I have forwarded your email onto the accredited reporters email address, you make some valid points and I would prefer wider input from our community on this. The article is still not published - hence soliciting input. Perhaps what we have found says more about *who* gets employed *where*, but I think you have a point and representing our information in a neutral manner is potentially problematic. Please - like all Wiki projects - feel free to edit and suggest contributions on the talk page, my main aim was to highlight this to a wider audience hopefully without someone "scooping" us. Brian. -----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gregory Maxwell Sent: 21 August 2007 16:01 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Scanner & wikinews On 8/21/07, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org> wrote: [snip] Oh lets see... How about the little detail that without confirming evidence there is no reason to believe that an edit made from a Fox IP was an action endorsed by Fox? With the widespread existence of things like open wireless access points we can't even be sure if any particular edit was made by someone employed by For or even using a Fox owned computer. Yet the Wikinews article seems to happily go on and describe every action coming from a company IP was an action of that company. "the BBC had edited", "FOX News, and its parent company, News Corporation had a history of unproductive edits" "FOX also edited" "the CIA had been editing" "FOX's edits" "AP had made a few edits" So would you also say that countless other Wiki(p|m)edians are editing on behalf of their employers every time they edit from home and forget to log out of their VPN? When they edit during a coffee break? Is the only thing protecting me of an accusation of "Greg's employer defends Fox in Wikipedia Whitewashing scandal" the fact that Gmail doesn't send IP addresses? It's sad to see us peddling the same sort of irresponsible journalism that we've seen from the commercial market on this matter. At least in their cases we can give them a pass due to a lack of understanding of the technology. Whats your excuse? _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I see two criticisms of the *unpublished* article here so far. I see no edits to the article to improve it in light of these criticisms. We at Wikinews are in the process of trying to arrange an interview with the creator of the WikiScanner tool to fill out the article, there is a window of opportunity for people to engage on Wikinews and shape this article. My posting to this list was to highlight something I thought people would take an interest in and perhaps contribute to. Whilst I can be charitable and accept that the criticism is intended to be constructive it is lacking in suggestions on how to improve our work to address said criticism. Not to mention the fact that this is a *wiki* article and anyone can edit it. Brian.

I completely agree with this point. The evidence should be presented in a "fair and balanced" way, and rather than spinning it as "A Fox news employee," it should simply be stated that an edit from the Fox News Corp. was made to an article related to them. The nature of the edit should also be explained - did it make them look favorable, or a competitor look less favorable? Allow people to draw their own conclusions. On the other hand, if your point is that, because we cannot absolutely verify that any of these people were actually acting in the best interest of their employer because we weren't there to see it happen and didn't interview them about their motivations, that there is likely no phenomenon here to discuss, you would have veered far and wide of common sense. It's pretty clear that Wiki Scanner has uncovered some dirt. So cover it, but be fair and balanced :) On 8/21/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: