Hi HN!<p>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.<p>If you want to read more on how it works I've written a short blog article about it here: <a href="https://ailef.tech/2020/04/18/discovering-wikipedia-edits-made-by-institutions-companies-and-government-agencies/" rel="nofollow">https://ailef.tech/2020/04/18/discovering-wikipedia-edits-ma...</a><p>I had already posted it here at the time (previous discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22907200" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22907200</a>) but I've now decided to release the code openly, hence the repost.<p>If you're insterested, you can check the repo here: <a href="https://github.com/aileftech/wikiwho" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/aileftech/wikiwho</a> (disclaimer: the code is a bit clumsy).<p>Cheers!
One amusing edit: <a href="http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/7d674d710c8d1328f0f74f6b351ffe1f" rel="nofollow">http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/7d674d710c8d1328f0f74f6b351ff...</a><p>IPs from the European Parliament editing out connections to Cambridge Analytica from Alex Phillips' (member of the European Parliament) page: <a href="http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/584f4588ec12334300a448f39ae4ce12" rel="nofollow">http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/584f4588ec12334300a448f39ae4c...</a>
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<p>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<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subic_rape_case" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subic_rape_case</a>
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).
I have to say, this is depressing to see just how corrupt brands and institutions are to protect their own bullshit.<p>Nevertheless, great work and a very useful project.
Remember when Wikipedia was never to be used as an authoritative source on any subject? Pepperidge Farms remembers.<p>Interesting how that suddenly changes around the time that smith-mundt was repealed.<p>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.
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 <a href="https://github.com/edsu/anon" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/edsu/anon</a><p>Also there is analysis of old edits (2002-2014) using IP ranges collected for bots <a href="https://jarib.github.io/anon-history/" rel="nofollow">https://jarib.github.io/anon-history/</a>, source code: <a href="https://github.com/jarib/anon-history" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jarib/anon-history</a>
This is amazing. Thank you for making this!<p>I want to highlight one part from the About page[0], as it's important enough to bear repeating:<p>> 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.<p>I do have a question about this tool. Is there a page that lists all the organizations in the dataset?<p>[0] <a href="http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/about.html" rel="nofollow">http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/about.html</a><p>[edited to ask a question]
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: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840671" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840671</a><p>But now, I realized I can 10x this stupid hobby with ipinfo.io<p>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.
LastPass are very good at deleting their security incidents<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756044" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756044</a>
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.<p>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.
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: <a href="https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231</a><p>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.<p>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.
I am surprised how many people goof off at work writing wikipedia pages about their favorite TV shows.<p>Especially you, Canadians... lol: <a href="http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/organization/46a20a0820d609f90314ea85462e9205" rel="nofollow">http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/organization/46a20a0820d609f90314e...</a>
You have to check out the malcontents who made edits to the USAF base at Alconbury:<p><a href="http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/0db36f4f426c89e6fb7d41e007470471?pageid=1858944#current-diff" rel="nofollow">http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/0db36f4f426c89e6fb7d41e00747...</a>
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:<p><a href="https://github.com/ruebot/gccaedits-ip-address-ranges/blob/main/gccaedits.json" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ruebot/gccaedits-ip-address-ranges/blob/m...</a><p><a href="https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/artfulhacker/a6eb800e58f2eb6f9231</a><p>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.
My favourite would have to be Eli Lilly bullying some random American school.
<a href="http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/6209781691e7fdc225681c784850413f" rel="nofollow">http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diff/6209781691e7fdc225681c7848504...</a>
The US Army has made six hundred contributions to a list of ethnic slurs:<p><a href="http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/11014515" rel="nofollow">http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/11014515</a><p>They appear as “PEO STAMIS” here, which appears to be an IT group?
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.<p>I've even seen sections in the edits go poof for very big stuff.
How is "institutiion" or "company" defined? I couldn't find any international news providers for example, Newscorp, BBC, Daily Mail<p>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.
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.<p>Incredibly odd.
Why did Pfizer do all these edits on a musical? <a href="http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c1b9f1c2d5cc1361ccf28b0108bd7179?pageid=1878304#current-diff" rel="nofollow">http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/diffs/c1b9f1c2d5cc1361ccf28b0108bd...</a>
Org/Page Search not working here fwi.<p>Great transparency, now where are the foreign service firm and their proxies.<p>You are telling me the FSB and the United Front aren't editing Wiki?<p>I've had them edit my stuff, so know it's happening. Just not sure the scale.
wow, it looks that someone from Air Force Materiel Command was very hot on Mireille Mathieu <a href="http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/154437" rel="nofollow">http://wikiwho.ailef.tech/page/154437</a><p>Mireille Mathieu is a french -old school- singer <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mireille_Mathieu" rel="nofollow">https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mireille_Mathieu</a>