Virgil was an undergrad research associate at SFI this summer: http://www.santafe.edu/education/fellowships-undergraduate-roster-05-griffith.ph p
-S > -----Original Message----- > From: Randy Burge [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 8:26 PM > To: FRIAM > Subject: [FRIAM] See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the > CIA, a Campaign > > See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign > > > By John Borland > 08.14.07 | 2:00 AM > http://www.wired.com/print/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/ > wiki_tracker/ > > On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted > 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor > Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's > machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave > behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the > contributor, such as the location of the computer used to > make the edits. > > In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved > for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far > from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched > Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their > corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive > data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which > until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of > specific allegations. > > Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation > and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers > users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous > Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently > originated, by cross- referencing the edits with data on who > owns the associated block of internet IP addresses. > > Inspired by news last year that Congress members' offices had > been editing their own entries, Griffith says he got curious, > and wanted to know whether big companies and other > organizations were doing things in a similarly self-interested vein. > > "Everything's better if you do it on a huge scale, and automate it," > he says with a grin. > > This database is possible thanks to a combination of > Wikipedia policies and (mostly) publicly available information. > > The online encyclopedia allows anyone to make edits, but > keeps detailed logs of all these changes. Users who are > logged in are tracked only by their user name, but anonymous > changes leave a public record of their IP address. > > Share Your Sleuthing! > > Cornered any companies polishing up their Wikipedia entries? > Spotted any government spooks rewriting history? Try Virgil > Griffith's Wikipedia Scanner yourself, then submit your finds > and vote on other readers' discoveries here. > > The organization also allows downloads of the complete > Wikipedia, including records of all these changes. > > Griffith thus downloaded the entire encyclopedia, isolating > the XML- based records of anonymous changes and IP addresses. > He then correlated those IP addresses with public net-address > lookup services such as ARIN, as well as private domain-name > data provided by IP2Location.com. > > [snip] > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
