Ian Silvera (@ianjsilvera) gives a step-by-step guide on how to find out who’s behind changes on a Wikipedia page. Cross-posted from the Help Me Investigate blog.

First, click on the ‘view history’ tab at the top right of the Wikipedia entry you are interested in. You should then be directed to a page that lists all the edits that have occurred on that entry. It looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Bradshaw_(journalist)&action=history

Second, to identify if someone has been deleting unhelpful criticisms of an organisation or person on their Wikipedia entry, you could read through each edit, but with large Wikipedia entries this exercise would be too time-consuming. Instead, look for large redactions.

To do this scan through the red coloured numbers in brackets. Low numbers such as (-700) mean that a reasonable amount of information has been deleted from the Wikipedia entry. Also, the date the Wikipedia entry was edited is located on the left-hand side of the page.

Once you’ve indentified a large passage that has been deleted, click on the user’s IP address listed in the centre of the page (unfortunately, if the user has an account with Wikipedia, you won’t be able to see their IP address — here the investigation may have to end).

You should now be directed to a page that lists all that user’s contributions on Wikipedia. For example, not many users have deleted content on Paul Bradshaw’s wiki, so I clicked on a Wikipedia user that removed two characters on Mr Bradshaw’s entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/193.60.133.202

Now click on the ‘diff’ button, located in the middle of the page, to check if the mystery editor did remove criticisms or unhelpful information.

You should now be directed to a comparison page which shows the Wikipedia entry before and after the deletion. For instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sony&diff=prev&oldid=378515677

Presuming that your mystery editor has deleted some valid criticisms or unhelpful information, it’s time to find them.

Locating

To find a person using their IP address you can use an IP locater. I use Neil Smith’s locater found on his website here: http://www.uk-osint.net/whoandwhere.html (just type the IP you’re interested in and press ‘search’).

Now, a lot of IP address are re-directed, many through Delaware, so IP locaters aren’t that accurate, but that’s not to say you may get lucky and the mystery editor’s internet provider may be a niche provider unlike BT, Virgin or the like (a computer service company that only does work for large businesses, for example). Even if the provider turns out to be BT or the like, Mr Smith’s IP locater is fused with Google Maps so you can zoom in and find the address of your mystery editor.

Returning to my example, I typed the IP address (193.60.133.202) of my mystery editor into the IP locater and identified the provider as Birmingham City University. So, clearly someone who has been using Birmingham City University’s computers on the 29th of July 2010‎ edited Mr Bradshaw’s Wikipedia entry — likely candidates include Paul Bradshaw or someone associated with Birmingham City University (an academic, PR Company or a student).

At this point of the investigation things become less technical – you will have to phone and confront the organisation or person you’re interested in with the information you’ve found.

Examples of Wikipedia investigations

• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Independent found that 10,000 Wikipedia edits were made from the House of Commons: http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/03/09/thousands-of-changes-made-to-wikipedia-from-within-house-of-commons/
• The blogger Tim Ireland discovered that Bell Pottinger deleted criticisms on their Wikipedia entry: http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2011/12/bell-pottinger/
• The blogger David Allen Green (Jack of Kent) found that Johann Hari had maliciously edited the Wikipedia entries of journalistic rivals under the alias ‘David Rose’: http://jackofkent.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/who-is-david-rose.html
• My discovery of the removal of unhelpful information on A4e’s Wikipedia entry:http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/mar/14/hugh-muir-diary-techdept

Do you have any other tips on tracing Wikipedia edits? Or examples of it used in journalism? We’d love to hear them.

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Paul Bradshaw has run a conference “Journalism, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship” for independent and mainstream journalists interested in “making a living from journalism in the era of free information”.

In this interview, Paul explains to Matt Wardman what the aims and achievements of JEEcamp have been, and reflects on how his own blogging activities over 6 years has opened up opportunities for him personally.

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Hope you enjoy this. Concept by Paul Bradshaw, drawings by the wonderful Alex Hughes:

Here are some Twitter avatar-size versions too:

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I’ve written a piece in the latest Press Gazette about the need to “take down the walls, stop mystifying investigative journalism and include readers in the process, starting now.” Sadly, they’ve pigeonholed it as being about “blog investigations”. Never mind: you can read it here.

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I’ve recently been reading ‘Making Online News‘ a book of ethnographic studies of online news production. Tucked towards the back of the book is a chapter called The Routines of Blogging by Wilson Lowrey and John Latta. It is one of the few studies I’ve read to look not at journalists, but at the work practices of bloggers – specifically, political bloggers.

And their findings support what I’ve increasingly suspected: “the more relevant bloggers become in terms of audience and influence, the more their production routines resemble those of professional journalists.”

A few years ago this would have been held up as evidence that bloggers could hold their own with journalists, that ‘blogging can be journalism’.

It’s a sign of how much has changed that, now, it’s actually rather disappointing to read that bloggers aren’t experimenting with exciting new ways of doing things.

The central argument of the chapter is that the pressures of being a popular blogger lead to the same routinisation that affects mainstream journalism, as well as an aspiration towards ‘professional’ ways of doing things:

“More than one blogger said a key turning point in the way they practice blogging was the moment they felt the gaze of the public eye. Realizing that people are paying attention … has led these bloggers to adopt a more careful, dispassionate approach and tone.”

One blogger is quoted as saying this “has led to less opinionating and more reporting and thoughtful analysis:”

“I was more creative when I started, now I’m more deliberate … I started trying to be more professional … Once I got to 100 readers I started to get more organized and started to take more responsibility for what I posted. Then I started to restrict what I put up there … I’ve ducked a couple of issues recently … because I wanted to be better informed. I didn’t want to be wrong … so I just avoided the topic.”

Another says:

“I’ve written about a candidate and said simply that the candidate has been in office too long and should go. I know more, and there are rumours I could check out … but I chose just to say that about being there too long.”

A key line here compares how, just as the restricted space and time of mainstream media shape their output, so does the lack of restrictions shape the output of blogs: “Whereas constraints necessitate routines, so does a lack of limits … bloggers have developed routine practices that narrow down possibilities.”

There is, however, some dubious logic in the chapter. One passage, for example, states that bloggers, “like journalists … do not meet or converse with most of their readers directly.”

Well, yes, not “most”. But I would certainly argue that bloggers converse with more of their readers directly. Significantly more.

From this they suggest bloggers “may” construct audiences to suit production needs rather than vice versa, as journalists do, but provide no support for this (my own research on blogging journalists suggests the opposite is the case).

There’s a rather curious line which manages to compare bloggers linking to their peer group as “not unlike the ‘beat’ routine in journalism, which ensures a steady, predictable stream of stories.” This substantially misunderstands the networked nature of the internet when compared to the physical restrictions of ‘beats’ and stringers.

Then there’s the line that says “Each blog has loyal followers who post comments and send emails, and bloggers tend to write to these individuals, much as journalists write for each other.”

What? How does that comparison work?

These points aside, it’s a fascinating chapter that’s well worth reading. We need more research like this. We also need to understand, however, that focusing on successful bloggers often risks missing the wood for the trees: blogs are different purely because there are lots of unsuccessful ones – something the old media economics never allowed to happen.

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How remiss of me not to mention that the second edition of Investigative Journalism is now out, including a chapter on ‘Investigative Journalism and Blogs’ by yours truly. As it happens, if you buy it from the OJB Amazon affiliate shop (or anything else for that matter) the commission will go towards an ‘open source’ investigative journalism venture I’m putting together.

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Here’s the good news for mobile phone websites: Vodafone has “seen a 50% rise in revenues from its data services over the past quarter, after the number of its customers using the web from mobile devices more than doubled.”

UK newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror will be particularly pleased, having “begun developing a mobile phone website for 12 of its regional newspaper titles.” in partnership with Nokia. So will AP, whose Mobile News Network is “used consistently throughout the day and even across weekends and weekdays … the typical unique user is logging in for seven visits a month.”

The bad news? The day before that Trinity Mirror announcement saw the release of a study that, while including encouraging news for print advertising (it receives more positive responses from British consumers than those in other media platforms) found “consumers resist forms of advertising that are intrusive, especially those intrusive on “private space,” media such as spam, telemarketing and…” And? “mobile ads”. Add to that the findings from a recent Nielsen report (PDF) that only 14% of US mobile web users say they don’t mind relevant mobile advertising.

Ah well, the advertisers are planning to buy it anyway.

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The New York Times and LinkedIn have entered into a partnership that will see LinkedIn users “shown personalized news targeting their industry verticals … and will then be prompted to share those stories will professional associates.” Meanwhile, NYT readers will see a widget directing them to LinkedIn (see image below).

This is an excellent move – I’ve written often and at length about the need for news organisations to get a handle on online distribution. The significance of the NYT’s move is that it recognises that the walls need to come down, that your content needs to be where the reader is, and not the other way around.

After all, you don’t distribute newspapers in libraries alone, do you?

In another example of this issue, Jeff Jarvis wrote about Ed Roussel’s musings on the possibility of newspapers handing over distribution and advertising to Google. Frankly, that would be suicidal. Deals with the likes of LinkedIn offer a much more promising and healthier future for news. It also offers another indication of the direction news continues to head in: personalised information through social networks.

The fact that Google’s social network has not been hugely successful (nor has its partnership with MySpace) may turn out to be a vulnerability and better for the news distribution marketplace on the whole.

Until, of course, they buy LinkedIn.

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Blogging recently on Newsquest’s relaunch of its websites, I feel I was a bit harsh on the Lancashire Telegraph…

Since that review the site has cleaned up and, more importantly, sped up. But here’s my frustration: the newspaper is one of the best in the country when it comes to innovation in interactivity, and the new website does far too little to show that off.

So, here’s my attempt to redress that. I’ve added the Lancashire Telegraph to the Interactivity Index – a comparison chart of the features of newspapers around the world (more visualisation options to come). If you select it from one of the drop-down lists below you’ll see it scores an impressive 1200 points thanks to its use of RSS feeds, text updates, blogging, slideshows and impressive video. That score is higher than the Independent’s 1000 points, and The Mirror’s 800, and puts the site level with the also relaunched Hull Daily Mail (which is also an innovator with interactivity).

In the interests of fuelling local rivalry, I’ve also added the Lancashire Evening Post. There must be something in the water around those parts, because they do even better, scoring 1400 points, making it as ‘interactive’ as The Times (yes I know that’s a subjective term and some things are more interactive than others, but it’s as good a guide as any).

Any other nominations for most interactive regional newspaper?

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I’ve created a little service called ‘PodsForMobs’ which gathers links to podcasts and sends them via SMS using Twitter.

In other words if, like me, you like to listen to podcasts on your mobile phone and are frustrated by trying to find download links on podcast directories – or just want a little bit of serendipity – or have too little battery power to search, this works pretty well.

It’s at http://twitter.com/podsformobs

Let me know what you think.

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