[Foundation-l] Wiki Scanner & wikinews

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 8/21/07, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil at wikinewsie.org> wrote:
> Okay, you've been living under a rock if you haven't heard of the
[snip]
> Comments/feedback? Are we unduly crucifying Fox? :-)

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?