Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Is Mike Florio Editing His Own Wikipedia Entry?


My third wiki related post in a row.  After posting my edits I subscribed to the change log RSS to help keep track of all future changes.  What I saw alarmed me.  Most of the recent changes were made by unregistered users.  When an article is edited anonymously the IP address of the user is recorded.  IP addresses are not unique to individuals, but there is certain information you can glean from using the tracert command on your computer.  I performed this function and here are the results (with entries identifying my own location removed): 

 11    91 ms    91 ms    91 ms  P14-0.LCR-01.PITBPA.verizon-gni.net [130.81.28.13]
 12    92 ms    91 ms    92 ms  P6-0-0.LCR-03.PITBPA.verizon-gni.net [130.81.27.195]
 13    92 ms    92 ms    92 ms  P8-0.PITBPADT-ERXG04.PITBPA.verizon-gni.net [130.81.44.21]
 14   107 ms   107 ms   107 ms  pool-96-235-14-153.pitbpa.east.verizon.net [96.235.14.153]

After seeing this result I now think a few things are suspect:

1.  It is known that Florio lives in the state of West Virginia.  It is possible that his ISP is located in Pittsburgh.  There is roughly 200 miles distance between those locations.  
2.  Florio is sponsored by Sprint, which owns the Verizon network.  The last few hops are on that network.
3.  The choice of anonymously posting is indicitive of attempting to conceal your identity.

If you're curious as to why this is important, read this article concerning the founder of Wikipedia discussing his own controversial edits.

I will be emailing Mike Florio through his website for comment.  I'm sure there won't be a response, but it's the fair thing to do.

UPDATE:

I did a tad bit more digging and think I've found evidence that PFT is run out of Grafton, WV.  That places the location within 100 miles of Pittsburgh and definitely makes it in that ISP range.

2 comments:

  1. I think it's likely.

    ReplyDelete
  2. He feels free to delete comments on his website when they are well-stated opposing views to his, so why wouldn't he.

    ReplyDelete

Feel free to say what you want. I will not delete them.