[HN Gopher] Show HN: Explore Wikipedia edits made by institution...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: Explore Wikipedia edits made by institutions, companies
       and governments
        
       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-ma...  I
       had already posted it here at the time (previous discussion:
       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 (disclaimer: the code is a bit
       clumsy).  Cheers!
        
       Author : ailef
       Score  : 244 points
       Date   : 2022-12-03 10:32 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wikiwho.ailef.tech)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wikiwho.ailef.tech)
        
       | thedudeabides5 wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
         | > 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.
        
       | karaterobot wrote:
       | 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/m...
       | 
       | 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.
        
       | ailef wrote:
       | One amusing edit:
       | 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/584f4588ec12334300a448f39ae4c...
        
         | erie wrote:
         | 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-...
        
           | loxias wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
             | Maybe pertaining to persecution like this:
             | https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2020/12/11/virgil-
             | griffith-s...
        
               | ailef wrote:
               | 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.
        
         | nonameiguess wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | It seems that such blocks would mostly just reduce
           | transparency.
        
         | jl6 wrote:
         | Good to see that the latter was reverted within 5 minutes, and
         | the removed content remains there to this day.
        
       | SmileyJames wrote:
       | Hugged to death?
        
         | ailef wrote:
         | Yes, indeed. It should be working fine now, though.
        
           | aussieguy1234 wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
       | It seems my poor VM was hugged to death! I just resized it to
       | hopefully sustain the load.
        
       | sushiburps wrote:
       | 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
       | 
       | 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.
        
       | dzhiurgis wrote:
       | LastPass are very good at deleting their security incidents
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756044
        
         | dzhiurgis wrote:
         | Apologies - the references are now outdated and I'm too lazy to
         | find them again
        
       | ibejoeb wrote:
       | This is a great idea. Thanks for making and sharing.
        
       | grensley wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | mlindner wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | slackfan wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | anyfactor wrote:
       | 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
       | 
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | arminiusreturns wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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)
        
       | iso1631 wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | Sujeto wrote:
       | Right now the site is not loading.
        
       | culi wrote:
       | 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
        
         | elgar1212 wrote:
         | > One of the Navy Network Information Center (NNIC)'s top edits
         | is the Subic rape case.
         | 
         | What's the tl;dr of what happened here? It looks to me like
         | someone in the US military raped a Filipino girl, and then
         | either blackmailed her family or did something shady in order
         | to get her to recant. Meanwhile there were edits on the page to
         | disregard her initial allegations[0]
         | 
         | [0]
         | http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c...
        
         | pastacacioepepe wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | spookthesunset wrote:
           | Of course it is gonna be a shitshow. It's still happening!
           | Everybody has a vested interest in making those pages reflect
           | their version of reality. And the non-cynic part of me says
           | that is fine and to be expected. In the fog of war there is
           | no true, objective reality yet. It takes a good long while
           | for humanity to settle down and cooler heads can then piece
           | together an accurate view of events.
           | 
           | There is plenty of good content on Wikipedia... you just
           | won't find it for highly potent current events unfolding
           | right this instant.
        
           | krisoft wrote:
           | > For one, check the edit history of anything Russia/Ukraine
           | war related, it's a complete shitshow.
           | 
           | I went and checked randomly a few edits. I'm not seeing
           | anything I would describe as a "complete shitshow". Can you
           | please provide examples and tell us what you find
           | objectionable?
        
           | prox wrote:
           | History was always written by the victors, we only see it
           | happen in real time now.
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | A simpler way to describe history that is happening in real
             | time is _things that are happening now_. This is not a case
             | of  "history being written by the victors," this is an
             | example of populations being propagandized by their
             | governments and oligarchs about the things those
             | governments and oligarchs are currently doing.
             | 
             | The sense of alienation is overwhelming here. We're not
             | reading stories about something that once happened to
             | someone, we're being sold stories about what is happening
             | to us, and what we are doing, right now.
             | 
             | -----
             | 
             | edit: Walter Lippmann did this stuff for a living, and
             | wrote a lot about it and the political implications of
             | imbalances of information. I don't think it's such a huge
             | difference that people 100 years ago only got two
             | newspapers a day worth of information (early and late
             | editions), and we now get our information rations in
             | smaller portions.
        
               | prox wrote:
               | What's a pivotal work of Walter Lippmann one could read?
        
             | trasz2 wrote:
             | And with revision log.
        
             | 411111111111111 wrote:
             | ...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.
        
               | sheepz wrote:
               | s/Russia/Soviet Union/g.
               | 
               | The huge role of Soviet Union was pushed by the Soviet
               | Union as part of its Great Patriotic War narrative is
               | continued to this day by Russia's propaganda. Without the
               | US Lend-Lease, the situation could have turned out much
               | differently for the soviets (as even Stalin himself
               | admitted).
        
               | hardlianotion wrote:
               | And the Royal Merchant Marine making huge efforts at
               | resupply, and the UK's own material response.
        
               | 411111111111111 wrote:
               | I wasn't trying to claim that the USSR was the sole
               | contributor to the defeat of the fascists, sorry if it
               | sounded like that.
               | 
               | I just wanted to make a pretty strong example of the
               | winners rewriting history and how this propaganda becomes
               | fact for the society.
               | 
               | I'm sure everyone here agrees that it's good that the
               | fascists lost the war and that the USA enabled Europe to
               | stay democratic. It was a very brutal period of time in
               | which human life was sadly undervalued.
        
               | sheepz wrote:
               | Ironically a better example of this would your own claim
               | that focuses solely on the crimes of Nazism without any
               | mention of Communist crimes. Since USSR was on the Allied
               | side, Communism never quite turned into the embodiment of
               | evil that Nazism has become. Due to this, today many
               | academics are proud to call themselves Communists,
               | whereas you would be hard-pressed to find any self-
               | proclaimed nazis, at least in the mainstream of academia.
               | All because history is written by the victors.
        
               | prox wrote:
               | I like to add a bit of historical context and that is
               | that communism as an ideology,field of study and it's
               | ideas were quite spread out over Europe and beyond (Way
               | before the Russian revolution and after)
               | 
               | Karl Marx ideas were very revolutionary for its time (a
               | good primer can be found in the book The Value of
               | Everything) and set a lot of ideas in motion. And there
               | was also debate in that regard on how to institute
               | communism. So communism could never reach the "evil"
               | moniker like Nazism, even though it was apparent the
               | Soviet Union was quite a brute. So the ideology was kind
               | of separated cognitively from its implementation by the
               | Soviet Union.
               | 
               | In the Cold War period, the SU was definitely seen as
               | something that had to be defeated. There was a lot of
               | fear of nuclear escalation between the superpowers. The
               | Soviet Union was seen as different at best, and something
               | to be defeated in all cases. And yes, also evil. Just
               | watch some action movies from that time to get a general
               | idea.
        
               | phkahler wrote:
               | >> And the fact that Russia could've likely just taken
               | over Europe completely has been forgotten entirely.
               | 
               | Well, seeing how Russia can't even take over Russia
               | _today_ , people have doubts! That's a joke, don't get
               | all serious ;-)
        
             | elgar1212 wrote:
             | > History was always written by the victors, we only see it
             | happen in real time now.
             | 
             | A modern spin on this: history is no longer written by the
             | victors, but by people with literally no life outside of
             | writing crap on the internet
        
               | totalZero wrote:
               | Not sure how that links to the article considering that
               | these IP ranges are linked to professional institutions.
        
               | californiadreem wrote:
               | This was true of medieval clerics and Enlightenment
               | historians as well. It's almost always the idle writing
               | history because everyone else is too busy working or
               | living their own lives. The exception to this rule is
               | patronage history (e.g. paying others to write flattering
               | histories) but that's exactly what this kind of
               | astroturfing on Wikipedia is.
        
         | newsclues wrote:
         | I am convinced the military has teams dedicated to maintaining
         | their wikipedia information.
         | 
         | And that isn't including a high ranking commander having their
         | subordinates do something for them unofficially.
        
       | kube-system wrote:
       | 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/46a20a0820d609f90314e...
        
         | jraph wrote:
         | Someone is a fan of Madonna in there.
        
         | logicalmonster wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | spookthesunset wrote:
         | 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...
        
       | elgar1212 wrote:
       | Some interesting ones:
       | 
       | http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c...
       | 
       | http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c5885fe11dbfd31923f7554cf41c...
       | 
       | http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/ca44a9a42489ede43a5f58ccbd0d...
        
         | Helmut10001 wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | hardlianotion wrote:
       | You have to check out the malcontents who made edits to the USAF
       | base at Alconbury:
       | 
       | http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/0db36f4f426c89e6fb7d41e00747...
        
       | bad416f1f5a2 wrote:
       | The US Army has made six hundred contributions to a list of
       | ethnic slurs:
       | 
       | http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/11014515
       | 
       | They appear as "PEO STAMIS" here, which appears to be an IT
       | group?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | the-printer wrote:
         | When I think about it, a lot of ethnic slurs that were
         | introduced to me were in a context that was militarily
         | adjacent.
        
           | gibspaulding wrote:
           | I suppose that makes sense considering most conflicts involve
           | groups who (accurately or not) wouldn't consider their
           | enemies members of their own race.
        
       | akolbe wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | Yes, this is unfortunately a very big issue and one of the
         | reasons I didn't develop it further.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | Why are you posting it again then?
        
             | s1artibartfast wrote:
             | 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
        
       | skilled wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
         | 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
        
           | hardlianotion wrote:
           | Their collection of ETFs has a standout in their anti Jim
           | Cramer ETF
           | 
           | https://unusualwhales.com/etfs
        
           | hackernewds wrote:
           | What is one to infer from these? That congresspeople, like
           | others that are afforded the right, also execute trades?
        
             | reallydontask wrote:
             | The inference is that they use insider information
        
             | passwordoops wrote:
             | 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
             | 
             | [2] https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-bought-
             | defen...
        
               | uejfiweun wrote:
               | Is this data immediately accessible? What's to stop me
               | from just following this data and copying their trades
               | 1:1?
        
               | passwordoops wrote:
               | Public officials in the US need to file their financial
               | activities within a certain time limit, and and this is
               | accessible to anyone with a Bloomberg Terminal.
               | 
               | Usually by the time this info is made public the best
               | profits would already have been made. There are also
               | plenty of examples of members not filing at all. Of
               | course nothing happens to them...
               | 
               | This was a bit of a scandal when Pelosi's activities
               | became a bit too obvious (e.g [1] - and I'm not saying
               | this is just a Democrat issue, they all do it), but the
               | furor very quickly died down after democracy came under
               | threat during the midterms because the other party are
               | neo-fascists or communists, depending on which
               | billionaire-owned news source you follow.
               | 
               | [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/09/congress-moves-
               | towards-banni...
        
       | mhitza wrote:
       | Pretty cool, please make it run under HTTPS
        
       | 11235813213455 wrote:
       | You could link to the wikipedia article in each page
        
       | Sujeto wrote:
       | Why did Pfizer do all these edits on a musical?
       | http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c1b9f1c2d5cc1361ccf28b0108bd...
        
         | cortesoft wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | TobTobXX wrote:
         | It probably was an employee working for Pfizer.
        
       | Sophira wrote:
       | 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
       | 
       | [edited to ask a question]
        
         | ailef wrote:
         | 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/r...
        
       | rainbowdash wrote:
       | 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
       | 
       | Also there is analysis of old edits (2002-2014) using IP ranges
       | collected for bots https://jarib.github.io/anon-history/, source
       | code: https://github.com/jarib/anon-history
        
       | v0idptrptr wrote:
       | My favourite would have to be Eli Lilly bullying some random
       | American school.
       | http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/6209781691e7fdc225681c7848504...
        
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