Joe Szilagyi

Just when it can’t get any stupider. Carolyn Doran, Wikipedia’s now former Chief Operating Officer, is a felon.

For more than six months, beginning in January of this year, Wikipedia’s million-dollar check book was balanced by a convicted felon.

When Carolyn Bothwell Doran was hired as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation, she had a criminal record in three other states – Virginia, Maryland, and Texas – and she was still on parole for a DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol) hit and run that resulted in a fatality.

Her record also included convictions for passing bad checks, theft, petty larceny, additional DUIs, and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gun shot to the chest.

Much more in the article. Wikinews, Wikipedia’s own news service, even has an article called “Chief Operating Officer of Wikimedia Foundation was convicted felon“.

UPDATE 7am 12-14-07: It’s on Digg now. Still hasn’t crossed major news media besides Yahoo! UK news here, but it just broke late last night Pacific time. If this gets wide coverage, it will be a few days, because other news sources will need to review it. If it hits a wire service like AP or Reuters, it’s all over.

Via Digg: “We aren’t democratic.” That’s how Wikipedia founder Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales described his famously-collaborative online encyclopedia in a recent puff piece from The New York Times Magazine. “The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable,” he said, “and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn’t be writing.”

read more | digg story

As an addendum to this post, about Wikipedia’s secret harassment mail lists, it looks like the genie is well and truly out of the bottle now. It’s getting posted on blogs non-stop, and that means that there is a good 50/50 shot that it will hit the mainstream media. Once that happens, its going to get a bit ugly for Lise Diane Broer, Jimmy Wales, and Wikipedia in the press spin department.

On top of all that, it gets better. Read this. It appears that Lise Diane Broer, who can be seen in this YouTube interview about Wikipedia, leaked the name of a Congressional staffer that edited Wikipedia, and the man was fired. Lise Diane Broer, aka Durova, is the admin that was part of the secret list that was used to harass and cyber-stalk real people, and was the main admin in the Register story that blew this latest stupid scandal into the public eye.

If you want to see the “secret evidence” that was used to ban a user, go look here. It’s awfully sad and pathetic, for supposedly a person who primped herself up as some Sherlock Holmes of Wikipedia, who was able to ferret out evildoers out to destroy the encyclopedia or some nonsense. For people that have never followed the comedy that is the behind-the-scenes or making-of Wikipedia, it’s a pretty funny ongoing thing to watch. I detached myself from that nonsense ages ago, and don’t regret it. Its too funny not to watch, though. Its almost as good as John Bunnell’s Wildest Police Chases for Nerds.

To read up on this behind the scenes comedy (or tragedy, as people in Real Life Get Hurt By Wikipedia Editors), the best places are:

* http://www.wikipediareview.com
* http://www.wikitruth.info
* http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com

Oops, looks like they got outted. See the “Criticism of Wikipedia” article, where admin “Jossi” is suppressing mention with troll Chip Berlet’s assistance of the Register article. Sadly, to get the real story, you need to read external sources such as:

* http://www.wikipediareview.com
* http://www.wikitruth.info

“On-Wiki” they are already in spin control. The best thing about the secret mail list is that it is hosted on Wikia.com servers, the private for-profit company owned by Jimbo Wales, which is legally supposed to be seperate from registered charity the Wikimedia Foundation. Various people have already informed the IRS.

Direct link to The Register article is here. If nothing else, read this news article.

Want to read Wikipedia form 990? Backup third party archive here.

The Linux Vault is a new wiki project founded with the mission of creating a centralized GNU/Linux information website. It has been just created, so we are begging everybody to take part of it and make it the place for writing guides, HOW-TO’s, configurations, administration tips, tricks, tweaks or whatever else related to the GNU/Linux system.

read more | digg story

Thanks, Virgil! WikiScanner was first, now WIKIRAGE: “This site lists the pages in Wikipedia which are receiving the most edits per unique editor over various periods of time. Popular people in the news, the latest fads, and the hottest video games can be quickly identified by monitor this social phenomenon.”

…and of course, the things that people fight tooth and nail over, to control the news. You can use this to easily see where the current “edit wars” on Wikipedia are–just look at the last hours’ top items. Crazy. How long until Wikipedia starts hiding editing histories?

read more | digg story

There’s a fascinating article on Wikipedia Review entitled, “The tight-knit web of Wikimedia and Wikia“. Remember when I mentioned some Wikipedia and Wikia conflicts of interests twice before? Read this paragraph. It’s a load of information, but read it through anyway (don’t just tl;dr it):

Non-profit and for-profit board members and accountants both have fiduciary duties to act in the best interest of their organizations. By various laws and governance principles they have to recuse themselves or avoid involvement when there is a conflict of interest. Even a perceived conflict can be corrosive to governance and is sometimes prohibited because donors and volunteers lose faith. Someone who is on the board of Wikimedia Foundation or prepares its finances and also has a financial stake in Wikia should be very careful about taking positions within Wikimedia properties that could benefit Wikia by directing traffic there, banning things from Wikipedia so as to distinguish it from a commercial site, making Wikipedia less attractive to constituents than Wikia, etc. Actions that seem to raise a conflict might include hiring personnel from the volunteer Foundation to work at the for-profit corporation, installing Wikia, Inc. employees into positions of power within Foundation properties, selectively banning some commercial links while allowing others, travel and speaking engagements for the Foundation that are also used to drum up support for the for-profit venture, etc.

Got it? Now, this section…

(4) The Wikimedia Foundation’s own Form 990 indicates on Line 80 that there is a personnel relationship between Wikia, Inc. and the Foundation. Yet, the Wikipedia article about Wikia, Inc. has been edited to say that “Wikia, Inc. is independent from the Wikimedia Foundation…”

Bold emphasis mine. See where this might be heading? I’m no lawyer, but… from a pure ethical standpoint, I see major problems that websites are denied “Googlejuice” and SEO from Wikipedia’s outbound links, except for companies that have a financial stake with the founders of Wikipedia. Add in that some Wikimedia Foundation board members may be financially benefiting their privately owned, for-profit businesses on the fiscal backs of Wikipedia, which is legally listed as a charity in the state of Florida…? How long until the mainstream media really begins to dig into this? Probably not until everyone starts blogging about it. Not that I would encourage such a thing, mind you.

Click here to read the full article.

Ever since Wired News first wrote about WikiScanner last week, Internet users have spotted plenty of interesting changes to Wikipedia by people at nonprofit groups and government entities like the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of the most obviously self-interested edits have come from corporate networks. More from the New York Times, now. The jig is up!

read more | digg story

Vishal-WMF, an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, has removed evidence from a news story that uncovered that Virgil, the scanner’s creator, was HIRED by the Wikimedia Foundation! News story that was removed by Wikipedia Employee (not admin, EMPLOYEE).

read more | digg story

And one more, for keeping score. I give this one week before larger mainstream media (CNN, ABC News, etc.) latch onto this and then all hell will absolutely break loose, leading to much hand wringing by Jimbo Wales and general Oh Noes! on Wikipedia. Gee, imagine that? Corporations and governments editing articles to get rid of negative information about them or to slander the competition!

Another good article on the whole mess and brilliant idea here by Kristen Nicole.

In what could be considered a sociology experiment, Griffith found that a good portion of edits for company entries are being made by the companies themselves. This isn’t surprising at all–it’s something that’s been speculated upon, and tested on a smaller scale. The team behind Wikipedia is also aware of it, and has been working to deal with issues such as this. Wikipedia’s policies have changed since it’s onset, and the user-generated system has been improved as a result. There is also a new edit-marking system that’s currently being tested on Wikia for possible use on Wikipedia in the future, making it even easier to track changes made to entries.

This is what I mentioned yesterday.

Should I, or shouldn’t I…?

This is fantastic, and great idea by the programmer.

Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith just launched an unofficial Wikipedia search tool that threatens to lay bare the ego-editing and anonymous flacking on the site. Enter the name of a corporation, organization or government entity and you get a list of IP addresses assigned to it. Then with one or two clicks, you can see all the anonymous edits made from those addresses anywhere in Wikipedia’s pages.

If any Wikipedia editors, admins, or public relations hacks from their Wikimedia Foundation whine or complain about it (that includes Jimbo Wales, but looking at you, Lise Diane Broer, User:Durova, and David Gerard, User:David Gerard), they need to be roundly slapped in the face by modern society for being obnoxious. To be honest, every edit on Wikipedia ought to include an IP address, irregardless of username, for the public to see. It’s the only way to expose bias and spin jobs, and to make sure that anyone defamed or libeled on their Wikipedia article is able to legally pursue those who committed illegal acts. For an example of how people have been severely hurt by Wikipedia, have you ever heard of John Seigenthaler? You should read about it.

Direct link to the awesome tool. I hope multiple corporations, agencies, and foundations get reamed if they’ve abused the system.

UPDATE: Wired Magazine is now having readers research and submit interesting results. Early winners (or rather, losers):

1. Fema.gov vandalized the John Orman, chairman of the CFL party’s Wiki page. 71.252.64.8 came back as- Multi-RBL check 71.252.64.8 (poker-2.fema.gov) using Robtex. FEMA, of course, is under Homeland Security, which the senator runs.

2. The Blackwater USA (a mercenary company with family ties to the Bush House) site was completely deleted and rewritten by Blackwater’s PR hacks to detail all their “services” and “sacrifices,” eliminating the facts (still available at SourceWatch) about their being founded and owned by billionaire right-wing fundamentalist Republicans.

3. The same IP from the House of Representatives that edited the ‘Dirty Sanchez’ article, also edited the ‘Bill Frist’ article.

I wonder if this will lead to Wikipedia trying to close the door on anonymous editing, or at least the ability of people to scan/research easily anonymous (IP) editing, for “privacy reasons”.

Ever think of visiting Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch? Yikes.

From Digg.com: “According to clues accumulated by ordinary citizens around the world, it could be that the CIA and other intelligence agencies are riding the information wave and planting disinformation on Wikipedia. If so, tens of thousands of innocent and unwitting citizens around the world are translating and propagating their lies.”

read more | digg story

This here is a fascinating article about how Wikipedia rewards, or doesn’t, expertise.

After their passwords got cracked: At least four different Wikipedia administrators have had their weak passwords taken. They deleted the home page repeatedly, and one person even put Tubgirl on the “Site notice“, which is a global header for all of en.wikipedia.org. What does that mean? All 1,500,000+ pages on Wikipedia had an image of a violently defecating person on it, right at the top, in a prominent location.

It was only up for about a minute with Tubgirl–but Wikipedia gets how many millions of hits per day? Assuming it was only 1,000,000 daily for all of the English Wikipedia, that’s at least 600+ people per minute. Oops. Nice work, guys: crappy logon security measures–there is no CAPTCHA on Wikipedia; crappy passwords, and on top of that, while there is an encrypted SSL logon page, it’s hard to find. The scariest thing is that people with passwords of “password” are entrusted as sysops and administrators on one of the Top 10 websites on Earth. They even blocked Jimbo Wales repeatedly from his own website!

There is more on this here, here, here, and here.

EDIT: Submitted to Digg. Click here to Digg this post!

A summary of what happened:

HD-DVD, also known as Blu Ray discs, have had a supposedly high level of encryption on them, in the form of digital rights management. Earlier this month, someone had cracked the system. They posted the magic hex code that apparently lets you copy the HD-DVD discs on a message board called Doom9. Like the earlier cracking of the DeCSS code, it would have gotten press, notice, screams and threats of DMCA crackdowns, and the usual nonsense. Then it would have trailed off, and no one would have given a damn about it. However, this situation feels different for a key reason. The HD-DVD hack/crack/whatever you want to call it, in the form of the value “09 F9…”, came out weeks ago. It was quiet. Then the Motion Picture Associate of American stepped in. In their usual feathery touch and approach, they made things absolutely worse for themselves.

How? By coming off with the authority of The Law, they begin issuing DMCA take down notices left and right, making a generally indignant and righteous stink. This led to Slashdot and Digg coverage. Again… it would have trailed off. It would have eventually gone into the background. The code was out, perhaps, for much longer it soon turned out than weeks ago. It may have been uncovered months ago. The Blu Ray encryption thus was a lost cause in it’s current form. The people that wanted to crack it would have, and the general public would have had whatever reaction was forthcoming, and then it would have all been relegated to the sub-sub forum of the Information technology cosmos this exists on. Thanks to the overzealous Digg.com moderators, administrators, and management, however, that’s not going to be the case.

Digg.com is a website where people can “Digg” or tag a page on a given website, drawing tremendous attention and traffic to it. Digg is tremendously popular, and influential these days. People began linking and Digging in earnest to various 09 F9/hex code related stories. Digg, in turn, began to crush them all; deleting them all. The Digg users, upset, ramped it up. For everyone deleted, two more would appear. They would go, and more Digg users posted more. Then they began to hide the hex value. The Digged images that contained the hex. MySpace pages with the hex. Then the Digg admins apparently began to edit the Digg values themselves to devalue these links, while removing others. They locked out ‘repeat offender’ users. Then Digg users began to Digg articles and stories about Digg censoring the numbers, a roundabout way around the Digg restriction. Victory, for the virtual masses, was in sight. Digg.com then locked down all new Digg submissions. Keep in mind, that Digg is in part sponsored by HD-DVD, not so ironically. Finally, in a complete turnaround, Digg posted that they’d support their users and would not attempt to restrict things anymore.

Personally, I think that Digg did this on purpose. They trolled their own userbase to seriously rile the masses, and to cause the HD-DVD hex code to spread like literal wildfire. Then, when “hope seemed lost”, they reversed course, and now look like heroes: They’re standing up to the horrible MPAA and the evil DMCA! It’s become some sort of nerdy Bastille.

Let the series of tubes eat hex code cake.

I think that if this actually comes to a head, and the MPAA actually tries to take on Digg over this messy situation, that it could be the first potential serious threat to the strength of the DMCA. If the MPAA lost in court, imagine the consequences…

This is what I’d posted so far:

Part 1: Digital Rights Management, anyone? Read this, and this. A blow in the name of justice, if you ask me. These numbers are almost better than 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.

Part 2: Holy leaked information! Because of This blog search about links back to the Doom9 forum, I suddenly got over a hundred hits. In just over an hour. Yow. There’s a Slashdot article on this now, as well, over the release of the AACS Code Leak hex I posted about. I can’t see how the MPAA can possibly keep this under control, now. It’s over, and the information will be on thousands of websites within another day, if not more.

Part 3: Censorship in action: Digg.com admins are censoring (and getting overwhelmed–as of now the front page of Digg is flooded with 09 F9 crap) the hex code that was released on Doom9, as noted here. Apparently Digg admins are even resetting “Diggs”, screwing with things further, and even apparently editing/changing Diggs about complaints aobut the editing oversight. It’s like the Digg Civil War. Even Wikipedia’s article on HD DVD is now locked down with the obnoxious message of, “This page is currently protected from editing because inappropriate content was being repeatedly added.” Classy. There’s not even a reference about the leak of the hex code, which is a major developing news story.

Part 4: Digg.com has now apparently backed down on the release and Digging of HD DVD hex code information via the Doom9 forum (the Digg suppression story even got picked up by Slashdot yesterday). One of the Digg founders wrote in their blog:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

Awesome… morals on that level of the corporate media stage? Impressive! Even more so since HD DVD is actually a sponsor of Digg.

Part 5: You’re reading it! Scroll up for my summary.

Part 6: The AACS has responded to “reports” of their hex code being broken apart on the Doom9 forums. Read this slowly, methodically, and carefully. Try to spot the portions of what they are saying that falls into “Big Brother” side of things.

RESPONSE TO REPORTS OF ATTACKS ON AACS TECHNOLOGY

April 16, 2007 – AACS LA Announces Security Updates (Updated URLs)

In response to attacks against certain PC-based applications for playing HD DVD and Blu-ray movie discs, Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (“AACS LA”) announces that it has taken action, in cooperation with relevant manufacturers, to expire the encryption keys associated with the specific implementations of AACS-enabled software.

Consumers can continue to enjoy content that is protected by the AACS technology by refreshing the encryption keys associated with their HD DVD and Blu-ray software players. This refresh process is accomplished via a straightforward online update.

Through this online update process, manufacturers are also able to see that consumers update their player implementations prior to distribution of encryption key expiration information via new movie discs.

Consumers are advised to check with the manufacturer of their AACS-enabled Blu-ray or HD DVD PC-based player to make sure you have installed the latest version. The following manufacturers have provided links to provide relevant information and facilitate consumer updating of their players…

Part 7: Spotted on ICANHASCHEEZBURGER.com. From Doom9 to mass media attention to jumping the shark cat in under 72 hours?

Part 8:

Bloggers “crossed the line” when they posted a software key that could break the encryption on some HD-DVDs, the AACS copy protection body has said.

According to the BBC, anyway. The article has one great quote in it:

Michael Ayers, chair of the AACS business group, said it had received “good cooperation from most folk” in preventing the leak of the key.

Er, yeah. Keep up the good work. Last time I checked a full Google search for the hex code it was up to 720,000, from the original one on Doom9.

EDIT: Summary post/article here on all this.

Censorship in action: Digg.com admins are censoring (and getting overwhelmed–as of now the front page of Digg is flooded with 09 F9 crap) the hex code that was released on Doom9, as noted here. Apparently Digg admins are even resetting “Diggs”, screwing with things further, and even apparently editing/changing Diggs about complaints aobut the editing oversight. It’s like the Digg Civil War. Even Wikipedia’s article on HD DVD is now locked down with the obnoxious message of, “This page is currently protected from editing because inappropriate content was being repeatedly added.” Classy. There’s not even a reference about the leak of the hex code, which is a major developing news story.