
A bot that tweets anonymous Wikipedia edits from IP addresses in the US Congress - DyslexicAtheist
https://twitter.com/congressedits
======
lightbyte
Some of these are pretty funny. Apparently someone in the House of
Representatives is a huge Carly Rae Jepsen fan:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=800487966&oldid=79...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=800487966&oldid=799703808)

~~~
flanbiscuit
And someone felt the need to add "comedienne" to the list of skills of Gwyneth
Paltrow

[https://twitter.com/congressedits/status/913086284058554368](https://twitter.com/congressedits/status/913086284058554368)

~~~
trentmb
I'm a nobody that adds pertinent yet mundane stuff to wikipedia all the time.
Why would members of the Civil Service be any different?

------
eli
At the risk of stating the obvious, this is mainly interesting as a study in
what interns do when they're bored.

~~~
godelski
I wouldn't say it is interns when there are edits that are made that are
clearly politically motivated.[1][1.5][2][3]

And personally I believe they know about this twitter bot and edit random
articles on purpose. There's a lot in there that have just added a space at
the end of a sentence. That's obscurification.

Then there are just weird ones[4]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694134&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694134&oldid=804694104)

[1.5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=804534506)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=794544004&oldid=78...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=794544004&oldid=789155816)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804108161&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804108161&oldid=804097887)

[4]
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=256336084&old...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=256336084&oldid=256336031&rcid=867871649)

~~~
eli
You think there's a conspiracy to maliciously alter Wikipedia and to obscure
those public edits under a mountain of seemingly innocent changes? But also
that the conspirators are so naive they make the changes from their work
computers without a VPN?

People who intern on the Hill tend to have strong feelings about politics.
Makes sense that some of the pages the edit are political.

~~~
godelski
>You think there's a conspiracy to maliciously alter Wikipedia

> People who intern on the Hill tend to have strong feelings about politics.

Probably. I think there is enough evidence to question it. It would take a lot
of analysis that I'm not bored enough to perform to prove it. But the few
times that I have checked this over the years I see a lot of junk and then
edits on hot topics where things keep getting added and removed. I remember
one on the Dakota pipelines that completely removed the mention of protestors.

1) They are clearly editing things that are politically motivating. See my
examples and scroll through more. This can be attributed to embarrassment or
trying the sling mud at opponents. Can you honestly tell me that you wouldn't
put these types of editing above politicians? And this is really all I'm
suggesting that is happening in terms of "maliciously alter Wikipedia." (I
don't think it is really malicious)

2) Most probably don't realize this twitter account exists let alone that
their IPs can be tracked.

2.1) Their name isn't attached anyway.

2.2) How often do people actually check this Twitter or Wiki logs?

2.3) Why are they making extremely dumb edits like adding a space at the end
of a paragraph? I'm sure that some edits are bored interns/politicians, but
there are definitely weird edits that look more like obscurification than
worthwhile edits.

There is no incentive for them to mask their IP, because it still can't be
traced back to them. And people knowing "someone" changed a wiki entry in a
misleading way just gets people to think "politicians are corrupt". Which is
nothing new. So why would they even bother?

------
robin_reala
See also
[https://twitter.com/parliamentedits](https://twitter.com/parliamentedits) for
the UK. Not sure which came first as they were both started in July 2014.

~~~
zanedb
From the readme on GitHub[0]: "it was inspired by @parliamentedits."

[0]:
[https://github.com/edsu/anon/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/edsu/anon/blob/master/README.md)

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Found some questionable edits:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694134&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694134&oldid=804694104)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=804534506)

~~~
bpicolo
Those diffs actually seem solid. Words like "bogus" and "baseless" don't make
for objective articles.

~~~
norikki
True. But you shouldnt remove words from the headlines of an article being
cited.

------
Adrock
See also: [https://twitter.com/bankedits](https://twitter.com/bankedits)

------
jbob2000
Most of these are pretty harmless; updates to sports figures, university pages
for alumni, celebrities, etc. I didn't see any revisionist history edits like
I was expecting.

~~~
tectec
That's what I thought too until I noticed they added a Nazi to the list of
alumni.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804058727&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804058727&oldid=803389733)

~~~
throwanem
What fails the sniff test about a German having studied abroad at a US
university before WWI - when no significant enmity between the two nations yet
existed - and, over the next few decades, following a course in life that led
him to join the NSDAP and the Waffen-SS? Uncommon, sure. But implausible?
(When and by whom was the same information edited into the article about
Lombard?)

~~~
throwawayjava
My reaction was the same as yours initially -- weird thing for congressional
staff to be spending their time on, but yeah that is a notable alumni (and
actually kind of interesting).

But the same user added Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash to the List of University of
Missouri alumni article.

All of that could of course could be a coincidence. But it'll be interesting
to see whether any of Missouri's representatives start pushing a "universities
create evil villains" narrative in the next cycle ;-)

------
aantix
Such a great idea. It's too bad that Twitter doesn't embrace it's programmer
base and add integrations like this.

A Zapier-like platform, made available to all Twitter users. Oh baby Jesus..

------
pohl
I look forward to finding some time to read through some of these changes this
weekend, but what this really makes me crave is a similar bot to track changes
that are made to Conservapedia.com – The Trustworthy Encyclopedia™ – which I
find very entertaining. Do yourself a favor and peruse some of the revert wars
that happen over there.

------
ncr100
E.g.

Don't call my conspiracy theory "baseless"!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=804534506)

-Fan of anonymous Paul Gosar, Arizona Congressperson,

------
Assossa
Some intern got bored

[https://twitter.com/congressedits/status/908761643982532609](https://twitter.com/congressedits/status/908761643982532609)

------
mbrumlow
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=800455861&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=800455861&oldid=800453377)

------
fotret
Any idea on how to find all government IP addresses? specially for other
countries

~~~
mindcrime
You might start by just googling for it and hope somebody has already compiled
a list. Outside of that, for an organization that has IP's allocated
specifically to them, you can search the ARIN registry.

For the US, you could do something like this if you wanted to find IP's for
the Senate:

    
    
        $whois "US Senate"@whois.arin.net
    

which gives back something like:

    
    
        # start
    
        CustName:       US Senate
        Address:        Telecommunications Department
        City:           Washington
        StateProv:      DC
        PostalCode:     20510-7202
        Country:        US
        RegDate:        1992-12-03
        Updated:        2011-03-19
        Ref: https://whois.arin.net/rest/customer/C00594783
    
        NetRange:       63.82.112.0 - 63.82.119.255
        CIDR:           63.82.112.0/21
        NetName:        UU-63-82-112
        NetHandle:      NET-63-82-112-0-1
        Parent:         UUNET63 (NET-63-64-0-0-1)
        NetType:        Reassigned
        OriginAS:       
        Customer:       US Senate (C00594783)
        RegDate:        1992-12-03
        Updated:        2003-05-30
        Ref:            https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-63-82-112-0-1
    

So the Senate has 63.82.112.0 - 63.82.119.255 assigned. A few caveats though:

1\. Those IP's might not be the ones assigned to desktop computers in
staffer's offices. They may only use these for servers, or they might not even
be used at all. For all we know, they have access via some random ISP -
Spectrum, AT&T, whoever. Hell, they might have dial-up through AOL! In which
case, it would be tough to ever really know.

2\. Searching the ARIN registry can be tedious and takes some guesswork.
Searching "US Senate"@whois.arin.net will give different results than "U.S.
Senate"@whois.arin.net, which gives different results than "United States
Senate"@whois.arin.net, etc. There may be a way to use wildcards and other
fancy search expressions, but if so, I've never bothered to learn how. Might
be worth looking into.

~~~
mkroman
What `whois` tool is that? When I try that exact command I get

    
    
      % whois "US Senate"@whois.arin.net
      No whois server is known for this kind of object.
    
      % whois --version
      Version 5.2.7.
      
      Report bugs to <md+whois@linux.it>.

~~~
mindcrime
More details. This is from a Fedora 24 machine, where I just tested the whois
syntax from above and it worked fine.

I guess different versions of the whois command handle this differently. I
never knew that until now. Every version I've ever used has supported this
kind of query.

    
    
        $ whois --version
        jwhois version 4.0, Copyright (C) 1999-2007  Free 
        Software Foundation, Inc.
        This program is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO 
        WARRANTY; you may redistribute it under the terms of the 
        GNU General Public License.
    

Edit: This form might work for you:

    
    
        $whois -h whois.arin.net "US Senate"

------
doall
Interesting to see. Is there a Chinese or Russian government version of this?

------
johmue
Amazing idea!

