[WikiEN-l] Editing with open proxies

[Anthony]

On 6/18/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/18/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 6/18/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 6/18/07, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:
> > > > Jayjg ... added ominously that *someone* has been
> > > > leaking information about deleted pages to Wikitruth.
> > >
> > > There's no question that someone with at least one admin account
> > > posted deleted material to Wikitruth. How else do you imagine it got
> > > there?
> > >
> > There are many sources for deleted Wikipedia materials which do not at
> > all require an admin account.
>
> Well, you could suppose instead that, for every single deleted article
> reposted on Wiktruth, a non-admin just happened to have copied the
> version that was on the page prior to the deletion. As they didn't
> know when the deletion would happen, this involves believing that
> someone is copying every single version just in case, and furthermore
> that they're always able to predict which articles they ought to do
> that with, because sometimes the deletions have come without warning
> following a private complaint.
>
I guess I'll take your word for it, since I don't have admin access
and therefore can't check for myself.

That does raise an interesting possibility though.  A dev could
presumably look at the logs and find out which admin(s) looked at
these deleted pages between the time of deletion and posting on
Wikitruth.  If there are a significant number of such deleted pages
they can probably narrow it down enough to figure it out.

If that doesn't work, a more active technique of inserting fake
information as a watermark definitely would.

> So: we have someone who is copying every single version of every
> single article just in case;

I actually tried this for a while, but it was years ago when the
traffic was much much lower :).

> or we have someone who is psychic and can
> intuit which articles are going to be deleted on which versions; or we
> have someone with an admin account who is copying deleted material.
>
Could it be someone who works at Answers Corporation or some other
place with a live feed?