the European Parliament) page: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/584f4588ec12334300a448f39ae4ce12 http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/584f4588ec12334300a448f39ae4c...

jl6 4y ago
Good to see that the latter was reverted within 5 minutes, and the removed content remains there to this day.
nonameiguess 4y ago
My wife's best friend used to work for Wikipedia and said they had to block any edits made from the IP range belonging to the US capitol building. Maybe they need to just do this for all legislative offices of all countries. Not that it stops the same people from just making these edits from home or learning to use a VPN.
- layer8 4y ago
  It seems that such blocks would mostly just reduce transparency.
erie 4y ago
Virgil Griffith had earlier done a similar tool and paid dearly for it after exposing CIA and FBI edits" 16 Aug 2007 — CIA and FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits ... The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute https://www.reuters.com/article/oukin-uk-security-wikipedia-idUKN1642896020070816 https://www.reuters.com/article/oukin-uk-security-wikipedia-...
- loxias 4y ago
  Came here to mention Virgil, glad someone beat me to it. =) It's truly amazing how much can be gleaned from a perusal of the edit history for a page from the beginning. I assume much goes undetected.
- ailef 4y ago
  Yes, I've mentioned it also in my original blog post. What do you mean though by "paid dearly for it"? I was not aware of anything particular happening.
  - whythre 4y ago
    Maybe pertaining to persecution like this: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2020/12/11/virgil-griffith-still-doesnt-know-what-exact-crimes-he-is-accused-of-attorneys-say/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2020/12/11/virgil-griffith-s...
    - ailef 4y ago
      It's possible, but as much as I dislike what's happened to him I think it seems a bit far-fetched to see it as retribution for creating WikiScanner.

culi 4y ago

One of the Navy Network Information Center (NNIC)'s top edits is the Subic rape case.[0] Predictably and, unfortunately, it's essentially all edits trying to play down the case or cast doubt I've been a Wikipedia editor for a few years now (mostly botany-related pages) and I've been quite the pessimist about the platform for almost as long. But browsing this website has gotten me really demoralized to be honest. Many of these edits seem like individual contributors, but some of these look downright coordinated [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subic_rape_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subic_rape_case

pastacacioepepe 4y ago
I completely lost trust in Wikipedia once I realized recent history is literally being rewritten by biased editors. For one, check the edit history of anything Russia/Ukraine war related, it's a complete shitshow.
- prox 4y ago
  History was always written by the victors, we only see it happen in real time now.
  - trasz2 4y ago
    And with revision log.
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    ...and to a much greater degree then people realize, really. As a simple example, WW2. There where several polls over the decades in Germany which country contributed the most to the fall of Nazi Germany. In the beginning, it was mostly attributed to Russia (something like 80%) with the USA mostly protecting Europe from getting integrated into Russia after the fall. But over time this opinion has been overturned to being mostly the USA with Russia playing a minor role... And the fact that Russia could've likely just taken over Europe completely has been forgotten entirely.

kube-system 4y ago

I am surprised how many people goof off at work writing wikipedia pages about their favorite TV shows. Especially you, Canadians... lol: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/organization/46a20a0820d609f90314ea85462e9205 http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/organization/46a20a0820d609f90314e...

jraph 4y ago
Someone is a fan of Madonna in there.
spookthesunset 4y ago
It’s a good thing to remember… just because it comes from a corporate IP doesn’t mean much. It is highly likely most of these edits were done by employees goofing around on Wikipedia while on their employer’s network. If you broke down comments on HN by IP, I bet the distribution would be highly concentrated to tech companies IP ranges. Assuming that every comment was posted for nefarious reason would be flawed. The truth is much less exciting. It’s just dudes goofing around at work…
logicalmonster 4y ago
It might be the case that government employees are mostly just goofing off at work on Wikipedia. That's a perfectly normal, likely, and very plausible explanation of reality. Another potential explanation is a practice of obfuscation. There might be one critical edit of some government corruption or something else buried in a list that looks like 99% tv shows. Those TV shows might have been edited solely to bury the 1 critical edit they needed to make that will be ignored because it's surrounded by hundreds of other benign looking edits. Without examining each and every edit, it's hard to completely dismiss this kind of explanation.

skilled 4y ago

I have to say, this is depressing to see just how corrupt brands and institutions are to protect their own bullshit. Nevertheless, great work and a very useful project.

SapporoChris 4y ago
A more charitable conclusion would be that brands and institutions want to ensure that accurate information is available. If a company is 5th largest yet they're shown as 6th then of course they want to correct the entry. However, I agree it's probably abused to remove any unflattering information. Wikipedia does have a number of editing guidelines, dispute resolutions, etc. It appears they have tried to combat abuse, but I'm sure HN readers can find many failures :)
passwordoops 4y ago
You really want to feel depressed? Look up Unusual Whales [1], a day trading app focusing on investment flows in the markets who does an annual report on insider trading by US officials, including Congress and SCOTUS. Even went so far as to create a congressional ETF. The focus is US pols, but no reason to suspect other jurisdictions are any better. There's a reason both parties put a HUUGE emphasis on culture war - it distracts us from their true crimes that just happen to transcend party lines. [1] https://unusualwhales.com/politics https://unusualwhales.com/politics
- hackernewds 4y ago
  What is one to infer from these? That congresspeople, like others that are afforded the right, also execute trades?
  - reallydontask 4y ago
    The inference is that they use insider information
  - passwordoops 4y ago
    That congresspeople use insider information gained from sitting on various committees to execute suspiciously-timed trades [1], such as: -heavy buying of semiconductors in the lead up to passage of the CHIPS act -mass sell-off by members and their families within the day of the first briefing on the coming COVID policy mandates -purchase of defense stocks by members who were briefed on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One member was particularly brazen, purchasing Lockheed Martin a day before the invasion, then tweeting "War can be profitable" in an attempted swipe at media [2] -regular returns exceeding 100% on companies that directly stand to benefit from policy decisions made by Congress people, on purchases usually executed shortly before public policy votes are held This is not normal [1] https://unusualwhales.com/politics/article/conflicts https://unusualwhales.com/politics/article/conflicts [2] https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-bought-defense-stock-day-before-slamming-profitable-war-ukraine-russia-1685780 https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-bought-defen...

Sophira 4y ago

This is amazing. Thank you for making this! I want to highlight one part from the About page[0], as it's important enough to bear repeating: > Any information that you find with this tool must be independently verified. The mapping between IP ranges and organizations has been compiled from multiple sources and has not been manually verified so it is certain that it contains inaccuracies. I do have a question about this tool. Is there a page that lists all the organizations in the dataset? [0] http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/about.html http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/about.html [edited to ask a question]

ailef 4y ago
Thanks, I'm glad you liked this! It's not exactly a page but there's this JSON file in the repo https://github.com/aileftech/wikiwho/blob/master/resources/ranges/ranges.json https://github.com/aileftech/wikiwho/blob/master/resources/r...

thedudeabides5 4y ago

Org/Page Search not working here fwi. Great transparency, now where are the foreign service firm and their proxies. You are telling me the FSB and the United Front aren't editing Wiki? I've had them edit my stuff, so know it's happening. Just not sure the scale.

elashri 4y ago
You said their proxies, which is not providing an easy to identify method. No one is going to do this in russia on a kermlin computer. They will let their boys do that.
ailef 4y ago
> Org/Page Search not working here fwi. I think it was because the server was overloaded due to it being on the front page. It seems to be working for me now (you need to enter at least two characters for suggestions to appear). As for the rest, I just collected some IP ranges on the internet. The might include foreign service firms or not, it wasn't feasible to check them manually. If you know about any IP range though I'll be glad to merge it into the repo.

SmileyJames 4y ago

Hugged to death?

ailef 4y ago
Yes, indeed. It should be working fine now, though.
- aussieguy1234 4y ago
  You might want to consider using a CDN like CloudFlare. The information on your site looks very cacheable. That would reduce load because requests for the same content would get served by them rather than hitting your server directly.

ailef 4y ago

It seems my poor VM was hugged to death! I just resized it to hopefully sustain the load.

dzhiurgis 4y ago

LastPass are very good at deleting their security incidents https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756044

dzhiurgis 4y ago
Apologies - the references are now outdated and I’m too lazy to find them again

akolbe 4y ago

Of course, this only catches the relative "amateurs". Proper professionals change IP address before making their edits, or they register a "volunteer" account (this also prevents routine disclosure of the IP address, but still makes the IP address potentially discoverable by higher-ranking Wikipedia functionaries).

ailef 4y ago
Yes, this is unfortunately a very big issue and one of the reasons I didn't develop it further.
- layer8 4y ago
  Why are you posting it again then?
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    In case you don't realize, I want to let you know that your post comes off as entitled and hostile. It might not be a perfect tool, but it is interesting and freely given. Tools need not be perfect to be shared freely
    - layer8 4y ago
      I found it bewildering that, if they see a “very big issue” with it, so much that they abandoned the project for that reason, that they would repost it again on HN without mentioning that upfront. One thing I missed is that the project hadn’t been open previously, which does explain the repost now, but still it would have been appropriate to mention the insight about its limitations in the submission. Personally I felt misled by the submission text upon reading the GP comment, hence my reaction.
      - akolbe 4y ago
        An IP-based tool is still useful to catch casual malfeasance. The various Twitter bots logging edits from various government IP address ranges for example did highlight interesting edits sometimes. It's just important to remember that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately it's the structural weakness of Wikipedia that limits how much you can know about the contributors.

mhitza 4y ago

Pretty cool, please make it run under HTTPS

LoganDark 4y ago
Seconded. My browser won't even connect over HTTP. This should be a must these days! It's so easy, Let's Encrypt makes it take 5 minutes to get a cert trusted by all modern browsers.

mlindner 4y ago

I'm not sure why people are so downhearted by this kind of thing. It's well known that anything controversial on Wikipedia is going to have a lot of edit warring and people trying to control a narrative. What Wikipedia is best at is non-controversial topics. And that has always been the case. Even for controversial topics it's honestly surprising how more or less correct the articles tend to be. Wikipedia is not where you read up on the war crimes that may have or may not have been committed by some country or the views of a politician on immigration. Wikipedia is where you read up on Mars's atmosphere or how solar wind works.

totalZero 4y ago
When it comes to current events, I think the advantage that Wikipedia has over traditional encyclopedias is not authoritative but rather referential. With most articles (such as historical events or scientific breakthroughs), Wikipedia converges to a pretty authoritative treatment of the subject and can be more accurate than a singe-source encyclopedia. With current events articles, Wikipedia provides a starting point for further reading (including via the citation pointers) whereas a single-source encyclopedia may be out of date and completely devoid of content on the subject.
- mlindner 4y ago
  I agree. When you look at the sources used for controversial topics and dive down to the original primary sources (Wikipedia has rules against using primary sources for many subjects) you find that the actual information isn't what was reported.

iso1631 4y ago

How is "institutiion" or "company" defined? I couldn't find any international news providers for example, Newscorp, BBC, Daily Mail Probably not a major issue though. As companies move more to remote and/or cloud based access from service providers - zscaler etc - that IP data is lost (or rather hidden by the provider), it certainly becomes easier to be anonymous to sites like wikipedia.

11235813213455 4y ago

You could link to the wikipedia article in each page

slackfan 4y ago

Remember when Wikipedia was never to be used as an authoritative source on any subject? Pepperidge Farms remembers. Interesting how that suddenly changes around the time that smith-mundt was repealed. But don't listen to me, I suffer from realistic dreams and an imperfect memory, that never happened, we have always been at war with eastasia.

arminiusreturns 4y ago

In the conspiracy community, wikipedia articles relevant to conspiracy theories often have extremely revealing edits and have been known as a source of checking for coverup for a while. The truth, I've found, is often so shocking that many if not most people, would rather reject it (attack the messenger, bury head in sand, etc) than admit their worldview has been so wrong for so long. I've even seen sections in the edits go poof for very big stuff.

throwaway290 4y ago
What do you mean by 'revealing edit'? Is that an edit that goes against a conspiracy theory? Do you have grounds for suspecting those edits originate on behalf of affiliated persons instead of someone trying to present a balanced viewpoint but whom you happen to disagree with? I used to look only occasionally at edit sections for sensitive articles involving crimes by powerful players but stopped because I never spotted any suspicious changes. (Also, if removing edits from page history on Wikipedia was actually common I don't believe no one in the editor community blew the whistle yet. Of course some people would claim such whistleblowers are tracked and eliminated by omnipresent evil illuminati before they go public... and at that point I can't take this line of argument seriously)

elgar1212 4y ago

Some interesting ones: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c10db?pageid=26033941#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c... http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c10db?pageid=27630477#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c... http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/ca44a9a42489ede43a5f58ccbd0d1d69?pageid=5183633#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/ca44a9a42489ede43a5f58ccbd0d...

Helmut10001 4y ago
Crazy (your last link): > The reality is that waterboarding is not a form of torture and is in fact used in the training of US forces. Much of the debate surrounding the use of torture stems from politically motivated individuals who do not understand the techniques themselves or the complex nature of military operations.
- elgar1212 4y ago
  Here's another one about waterboarding, very odd... http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/156bbb833d79c589d7791bc8d02fa7ae?pageid=747573#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/156bbb833d79c589d7791bc8d02f...

hardlianotion 4y ago

You have to check out the malcontents who made edits to the USAF base at Alconbury: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/0db36f4f426c89e6fb7d41e007470471?pageid=1858944#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/0db36f4f426c89e6fb7d41e00747...

bad416f1f5a2 4y ago

The US Army has made six hundred contributions to a list of ethnic slurs: http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/11014515 http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/11014515 They appear as “PEO STAMIS” here, which appears to be an IT group?

the-printer 4y ago
When I think about it, a lot of ethnic slurs that were introduced to me were in a context that was militarily adjacent.
- gibspaulding 4y ago
  I suppose that makes sense considering most conflicts involve groups who (accurately or not) wouldn't consider their enemies members of their own race.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Sujeto 4y ago

Why did Pfizer do all these edits on a musical? http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c1b9f1c2d5cc1361ccf28b0108bd7179?pageid=1878304#current-diff http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c1b9f1c2d5cc1361ccf28b0108bd...

TobTobXX 4y ago
It probably was an employee working for Pfizer.
cortesoft 4y ago
Because people do non-work things on their work computers. This is one of the reasons I think the statement "edits made by companies" is a bit too strong... these are edits made from company owned IPs, but we have no idea if these were made based on direction from the company leadership or just by employees doing non-work related things from work computers.

ibejoeb 4y ago

This is a great idea. Thanks for making and sharing.

v0idptrptr 4y ago

My favourite would have to be Eli Lilly bullying some random American school. http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/6209781691e7fdc225681c784850413f http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/6209781691e7fdc225681c7848504...

anyfactor 4y ago

This is really a hobby of mine. I will sometimes go through articles and see if I can find suspicious edits. It grew out from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840671 But now, I realized I can 10x this stupid hobby with ipinfo.io You can get company name and VPN detection from IP address. I work for IPinfo, so not plugging the API service. Use the search box on the homepage to check individual IPs for free.

anyfactor 4y ago
Posted this on our Slack. If OP needs a company database or something, I can ask my team. I heard that we collaborated with Wikipedia on a project like this before.

sushiburps 4y ago

This is an amazing tool, but I'd caution it's using IP lists for groups of specific organizations. One of the 2 IP lists provided by the author is just the US military: https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231 https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231 The section "MOST ACTIVE ORGANIZATIONS" shouldn't be taken as a list of the most active organizations in the world editing Wikipedia, just the most active organizations that made an IP list the tool is using. Anyone using the very large number of static IP addresses on these lists will be pooled as an edit by the organization that maintains that IP range. This means a seaman in the Navy editing a TV show article on their free time may be pooled into the "Navy Network Information Center (NNIC)". It doesn't necessary mean the NNIC has a special interest in editing 'Breaking Bad' episode synopses.

karaterobot 4y ago

This tool is interesting and useful, but it's important to remember that it is constrained by the lists of mapped IP addresses. It will only show edits made by these specific sources, and no others: https://github.com/ruebot/gccaedits-ip-address-ranges/blob/main/gccaedits.json https://github.com/ruebot/gccaedits-ip-address-ranges/blob/m... https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231 https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231 It would be a very basic mistake conclude that these are the only groups editing Wikipedia articles to control the narrative, just because they're the only ones being sampled.

grensley 4y ago

I think I'm most puzzled why the Navy is making so many edits on Boys II Men founding member Marc Nelson. The read I'm getting is they are by Marc Nelson himself since a lot of them seem to reflect his personal regrets about leaving right before they blew up. Incredibly odd.

rainbowdash 4y ago

There was fun time when Ed Summers made a tool to monitor Wikipedia edits from some IPs pool realtime, and it turned into worldwide effort with Twitter bots monitoring many governments and big corporations, highlighting a lot of cringe edits and poor attempts to remove some info from Wikipedia. Many bots are still active, you can find source code and list of bots here https://github.com/edsu/anon https://github.com/edsu/anon Also there is analysis of old edits (2002-2014) using IP ranges collected for bots https://jarib.github.io/anon-history/ https://jarib.github.io/anon-history/, source code: https://github.com/jarib/anon-history https://github.com/jarib/anon-history

Sujeto 4y ago

Right now the site is not loading.

jmprspret 4y ago

No TLS? Really? What year is this?

thetis 4y ago

wow, it looks that someone from Air Force Materiel Command was very hot on Mireille Mathieu http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/154437 http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/154437 Mireille Mathieu is a french -old school- singer https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mireille_Mathieu https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mireille_Mathieu