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?
My excuse...Do you know how IP address work? ONLY individuals employed by FOX News Channel, or News Corp have access to those IP addresses. ONLY employees are the ones who can log onto the internet with those IPs.
Its simple. FOX News employees made the edits, as the tool says, under FOX News IP addresses, only able tp be used by employees. I or you or anyone else is not able to log onto the internet and use their IP ranges. That is impossible. This is not whitewashing. We did more than FOX. We did the AP, Reuters, MSNBC, CNN, and BBC. and all of those agencies, with the exception of FOX News were realitively clean in terms of edits.
You see, before slam Wikinews and whitewash us, maybe you need to use the WikiScanner tool and understand how it works and also understand how IPs work as well.
Jason Safoutin, Wikinews writer, administrator.
--------------------------------- Shape Yahoo! in your own image. Join our Network Research Panel today!
On 8/21/07, jason safoutin cute24minbflo@yahoo.com wrote:
My excuse...Do you know how IP address work? ONLY individuals employed by FOX >News Channel, or News Corp have access to those IP addresses. ONLY employees are >the ones who can log onto the internet with those IPs.
Prove it.
Its simple. FOX News employees made the edits, as the tool says, under FOX News IP >addresses, only able tp be used by employees. I or you or anyone else is not able to log >onto the internet and use their IP ranges. That is impossible.
Okey:
There are various ways they could have computers set up for semi public acess. School vists perhaps.
Fair chance of useing wifi. Far from imposible that their security hasn't always been flawless
Fox may have chosen at some point to act as an ISP for someone else either in the same building or a nearby building.
The usual problems with compramised computers
There used to be a way to make mediawiki record false IPs
This is not whitewashing. We did more than FOX. We did the AP,
Reuters, MSNBC, CNN, >and BBC. and all of those agencies, with the exception of FOX News were realitively clean >in terms of edits.
You see, before slam Wikinews and whitewash us, maybe you need to use the >WikiScanner tool and understand how it works and also understand how IPs work as well.
Jason Safoutin, Wikinews writer, administrator.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AListusers&usern...
Generaly Check users are chosen from those who know their way around as to how IPs work.
I have to ask why people are going to such great lengths to excuse the actions of News Corp.
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of geni Sent: 21 August 2007 22:44 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Scanner & wikinew
On 8/21/07, jason safoutin cute24minbflo@yahoo.com wrote:
My excuse...Do you know how IP address work? ONLY individuals employed by
FOX >News Channel, or News Corp have access to those IP addresses. ONLY employees are >the ones who can log onto the internet with those IPs.
Prove it.
Its simple. FOX News employees made the edits, as the tool says, under FOX
News IP >addresses, only able tp be used by employees. I or you or anyone else is not able to log >onto the internet and use their IP ranges. That is impossible.
Okey:
There are various ways they could have computers set up for semi public acess. School vists perhaps.
Fair chance of useing wifi. Far from imposible that their security hasn't always been flawless
Fox may have chosen at some point to act as an ISP for someone else either in the same building or a nearby building.
The usual problems with compramised computers
There used to be a way to make mediawiki record false IPs
This is not whitewashing. We did more than FOX. We did the AP,
Reuters, MSNBC, CNN, >and BBC. and all of those agencies, with the exception of FOX News were realitively clean >in terms of edits.
You see, before slam Wikinews and whitewash us, maybe you need to use the WikiScanner tool and understand how it works and also understand how IPs
work as well.
Jason Safoutin, Wikinews writer, administrator.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AListusers&usern... &group=checkuser&limit=50
Generaly Check users are chosen from those who know their way around as to how IPs work.
On 8/21/07, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I have to ask why people are going to such great lengths to excuse the actions of News Corp.
"Actions of News Corp" I doubt it. Some of their emplyees probably but without authorisation those cannot be said to be the action of news corp.
On 8/21/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/21/07, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I have to ask why people are going to such great lengths to excuse the actions of News Corp.
"Actions of News Corp" I doubt it. Some of their emplyees probably but without authorisation those cannot be said to be the action of news corp.
::nods::
I hate Fox News; I think it's dealing a rather harsh blow to the state of public discourse and what passes for news. (Someone always leaves it on in the cafeteria, and so I am exposed to its programs far more frequently than I might like.)
But I would not say that the edits made from computers in its address space are the actions of News Corp. (They spread enough terrible articles that they're willing to endorse and even advertise to the world.) The edits may be things News Corp would actually approve of (a lot of them look like they would be) -- but they may also be the actions of support staffers and interns on their break, some guy playing a joke on his co-worker, or people who just still don't know that yes, everyone can see your changes when you make them, who may well have been fired for their actions if anyone knew about them at the time. I seriously doubt News Corp finds it to be in their interest to replace an entire article, even one critical of them, with juvenile vandalism, for example, yet that sort of edit can be found among the others WikiScanner turns up. (Here's an example, from someone who clearly didn't enjoy "The Incredibles". http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=68303976 )
To treat a story about someone we dislike with less concern for skepticism and neutrality than another story is just as irresponsible as any bad reporting others do -- so I'd rather err on the side of caution. Wikimedia projects are somewhat notorious for being overly pedantic in the attempt to reach neutrality, and I can't deny that at all. But I'd far rather have that and get a very truthful picture than a more exciting story that doesn't mention things the reader may not realize or may get the wrong idea about.
-Kat
(The above opinions are just the opinion of someone blathering on, not the location from which I am currently posting. :-P)
On 8/21/07, Kat Walsh kat@mindspillage.org wrote:
On 8/21/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/21/07, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I have to ask why people are going to such great lengths to excuse the actions of News Corp.
"Actions of News Corp" I doubt it. Some of their emplyees probably but without authorisation those cannot be said to be the action of news corp.
::nods::
I hate Fox News; I think it's dealing a rather harsh blow to the state of public discourse and what passes for news. (Someone always leaves it on in the cafeteria, and so I am exposed to its programs far more frequently than I might like.)
I know how you feel, I'm in a hotel lobby right now and I see The O'Riley Factor on in the background........
But I would not say that the edits made from computers in its address
space are the actions of News Corp. (They spread enough terrible articles that they're willing to endorse and even advertise to the world.) The edits may be things News Corp would actually approve of (a lot of them look like they would be) -- but they may also be the actions of support staffers and interns on their break, some guy playing a joke on his co-worker, or people who just still don't know that yes, everyone can see your changes when you make them, who may well have been fired for their actions if anyone knew about them at the time. I seriously doubt News Corp finds it to be in their interest to replace an entire article, even one critical of them, with juvenile vandalism, for example, yet that sort of edit can be found among the others WikiScanner turns up. (Here's an example, from someone who clearly didn't enjoy "The Incredibles". http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=68303976 )
Of course! We can't assume that these are the opinions of the News Corp as a whole, just some employees who thought it would be cool or funny to edit or just didn't think we'd be able to track them this way.
To treat a story about someone we dislike with less concern for
skepticism and neutrality than another story is just as irresponsible as any bad reporting others do -- so I'd rather err on the side of caution. Wikimedia projects are somewhat notorious for being overly pedantic in the attempt to reach neutrality, and I can't deny that at all. But I'd far rather have that and get a very truthful picture than a more exciting story that doesn't mention things the reader may not realize or may get the wrong idea about.
Yes. If they are planning on writing a story, they should do it with the utmost caution! :-)
-Kat
(The above opinions are just the opinion of someone blathering on, not the location from which I am currently posting. :-P)
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Kat Walsh wrote:
But I would not say that the edits made from computers in its address space are the actions of News Corp. (They spread enough terrible articles that they're willing to endorse and even advertise to the world.) The edits may be things News Corp would actually approve of (a lot of them look like they would be) -- but they may also be the actions of support staffers and interns on their break, some guy playing a joke on his co-worker, or people who just still don't know that yes, everyone can see your changes when you make them, who may well have been fired for their actions if anyone knew about them at the time. I seriously doubt News Corp finds it to be in their interest to replace an entire article, even one critical of them, with juvenile vandalism, for example, yet that sort of edit can be found among the others WikiScanner turns up. (Here's an example, from someone who clearly didn't enjoy "The Incredibles". http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=68303976 )
I've worked in a number of organizations where someone would bring their child to work and have them sit at an absent co-worker's PC. Evidently this is a possible consequence of such an action.
Brian McNeil wrote:
I have to ask why people are going to such great lengths to excuse the actions of News Corp.
Mostly because we don't like distracting political witch hunts every time someone discovers that someone on a computer owned by [Congress | The FBI | The Democratic Party | News Corp | Tom Cruise] edited an article.
-Mark
On 8/21/07, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I have to ask why people are going to such great lengths to excuse the actions of News Corp.
Your bias is showing.
I never excused news corp, I complained that Wikinews was misrepresenting the facts.
No matter how much I might personally dislike Fox, I still believe we should not tell lies to make them look bad. This is called having integrity.
And it's not specific to news corp at all, the Wikinews article contains the same incorrect assumptions about other parties. It's only more relevant in the news corp case because the incorrect information is used to cast fault on news corp.
Except in cases where there is additional data, the only thing we know for sure from Wikiscanner data is that those edits were made from addresses now listed as being assigned to Fox.
Even if you take a little leap and say that those edits were probably performed by employees, ignoring dozens of other possibilities, in the absence of additional information there is *nothing* to suggest that the actions were endorsed by their companies. To do so would be a grievous inattention to the truth.
...and thats exactly what Wikinews has done. I don't know exactly what mixture of incompetence and lacking ethics underlie this result, but I find it somewhat ironic that Wikinews is now as guilty of "spin over substance, to hell with the truth" as Fox is widely understood to be.
Wikinews was, at one time, intended to be NPOV. What happened? Today I'm accused of "whitewashing" for toning down the obvious POV in Wikinews attack piece.
I think a project like this has no business inside Wikimedia.
On 8/21/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
There used to be a way to make mediawiki record false IPs
There still is. It's trivially easy for any admin to do this, for either an IP or a username. http://scratchpad.wikia.com/index.php?title=Changing_timestamps&diff=225... - Wikimedia and Google IPs addresses edit war over who is best.
Angela
Hi,
jason safoutin schrieb am 21.08.2007 22:32:
My excuse...Do you know how IP address work? ONLY individuals employed by FOX News Channel, or News Corp have access to those IP addresses. ONLY employees are the ones who can log onto the internet with those IPs.
I visited "Barcamp Cologne 2" this weekend. Together with ~200+ other people. The QSC corporation sponsored the WLAN access. So all participants which edited Wikipedia last weekend (not logged in) would be shown as belonging to QSC in WikiScanner.
Bye, Tim.
I think, following this hullabaloo, you will find that FOX will be issuing a directive to their employees saying that they are NOT allowed to use the FOX network for making changes to wikis based on their personal knowledge and/or beliefs and that anyone found doing so will suffer serious consequences :-)
I would expect senior management within FOX to have no prior knowledge of any of this. Maybe I am naive in my opinions :-)
Best
Debbie
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of jason safoutin Sent: 21 August 2007 21:32 To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Scanner & wikinews
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?
My excuse...Do you know how IP address work? ONLY individuals employed by FOX News Channel, or News Corp have access to those IP addresses. ONLY employees are the ones who can log onto the internet with those IPs.
Its simple. FOX News employees made the edits, as the tool says, under FOX News IP addresses, only able tp be used by employees. I or you or anyone else is not able to log onto the internet and use their IP ranges. That is impossible. This is not whitewashing. We did more than FOX. We did the AP, Reuters, MSNBC, CNN, and BBC. and all of those agencies, with the exception of FOX News were realitively clean in terms of edits.
You see, before slam Wikinews and whitewash us, maybe you need to use the WikiScanner tool and understand how it works and also understand how IPs work as well.
Jason Safoutin, Wikinews writer, administrator.
Shape Yahoo! in your own image. Join our Network Research Panel today! _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 8/21/07, Debbie Garside debbie@ictmarketing.co.uk wrote:
I would expect senior management within FOX to have no prior knowledge of any of this. Maybe I am naive in my opinions :-)
Best
Debbie
It would certainly be unusal although there are cases:
http://weblogs.jupitermedia.com/meckler/archives/017880.html
Geni,
i dont think you got jasons point. He doesnt seem to deny they were made from a foxnew iip, he just says that the fact that foxnews employees made the edits fro m foxnews pcs does not mean that foxnews management was involved. many people use lunch or other sparetime to edit from the office, without aopproval from their management.
kind regards, teun
On 8/21/07, jason safoutin cute24minbflo@yahoo.com wrote:
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?
My excuse...Do you know how IP address work? ONLY individuals employed by FOX News Channel, or News Corp have access to those IP addresses. ONLY employees are the ones who can log onto the internet with those IPs.
Its simple. FOX News employees made the edits, as the tool says, under FOX News IP addresses, only able tp be used by employees. I or you or anyone else is not able to log onto the internet and use their IP ranges. That is impossible. This is not whitewashing. We did more than FOX. We did the AP, Reuters, MSNBC, CNN, and BBC. and all of those agencies, with the exception of FOX News were realitively clean in terms of edits.
You see, before slam Wikinews and whitewash us, maybe you need to use the WikiScanner tool and understand how it works and also understand how IPs work as well.
Jason Safoutin, Wikinews writer, administrator.
Shape Yahoo! in your own image. Join our Network Research Panel today! _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 8/21/07, jason safoutin cute24minbflo@yahoo.com wrote:
My excuse...Do you know how IP address work? ONLY individuals employed by FOX News Channel, or News Corp have access to those IP addresses. ONLY employees are the ones who can log onto the internet with those IPs.
I'm pretty qualified to argue on this point. I may flap my gums on a lot of subjects, but here you've stepped right into an area intersecting my professional expertise.
In other words, I'm the sort of person you would have asked about this if you had an interest in accuracy rather than spin.
Quite a bit of the print media got this right. ... and considering their track record with technical matters there is just no excuse for Wikinews.
There are dozens of ways that someone not at all associated from a company could edit from an address block currently assigned to that company.
*Visitors, family and friends of staff are often given Internet access. **In fact I've used the Internet from the offices of at least 6 large corporations in the last month or so, including 3 Fortune 500 companies.
*They may intentionally provide open Internet access to the public at their facilities. For example open WIFI, Kiosks.
*The allocations could have changed. Wikiscanner lookup is based on current allocations, but in some cases we are taking about edits months or years old. The allocations listings could be also be inaccurate. Some providers are pretty sloppy about updating rwhois data.
*They may unintentionally provide Internet access to the public, through insecure WiFi, or unsecured desktops in public places.
*Employees home systems may access the Internet via the company network due to leaving up a VPN, resulting in the employees children, friends and family, neighbors, etc all possibly editing from a company IP in addition to the employees after work hours and outside of the office.
*They be intentionally providing Internet access to neighbors.
*They may be running an open proxy.
*Their desktops may be compromised with a trojan that provides closed proxy services to others.
*Our own records could be wrong.
I could continue for hours... Some of the possibilities are fairly unlikely, especially when you consider the character of the edits but the first couple are rather common which also fit with the edits being related to the companies.
Even ignoring all the possible ways that the edits could have been made by someone with no affiliation with Fox, it's still a *huge step* to go from "an edit was made by an intern or employee of X, potentially after hours or otherwise on their own time", to saying "Company X whitewashes articles".
You see, before slam Wikinews and whitewash us, maybe you need to use the WikiScanner tool and understand how it works and also understand how IPs work as well.
So I'm a whitewasher now too? Good thing you don't have my IP address.
You wikinewsies really ought to make up your collective mind. Brian complained that I didn't fix it, now you're attacking me because I did.
I haven't looked at enough of the Fox edits to comment on them, but some of the "whitewashing" allegations I've seen related to Wikiscanner were removing NPOV violating hatchet jobs. Sure, it would be better to fix the text rather than remove it...
Our experience is that most likely person to complain about problems with our articles are the subjects themselves. Our most common response to reasonable sounding complaints from anyone is {{sofixit}}. There is room for reasonable, and certainly somewhat biased, folks to disagree on what constitutes a problem. I think that so long as we continue to demand people {{sofixit}}, and so long as we have so many hatchet jobs in Wikipedia, we ought to be really careful in what we call whitewashing.
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