Tuesday, August 21, 2007

NASA by Far the Biggest Government Censor on Wikipedia

According to an article on Govenment Executive.com, NASA is far and away the biggest Wikipedia editing source when it comes to US government agencies. A website called Wikiscanner keeps track of just who is editing what pages, and NASA is the clear winner with over 6,800 Wikipedia pages edited.

One has to wonder; why is NASA so intent on filtering the Wikipedia content that the general public has access to?

Until the Wikiscanner search for individual pages is enabled, we won't know exactly which pages they are editing, but with 6,800 edits, they must have a whole team devoted to holding the NASA party line over at Wikipedia.

-- MB

21 comments:

HHMSS Sword said...

Of course they do... ...its called SPIN...

Now where is that definitive link to the higher resolution image of the flag that that astronaut is holding?

Sword

BTW - Tweak this sight... ... ...

HHMSS Sword said...

BTW - is this the book cover - Christ I hope not - because there should be a much different flag - but of the same motif...

Sword

HHMSS Sword said...

From:
http://reddit.com/

(Todays most popular website viewing)

"That's No Moon.....Oh, Wait, I'm Sorry, it IS a Moon." (PIC) (photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov)

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA07639_modest.jpg

Sword

MeanGreen said...

The flag pic on the book cover is very weak!

Mike Bara said...

Okay... so what's "weak" about it? (BTW, neither Richard nor I had a say in the cover design...)

MeanGreen said...

Good points about NASA and Wikipedia - someone has the time.

BTW
Upgrade that profile pic, you are creeping me out dude!

I did not know you and Rich were that limited to the design. I think the image of the flag should be flat or have some type of real wave/ripple to it, or maybe that image put somewhere else in the image.

Clamytoe said...

Really? Can you tell us who was?

Anonymous said...

It is very interesting to see who is posting here, especially in light of RCH's abandonment of "The Crew" last year. Where's the outrage that was all over FSHOD for the longest time over the lack of response by The Good Captain as to why he left everyone high and dry? And btw, since when does asking questions, legitimate ones, qualify one to be a roach? Blind allegiance, to anyone, is quite unbecoming.

Mike Bara said...

Hey pal, you don't even HAVE a profile pic...

Clamytoe said...

Dude I was calling BU a roach. CC just happened to be in the line of fire.

CC seems like an intelligent guy, his associations is what keeps people away from his blog.

MeanGreen said...

Mike - About your pic, looks like you have been up all night at the GAMES(Gears of WAR!)

You would not want to see my ugly MUG!

Hey there ClamyToe, I think you have your bases covered.
BTW - Who you sucking up to?
Beware, BU is out there lurking about!

Mike Bara said...

MeanGreen, I've looked like that for years....

Clamytoe said...

MeanGreen said...

BTW - Who you sucking up to?


Sucking up to? Show me where I've done that and I'll see if an explain is even needed.

Unknown said...

NASA is a gov't 'funded' agency... it relies on money appropriated yearly from Congress... if NASA is to continue to exist they must do as they are told by Congress. I worked one year for NASA and that was enough for me.

Richard C. Hoagland said...

Guadalupejoe,

What did you do there ... that "opened your eyes?" :)


RCH

Biological_Unit said...

Guadalupejoe,

What did you do there ... that "opened your eyes?" :)


RCH


What did RCH do?

Oh yeah - oversee a fake landing, to score Cold War Political points, as Vietnam was the movie playing in those days, and that was a buuummmer maaaan

Anonymous said...

The original post reveals ignorance of how Wikiscanner works. It merely reports edits from an IP address range known to be assigned to NASA. It in no way can be taken as meaning that any of those edits are "official" NASA edits. John Doe, from his office somewhere in JSC, editing an article about the Carnival in Rio while on his coffee break, would be reported by Wikiscanner as "a NASA edit".

Mike Bara said...

There is no ignorance involved. The likelyhood that NASA employees are editing articles about Carnival is rather small, given the statistically significant differentiation between NASA and all other government agencies. If\when Wikiscanner can be used to analyze which articles are being edited, we'll post those results as well.

Anonymous said...

I can save you the trouble. Here are a few topics edited from IP ranges assigned to KSC/MSFC:

.45 Colt
Basque people
Brewing (beer)
Carly Fiorina
D. W. Griffith
Exhibitionism
Football (soccer)

A total of 1007 edits were reported from these IP addresses. This is not a large number. For comparison:

Boeing 1264
Apple 3760
UK parliament 1557
Brigham Young 1380
BBC 4074

What do you conclude from this?

Anonymous said...

More NASA centers:
JPL 295
GSFC 776

More comparisons, in Govt. agencies:
US House of Representatives 3168
US Senate 1809
State of Connecticut 1650
Canadian Govt 1780
UD Dept. of Education 562
Sandia Labs 491


Perhaps the title of this thread should be changed from "NASA by far the biggest...." to "Some NASA employees edit wikipedia in their spare time, but fewer than those of comparable government agencies"?

Mike Bara said...

I conclude you are cherry picking your results. Here are a few more topics that were edited from NASA IP addresses:

Armageddon
Energy policy act 1992\2005
Eugenics
Far side of the Moon
Intelligent character recognition
Library of Alexandria
Men in Black
Phased array
Pseudorandom sequence
Pulse-amplitude modulation
Pulse-position modulation
2006 Atlantic hurricane season
2006 Pacific typhoon season
23 (number)
Airy (Martian crater)
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
Cosmic ray /* Role in climate change */
Davies (crater)
Deep Space 1
Delta rocket
Galactic cosmic ray
Geoffrey A. Landis
Greenhouse effect
Hall effect thruster
History of ancient Egypt
Holocaust denial
Interstellar travel
List of craters on Mars
Mars
Mars Exploration Rover
Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander
Multipurpose Laboratory Module
NASA
Opportunity rover
Particle image velocimetry
Sidereal time
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
Spirit rover
Strategic Defense Initiative
Talk:Apollo Moon Landing hoax accusations
Timekeeping on Mars
X-band radar
Artificial gravity
Broken Obelisk
Deep Impact (space mission)
Enki
Faster-than-light
Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center
Neil Armstrong
Orion (spacecraft)
Space Shuttle main engine
Supercomputer

And the number of edits compared to other private sector editors is not relevant to this post. The point is that NASA edits far more pages than any other GOVERNMENT AGENCY. I assumed you read that part of the post. Nice try though.