User:Daniel Bush/Story preparation/Research-United States Department of Justice workers among government Wikipedia vandals
{{abandoned}} {{Investigation}} Previous research can be found at the discussion page of the article and the actual article itself. Research consists almost entirely of edits made since the discovery of Marty Meehan's staffers' edits.
Many links copied from Wikipedia code do not work because internal code is different at Wikinews. As stated on the talk page, edits were checked through the ARIN database, while the IPs themselves were gotten through a Wikipedia page that had already been researched through fellow users.
House of Representatives edits[edit]
On February 4, the same IP known to have been used by Marty Meehan and other congressmen's staffers was blocked for eight hours for "Repeated NPOV violations and introducing political spin to articles," as noted
If the above is not disputed, this article must not be abandoned. It sounds like enough "investigation" was indeed completed in order to arrive at some conclusion.
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in the block log. This was the third block on that IP address after the IP became known for its media attention, the first being a week long block that was lifted, and the second being a three hour block that expired. This one lasted eight hours.
The offending edits were to an article on Chris Shays, who, interestingly, cosponsored a bill with Marty Meehan that the ACLU said would infringe on the first amendment. All references to the bill and its criticism were removed.
A paragraph displaying three points of view was changed to display the most positive one.
"Shays is known by his supporters and the press as a "maverick" and "independent thinker", while conservative detractors regard him as a RINO ("Republican in name only"). Liberal detractors regard him as a false moderate who effects centrism through catch and release techniques."
was changed to
"A moderate Republican known for his independence, the New York Times hailed Shays, saying "...his record reflects a rare thoughtfulness and considerable independence....Legislators with the fearlessness and principles of Mr. Shays aren't easy to come by.""
They removed a paragraph relating to Chris Shays criticizing the Republican Party and a paragraph discussing relations to Dennis Hassert, which read "While Shays has criticized DeLay for hurting the Republican party's electoral chances, he is very close to Speaker Dennis Hastert. In June of 2005 Dennis Hastert helped Shays raise $70,000 at a country club event."
Senate edits[edit]
As seen here, the article on the w:Hamas was edited to give it a biased slant. This was made by the same IP address that had edited Joe Biden's article to give it a more positive spin. This was another Joe Biden edit. Both Biden edits were made more than half of a year before the recent discovery. Both were not caught by Wikipedia users.
I have discovered a method of finding what senators have edited what articles that follows a strict pattern. A typical Senate IP address appears as 156.33.x.y. X is the number a state would appear in a list of states when arranged in alphabetical order, multiplied by 2. The number will vary by one 50% of the time. A list of senators in the same order described here can be found at Wikipedia. This pattern was tested on senators w:Thomas Carper and w:Hillary Clinton, whose IP addresses were obtained in the automatic form letters sent to those who e-mail them, by Journowiki. Journowiki is another wiki that cooperates with Wikinews. Clinton's IP was 156.33.64.61 and Carper's was 156.33.16.59. Norm Coleman, at 156.33.46.3, and Frank Lautenberg, at 156.33.59.3, also fit this pattern.
This cannot be done with the House of Representatives IP addresses because they all funnel their edits through a proxy. At the present time I do not know who authored edits IPs coming from addresses over 100.y. Judd Gregg's IP block is 222, rather than 57 as would be in the pattern. No edits from the .57 block have been made. Both Larry Craig's and Bill Frist's IPs are given in the 203 block. Yet still, the 23 block belonging to Larry Craig's staffers updated his article, updating it with relevant information. Therefore I think edits from blocks higher than 100 may be just made from other places throughout the Senate building.
It can be determined through this pattern the edits to Joe Biden's article were made by his staffers. Senator Norman Coleman's edits have already been covered by the Associated Press, mirrored here, has already been covered, but for the record, the edits were [1], [2], and [3].
What follows is a further investigation into Wikipedia vandalism using the Senate IP address pattern.
The person that made this edit to Tom Coburn's article meets John McCain's staffers' IP block in the pattern. According to the contributions list, the same edit was done twice in different places in the article. John McCain's office was contacted by Amgine and they denied having made the contributions, and because the pattern has never been off so far for states, that would mean the edits may have come from Jon Kyl's staffers.
Carl Levin's block made these edits, which included saying Robert Byrd is 180 years old, a George W. Bush vandalism, and another Robert Byrd vandalism.
Senator Tom Harkin's block made this edit and another edit to Tom Harkin's article, removing paragraphs about controversy. Prior to engaging in editing, they tested by editing here and then reverting.
This edit was made by an IP block belonging to Conrad Burns's staffers in the Senate IP address pattern. They replaced the heading, "A Controversial Speaker," with "A Voice for the Farmer," removed the paragraph
- On February 17, 1999, while at a meeting of the Montana Implement Dealers Association in Billings, Montana, Burns referred to Arabic people as "ragheads".
and a paragraph saying his detractors point out he has a legislative history of reducing Native American sovereignty. At first I thought the paragraph about using an ethnic slur may have been rightfully done because a Google search for Conrad Burns's name plus "ragheads" yeilded only 500 results, with many of them copied from Wikipedia, however it was finally confirmed when I came across a USA Today article.
According to the pattern, Senator John Ensign's staffers made this one word edit, introducing bias to a paragraph with a quote on Reid criticizing George W. Bush. The user reinserted the one word again after it had been removed in this edit, and a third time in this edit. A fourth edit was made here. Considering that that in some cases the block pattern is off by 1, the edit may come from Harry Reid's or Judd Gregg's staffers, but because Ensign and Gregg belong to opposite parties as Reid, who is Democratic Minority Leader, and therefore those staffers may be less likely to make those edits, there is a good chance Reid's staffers made those edits instead.
The block of Olympia Snowe vandalized the article on carrot cake here. The edit inserted the paragraph, "Carrot cake is the most liberal of all deserts. Hippies embraced carrot cake because it is a way to incorperate vegetables into desert. No true conservative enjoys carrot cake." However, the same IP removed anti-George W. Bush vandalism.
The block of Rick Santorum made the following edits:
- Corrected an article for proper punctuation here.
- Made this edit.
- Removed a paragraph from the article on a controversy relating to Santorum's political views.
Two edits were made from an IP address higher than 100, this and this edit. I highly doubt a member of Congress would have done this, because Pages are high school juniors, and I think a Senate Page may have been involved. Other edits:
Although not fitting the pattern, the IP block given in Senator Feinstein's e-mail made this edit to the article of Richard C. Blum, husband of Senator Feinstein and investment banker. While perhaps helpful in the first paragraph, which I haven't checked, the edit removed a paragraph relating to a scandal involving a possible conflict of interest between Feinstein and investments in Chinese businesses by her husband. Also removed was the sentence, "In 1992, Feinstein was fined $190,000 for failing to disclose that Blum had guaranteed nearly $3 million in loans to fund her 1999 bid for California governor." The edits were originally noted on Journowiki, where, upon looking at their listed IP address, it matched up with Feinstein's.
In total, the number of senators whose staff may have been vandalizing or introducing bias into Wikipedia articles numbers twelve. The supposed block of Senator Gordon Smith's staffers made this edit to Rambus.
Senator Feinstein's IP address was off from the pattern by 1. Senator Graham's was off by 1. Senator Isakson's was off by 1. Arlen Specter's and Tedd Kennedy's offices' blocks met the pattern perfectly. These may be due to changes in seniority, or other situations, but it demonstrates a severe need to get in contact with Senate offices before any writing can be done. The pattern is not being used as an absolute, but a guide on which offices to contact.
Positive edits[edit]
Many times the Senate has edited out bias, created articles, or reverted vandalism themselves. The same IP block supposedly belonging to Senator John Ensign's staffers created the article w:Click Back America. John Cornyn's staffer's supposed IP block created w:Washington's Tomb, and the supposed block of Robert Foster Bennett's staffers created and edited w:Robert Foster Bennett. A block that may belong to Senator Mark Pryor's staffers made very useful edits to Closed sessions of the United States Senate in November.
The offices of most senators mentioned here were contacted via voice mail by Amgine, but only McCain's and Levin's offices had replied by the next day.
Also, at first I was working under the theory that within individual states, senators with seniority were given the lowest numbered IP addresses, but I later discarded it because it varied too often, in favor of thinking that the IPs for states are probably randomly assigned.