For this week’s assignment, we were to do some analysis of what we find on the Wiki Scanner site. I didn’t really know where to start at first, so I started with the USDA. That was just depressing, since most of the changes made from USDA servers were not even job related, unless trivia about Brad Pitt is somehow related to agriculture in the United States. Somehow, I doubt it.

I thought maybe I could uncover some deceptive handiwork in corporate America, so I moved on to Wal-Mart. I looked up the changes to Wikipedia entries that had been made from their corporate servers, and it turns out they’ve done some honest, and not-so-honest, editing to their entry.

On one edit in 2005, they took out references to sub-standard wages and replaced it with a more positive spin. The phrase, “Wages at Wal-Mart are about 20% less than at other retail stores,” was changed to “The average wage at Wal-Mart is almost double the federal minimum wage.” I don’t know the veracity of either statement, but it raises some suspicion. The current version of the Wal-Mart entry refers to the event, but an entirely new entry has been made on criticism of Wal-Mart and takes a more neutral point of view.

On the subject of imports, Wal-Mart employees also made some edits. “As of 2004, about 70% of the products sold in Wal-Mart stores have at least a component manufactured in China,” was changed to “Even today, though, Wal-Mart buys merchandise and services from more than 68,000 U.S suppliers and supports over 3.5 million supplier jobs in the United States.” Again, there is more detail on the current “Criticism of Wal-Mart” entry. In the history of this page, there is discussion of Wal-Mart’s editing of their own entry (the reference has since been removed).

Regarding companies and government editing their own entries, I don’t necessarily think it is wrong. I recently updated the entry for my own agency, which was severely lacking. However, I believe it’s wrong to make changes when the organization tries to take out or edit information that, if true, paints a negative image of the organization. There is a fine line of presenting the facts and spinning the truth. A line I think Wal-Mart may have crossed.

There were several interesting stories in the NYT Sunday Magazine section “Year in Ideas” section.

We’ve previously reported on wikiscanning.

But the “God Effect” highlights something that we have observed in our work, the strong connection between religiosity and altruism and philanthropy, even if it is altruism or philanthropy for secular purposes. The “God Effect” suggests that those who are more religious are constantly in the background of their mind thinking “What would God do?”, “What would Allah do?”, etc. and this leads them to make more charitable decisions, or in the case of the “dictator game” experiment of Ara Norenzayan, fairer distributions with an opponent. [Interestingly, Norzenzayan, in a second experiment primed participants to think of police, contract and civil, and found that this also led to people proposing fairer distributions, although in this case for the religious and secular alike.]

In “Hope Can Be Worse Than Hopelessness“, the magazine summarizes research of Peter Ubel, of University of Michigan on colostomy patients (who had portions of their colons removed or bypassed). This condition is so unpleasant that many say that they would prefer to die. Six months later, the temporary patients who were likely to heal and have their bowels reconnected” showed worse quality of life and lower happiness than ones that expected their colostomy to be permanent.

This mirrors work done by Dan Gilbert (and reported here at 15:15). Harvard students in a photography course took photos of their favorite things of Harvard; they blew up their 2 favorite photographs into beautiful prints and were then told at the nth hour that they had to give one up permanently. A control group was told that they had 4 days to switch their choice if they changed their mind and staff would come to their dormroom for convenience to swap. Those who were stuck with their photograph liked it a lot more during these 4 days and afterwards. A “reversible condition is not conducive to happiness”, Gilbert says. But Gilbert notes that 2/3 of Harvard students choose to be in a course where they have a chance at the end to choose their photograph rather than have to pick one irreversibly, even though this ability to choose leads to lower happiness.

You’ve probably read about Wiki Scanner, the new software that exposes just who is editing Wiki. Beyond the fact that it is the coolest software to come out this month, Wiki Scanner is a real eye-opener. It reveals the fact that many corporate entries are edited by corporate employees. The scanner is the brain child of CalTech grad student Virgil (David) Griffith.

Yeah, I know his real name. See, Virg was a high school undergrad of my daughter’s at the very prestigious Alabama School of Math and Science. ASMS nurtures some of the brightest minds in the country. Virg is yet one more in a growing line of super-nerds being birthed in Alabama. Y’all think we’re all ‘possum-eaten rednecks, but we got game, Bubba.

Her memories of him are “twitchy and nervous.” Apparently, he was the South Park Tweak of his high school class.

Raise a glass to Virgil, Wiki, Alabama, and South Park. Dear God, that was a strange toast to make. But any excuse for a drink is better than none.

I almost forgot to mention that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is from Alabama, too. Boo Yea! In your face Massachusetts.

From The NY Daily News: CIVIL WAR REENACTMENT – IN BAGHDAD?

Where did they come up with this one? The Multi-National Corps-Iraq press desk sent out a release today about a new operation targeting insurgents in Baghdad, which succeeded killing two insurgents and locating a cache of “artillery rounds, mortars, cell phones, weapons, propaganda, ammunition magazines and other bomb-making materials.” The clever name of this mission? Operation Bull Run.

From CD in February 2006: The Iraq Civil War, or Operation Bull Run

Last Sunday, Secretary of State Rice made the TV rounds and dismissed an “impending” civil war. And, technically, she’s right: It’s not impending if it’s already here. Her comments sound like Gen. Westmoreland’s December 1967 dismissal of the North Vietnamese’s ability to launch an offensive anywhere in South Vietnam. The following month the North launched the Tet offensive everywhere in South Vietnam.

Two points for the Pentagon to keep in mind:

1. It was a JOKE.
2. There have been two previous battles of Bull Run. We lost ‘em both.

Y’know, Tom Lehrer once said that irony died when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh Tom, if only you’d been right.

(Mad props to Flagrancy To Reason for finding this.)

From Wired: How to Take Money From Kids: Sell Toys Both Physical and Virtual

Webkinz kick-started a trend in children’s gaming that ties virtual environments to real-world merchandise. Online games for kids aren’t new. Sierra Online had tot-focused games in the early ’90s, and Neopets proved a hot product six years ago with a similar concept. But the unprecedented success of Webkinz is inspiring everyone from Barbie to Disney to get children invested in both the digital and the physical.

From TheWhatchamacallit: Neopets a neoscam?

The NC Mall was the final blow though. Needing to use real money, to buy virtual items on a kids site? It should not be! I am going to write a twelve paragraph letter to neopets on this subject, after seeing how few people actually realize neopets is being taken over!

From Reuters: Program Reveals Where Wikipedia Entrees Come From

A new tracing program that reveals where Wikipedia entries come from is stirring up controversy. People using FBI and CIA computers edited entries on such topics as the “Iraq war” and the prison at “Guantanamo Bay,” presenting a conflict of interest for the nonprofit online encyclopedia, according to a company spokesperson.

From today’s New York Times: Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits

Collateral Damage: See here & here.

Collateral Damage: Today’s sarcasm is tomorrow’s news.

I previously referred to wikiscanner here – the neat tool developed by Virgil Griffith that lets you detect whether governmental or corporate entities have been trying to change wikipedia entries.

Reuters now reports that CIA and FBI computers were used to try to entry wikipedia entries on Guantanamo and the Iraq War.

“Griffith said he developed WikiScanner ‘to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what ‘interesting organizations’ (which I am neutral towards) are up to.’ ” Looks like mission accomplished for Griffith.

Wikipedia has said that the entries may violate their conflict of interest policy that prhobits people with close ties to an issue to submit or edit an entry about it.

It will do wonders for trust of government to see that the government, having failed to convince the public that the Iraq War was a wise policy intervention, is now actively spinning wikipedia entries to try to re-define how the war and Guantanamo is captured by the ‘public.’

I liked the comments of Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) that Wikipedia ought to add a feature when someone clicks on edit to say: “Hi, thank you for editing. We see you’re logged in from XXX company. Keep in mind that we know that, and it’s public information,’ ” he said. “That might make them stop and think.” (NYT story 8/19/07) Might be nice to combine Griffith’s wikiscanner applet with the color-coding of Wikipedia entries so that a different color would alert the reader of all corporately entered entries that might be government or corporate spin jobs, rather than having to go to Wikiscanner and find this out himself or herself. That way the user could hover over text that says *the Valdez oil spill was a tremendous boon for the environment* and see with a pop-up window that this was entered by Exxon.

Epilogue: the New York Times in Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits (8/19/07) reported on this same phenomenon and noted that other corporations have been snared in Virgil Griffith’s software: Anheuser-Busch; Pepsico; and the perennial corporate villains from central casting Wal-Mart, Diebold, and Exxon.