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ESA, EA Caught Editing Their Own Wikipedia Entries

Posted by Zonk on Tue Aug 21, 2007 01:12 AM
from the that's-a-no-no dept.
The Internet Entertainment Games
With the whitewashing of Wikipedia now an easily-reviewable record, it's been noted that games-related organizations are not above tweaking their public image online. Joystiq notes that EA, for example, is unabashed about removing founder Trip Hawkins from their entry. More ominous edits from the Entertainment Software Association are reported by GamePolitics. The organization, which you may recall backing the recent raids on mod chippers, has made a concerted effort to cast mod chips in a negative light. " In one paragraph, someone at ESA deleted a nuanced discussion of mod chip legality, replacing it with a flat assertion that mod chips are illegal. Less than a minute later, a lengthy section on the positive uses of mod chips was deleted, as was a notation that the US Supreme Court has not yet dealt with the DMCA. Finally, a sentence stating that mod chips are legal in Australia was removed."
+ -
story

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[+] Your Rights Online: ESA Initiates Police Raid Against Console Modder 139 comments
Donkey Konga writes "A San Diego man was arrested after a raid turned up over a thousand counterfeit games, modded consoles and mod chips. Frederick Brown 'had allegedly built up a thriving business selling counterfeit games and installing mod chips, having advertised his services on Craigslist and other web sites. He allegedly sold pirated games from his Vista, CA residence as well, including both discs and hard drives preloaded with games that he would install into customers' Xboxes and Xbox 360s.' After the ESA learned of his activities, they contacted San Diego law enforcement and the San Diego Computer and Technology Crime High-Tech Response Unit led the raid on his home. '"CATCH was very receptive to the evidence we brought them and were able to put the investigation together in very short order," ESA VP Ric Hirsch told Ars.' Brown now faces 10 felony counts related to selling pirated games and modding consoles."
[+] See Who Is Whitewashing Wikipedia 478 comments
Decius6i5 writes "Caltech grad student Virgil Griffith has launched a search tool that uncovers whitewashing and other self-interested editing of Wikipedia. Users can generate lists of every edit to Wikipedia which has been made from a particular IP address range. The tool has already uncovered a number of interesting edits, such as one from the corporate offices of Diebold which removed large sections of content critical of their electronic voting machines. A Wired story provides more detail and Threat Level is running a contest to see who can come up with the most interesting Wikipedia spin job."
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ESA, EA Caught Editing Their Own Wikipedia Entries 50 Comments More /

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  • ...I thought that we were now subject to any anti-modchipping clauses that might be present in the DMCA?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by base2_celtic (56328)
      Not that I'm in any way in favour of the act, of course. I think any device you own should be able to be modified in any way you see fit.
    • You mean because we're the unofficial 51st state of the US?

      Or were you just after first post?

      • Re:As an Australian... (Score:4, Funny)

        by Belacgod (1103921) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @01:57AM (#20301561)
        54th. England is 51, Saudi Arabia is 52, Iraq is 53.
      • No, because the Australia - USA Free Trade Agreement brought in DMCA style anti-circumvention measures, as well as a bunch of other less than savoury copyright changes.
        Bizarrely enough, the same bill also made format shifting absolutely legal.
      • No, genuinely interested. Modchipping old XBOXen has become de riguer as a media centre machine for cash-strapped student organisations that run screenings of various materials.
          • No, not correct. Because I was covering a variety of different organisations, I was trying to locate a generic enough term. Of course I can't speak for all university or student societies in Australia, but I can can tell you that the UTas Anime Society obtains written permission to screen all material before we do. We have an excellent relationship with our local distributors and copyright holders. They're very forward-thinking and only too happy to increase their audience base.

            Heck, they're even cool enoug

  • I hope there's a wiki page (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pembo13 (770295) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @01:52AM (#20301533) Homepage
    listing all the individuals, organizations, and businesses who are caught doing this. The name of the individuals, along with whom they represent should be posted clearly on a wiki page.
    • So what? Revert!
      The point is that *anyone* can edit. Companies who do this will just get bad publicity - they will lose. The system will self heal. The joys of a community based technology.
    • That would be a very long list. Maybe you could get Sisyphus to maintain it. I hear he's getting tired of that rock and bird routine.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by 5E-0W2 (767094)
        The bird is Prometheus, Sisyphus is the one rolling the boulder up the hill (and Tantalus was the one with the pool of water and the grapes).
    • There is, but all the people that get caught keep removing themselves from the page!

    • so what? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Geoff-with-a-G (762688) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @12:26PM (#20307147)
      Why should someone try to list this? Who cares, and why?

      Of course people from various companies or organizations edit the Wikipedia entries for those organizations. They're likely to be more knowledgeable and more interested in the subject matter than the average contributor. That's normal.

      If someone created a Wikipedia page about me, and claimed that I cheated on a Geology paper at Harvard, I would probably edit the page and remove it - seeing as how I never went to Harvard or took Geology. Are you telling me that's unfair or unethical of me? That I should wait patiently for someone else knowledgeable and motivated to go make that correction for me? That principle seems absurd to me.

      If the edits they make are untrue, if they're trying to give a falsely positive impression of themselves, then fix it. Correct it. Revert it. The fact that they want to do so is neither surprising nor any worse than if some random third party wanted to post falsely positive (or negative) information about the organization in question. If I'm some random crazy jerk and I decide to vandalize Linus Torvalds' entry to say terrible things about him, how is that better than if he himself edited it to say untrue but positive things about himself? Either way it's just someone posting false information to Wikipedia, and either way you should just correct it to the best of your ability and move on.

      There shouldn't be some sort of blanket principle or policy that an organization can't update its own Wikipedia page. I'd imagine there are IBM employees who know more about IBM than you do. I'd expect there are EA employees who know a lot about EA. They should be free to contribute that knowledge. If they're lying, correct their lies like you would anyone else's.
    • should be posted clearly

      Well, if anyone wants to do so, it's easily done. Ergo, if a company wants to sneak around, it can quickly gain bad publicity. However, any company can also find itself discussed in an undeservedly positive or negative way due to the public nature of Wikipedia.

      Perhaps Wikipedia entries should have some reserved space that companies can use to make statements. Then we can really judge.

  • Change it back? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ludomancer (921940) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @02:05AM (#20301595)
    Now that we've caught these people exploiting the part of wikipedia that NO ONE should exploit simply because it undermines the very principle of this community-based system, who will change these entries back? WILL these entries be changed back?

    It seems kind of limp to blow the horn on them but not remove the erroneous edits they made. Even if this information is subjective, if a company edits this info to benefit said company, that doesn't seem fair. As a slave/consumer in this country, it makes me cringe every time a large corporation gets away with this kind of bullshit. When is enough, enough?
    • Generally speaking, with regards to consumer abusive corporations, immediately after a successful class action law suit ;). So come on you blood sucking sharks, here is an excellent opportunity to stick to a whole bunch of corporations for vandalising a community based system ;).

    • Re:Change it back? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Enlightenment (1073994) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @04:17AM (#20302191)
      Of course they were changed back. The whole point of this article is that people found out and weren't pleased with the disinformation being spread. Would they then allow those edits to remain? Besides, I've been checking, and I've found that yes, the redacted information has been restored. So don't worry. :)
    • As far as I can tell, at least some of the edits were reverted within minutes of being made, anyway.

    • Now that we've caught these people exploiting the part of wikipedia that NO ONE should exploit simply because it undermines the very principle of this community-based system, who will change these entries back? WILL these entries be changed back?

      It seems kind of limp to blow the horn on them but not remove the erroneous edits they made. Even if this information is subjective, if a company edits this info to benefit said company, that doesn't seem fair. As a slave/consumer in this country, it makes me cringe every time a large corporation gets away with this kind of bullshit. When is enough, enough?

      sofixit

      • Re:Fairness? Depends on which party you are. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ludomancer (921940) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @07:16AM (#20302941)
        You can't dismiss another persons concerns about the world simply by tagging their arguments as "teen angst". That in itself is an imature perspective.

        I'm 30, and as I watch my country slip into a sick pit of capitalistic facism, I think speaking out about it is the best way to show concern and encourage others to act as well. I live in america where our whole world is controlled by entities such as these. I have every right to be irate about the level of dishonesty and corruption in the corporate world. They slight us all on a personal level every time they pull something like this. If you really feel that's being overdramatic, then as a member of "the real world" I implore you to not care about my angst. Please.

  • Fundamental Flaw In Wikipedia? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GaryPatterson (852699) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @03:26AM (#20301981)
    This exposes an issue I have with Wikipedia - who edits last wins.

    If these people had used IP anonymisers, they'd never have been picked up and the edits would have looked just like arguments back and forth until someone gave up. The problem is that a company can be far more tenacious than any one person, even paying marketing people to make sure Wikipedia has the 'right' information.

    The answer I see from Wikipedia fans is "just edit the page when you see an error." That's great, but if someone's determined enough, they'll edit right afterwards, making the entire thing pointless.

    The greatest strength of Wikipedia is the reason I believe it must ultimately fail.
    • In cases where that happens, isn't editing of the page often locked? That's certainly the case for some higher profile articles...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by nlitement (1098451)
      Oh, really? Or then the dumb idiot pulls of a three-revert, or the good user brings it up on the talk page, or even better, notifies an admin of a badly behaving IP and gets someone to solve the whole issue. The greatest weakness of Wikipedia is the prejudiced approach that people often hold against it and how it handles vandalism/etc.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If these people had used IP anonymisers, they'd never have been picked up and the edits would have looked just like arguments back and forth until someone gave up.

      Or more likely, they would have just been presented with a page telling them they were blocked from editing - Wikipedia blocks all the public proxy servers it can find, for precisely this reason.
      • Maybe the GP is talking about something like tor [eff.org].

        • And if you use Tor, your exit node's IP address gets blocked unless you log in.

              • Known good AC's?
                Hah.
                Plus, what's to say that someday somewhere someone won't start buying off known good editors?
                  • Would they now? By whom? How can you tell if it's just a bunch of apples gone bad or a whole barrel of cider waiting to happen? Why risk it in the first place?
              • That page is inconsistent with other pages that say something else - a common problem on wikipedia, unfortunately.

    • Re:Fundamental Flaw In Wikipedia? (Score:4, Informative)

      by LKM (227954) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @05:48AM (#20302521) Homepage
      Please check out the change history. In most of the cases, the changes were reverted within minutes. It doesn't matter who makes the edits, if the edits are wrong or uncalled for, they will be reverted.

      Constantly changing back would lead to the article being locked. Being tenacious does not matter one bit if the article can't just be changed anymore.

      If you doubt the information in a Wikipedia article, check out its history. It's there for a reason.

      • Constantly changing back would lead to the article being locked. Being tenacious does not matter one bit if the article can't just be changed anymore.
        Right, but without the evidence that they have a conflict of interest, it's a crapshoot [wikimedia.org] whose changes get locked into place.

        • Constantly changing back would lead to the article being locked. Being tenacious does not matter one bit if the article can't just be changed anymore.

          Right, but without the evidence that they have a conflict of interest, it's a crapshoot [wikimedia.org] whose changes get locked into place.

          I've usually found the Wikipedia editors to be surprisingly objective and reasonable. Do you have examples of where the locked version was "The Wrong Version"?

          And again, the history and the discussions are there for a reason. Check them out, especially if the article is locked.

  • I am shocked, shocked... (Score:5, Funny)

    by advocate_one (662832) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @04:10AM (#20302175)
    to discover that companies edit their own wikipedia entries...
    • I would like my Wiki info to be correct and thorough, and who knows more about a company than the employees themselves? So it's not inherently bad that employees edit their companies entry, it's the fact that these entries are starting to look like press releases.
  • Entity edits freely-editable online encyclopaedia. "News at 11" as I believe the cliche goes.
    • If anytime someone does this, people catch it and then we all make a big stink about it, maybe they'll stop doing it. And we'll have a better idea about which entities do or do not play well with others, which matters to some of us when making purchasing decisions. Perhaps you want us to just shut up and be good little consumers?
  • Just because the IP belongs to the company doesn't mean it's a company decision. I've made plenty of edits from school/work. It doesn't mean those edits were endorsed or even known to the company.

    With Wikipedia, you edit the topics you're interested in. If you work in a certain industry or a certain company, you'll most likely edit pages related to it.
    • Excellent point...I have done the same myself. Some of it is relevent to my company's line of work and some completely irrelevent. None of it was endorsed by my company.

      Along the same lines, I've browsed through this thread and have not seen a single acknolwedgement (and I may have missed them if there are any) that sometimes it may be completely OK to edit an entry relating to one's self, be it an individual or a company. There is nothing unethical about participating in a community discussion/posting/h
    • There's a huge gray area. Obviously the EA edits are unethical. But what if, for example, EA had edited the entry for "Medal of Honor" to include detailed specs on the weapons used in the game? In some ways, I'd think Wikipedia would want to encourage edits by people involved as long as those edits aren't self-serving.

  • wikipedia fundamentally flawed. Time for better! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by swordgeek (112599) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @09:46AM (#20304541) Journal
    ...also known as citizendium. [citizendium.org]

    Wikipedia is a great idea, and a great interface, but leads to exactly this sort of behaviour. If a company edits their entry to reflect their side of the story, is it editing or abuse?

    He who edits last, wins. Over the long run, that doesn't work. That's why one of the founders of wikipedia (Larry Sanger [citizendium.org]) decided to take the idea of wikipedia and add in some accountability. The project was named citizendium, and was started just about a year ago. It is based on three fundamental differences from wikipedia:
            * all contributors must apply for membership in the project under their real names, which are then visibly associated with all articles
            * all articles are reviewed by experts in their particular fields, offering suggestions and criticism as the articles evolve with the goal for each article to be "approved"
            * that vandals, trolls, and disruptive editors are quickly and permanently banned from further work on the project.

    It's MUCH smaller than wikipedia at present , but also not loaded with garbage and editorial pissing matches. Take a look, join the community, and help make the next generation online encyclopedia better.
    • I'm glad to see that Citizendium has adopted a more realistic policy on the expertise requirements by moving to approval instead of pre-vetting. I still think the barriers to entry for "trivial" editing are going to be a problem. Most of the barriers are a function of the MediaWiki software, which is really not well-suited for the type of workflow changes that would be needed to support it. I think something working like a distributed SCM system would be more appropriate, where diffs could be pushed upst

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