.
Congrats to Andrew over his posting on the BBC’s wikiedits. 7,000 eh? Such busy boys (and girls) at the BBC. Congrats too to all the great commenters who offer us so much to think about here. About half a clap should finally go to the BBC, who have now updated their article to include a modest reference to their own wikiediting exploits. Why so modest, chaps? (see below posts for details) Oh, and they’ve also linked here, as part of their inching towards a compromise on the subject. I think that most people will consider the efforts to be too little, too late.
Update (15.35 UK): that reference in full (at present):
“BBC News website users contacted the corporation to point out that the tool also revealed that people inside the BBC had made edits to Wikipedia pages.”
No mention of the nature of some of the edits: George wa*ker Bush, for instance, or the Tony Blair edits.
Update (15.45 UK): Thanks too to Damien Thompson of the Telegraph for recognising B-BBC in relation to this story with his kind words.
Update (16.05 UK): you will no doubt want to check out the BBC blog’s view of the matter, which also links here (to commenter glj thanks for the heads up on that). Thanks as well to the illuminating Helen of EU Referendum who recommends her readers to visit. Hello to you folks as well.
But the Vatican and the CIA etc are pushed by the BBC as organisations that edit, the BBC edits are by people working for the BBC and therefore nothing to do with the BBC when they are off duty etc.. yeah right!
“BBC News website users contacted the corporation to point out that the tool also revealed that people inside the BBC had made edits to Wikipedia pages.”
Rhubarb! Nick R and others from the Beeb have been discussing this here and on their blogs and at work!
BBC – never admit we are wrong – that’s what we do.
“BBC News website users contacted the corporation to point out that the tool also revealed that people inside the BBC had made edits to Wikipedia pages.”
Not only too little too late (where are the details of these edits, we have details of edits from other organisations), but that statement, as dave t points out, is a downright lie.
Keep digging BBC, you are just making things worse.
At least now there is a link from the story to Biased BBC!
Story up on the Editors blog now – same old rubbish.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/08/wikipedia_edits.html
“.. What about people inside the BBC?”
“This was an irritating oversight.”
Be careful when you say there were 7,000 edits. There were 7,000 edits FROM BBC IPS. If you register an account (which is free and doesnt even require email validation), you can edit without publicly displaying your IP address. I imagine most BBC employees who use the site will have accounts, so this is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.
MDC your caution is wise. Fortunately there’s a question mark there. We can update further…
very interesting discussion on the “criticism of the bbc” talk page, vis a vie inclusion of links to blogs (such as this one) as reference links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Criticism_of_the_BBC#Blogs
at this stage, you can’t link to the Biased BBC blog as its not a a “reliable source”.
I have just had a look at the site which tracks wikipedia changes by organization.
The time period it covers is 5 years.
7 thousand edits over 5 years?
If this is correct, its a tiny number bearing in mind how big Wikipedia now is.
But how big a percentage of the number of overall Wikipedia edits is just plain irrelevant.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2267665.ece
“The problem is not that there are too few voices in the editorial process, who can skew the result, but the opposite. Participation is prized more than competence. When a prominent Wikipedian who claimed to be a tenured professor of divinity was revealed instead to be a young college dropout, the site’s founder Jimmy Wales responded that he was unconcerned. The notion that a false claim to knowledge is wrong is not part of Wikipedia’s culture.
The WikiScanner is thus an important development in bringing down a pernicious influence on our intellectual life. Critics of the web decry the medium as the cult of the amateur. Wikipedia is worse than that; it is the province of the covert lobby. The most constructive course is to stand on the sidelines and jeer at its pretensions. ”
Oouch! But very true! Now if only we can get the BBC to admit that the data on which they base global warming etc is flawed…. seize back the truth fellow B-BBC-ers! Down with BBC Bias! Let us wave little red books as we start a new cultural revolution that flushes the sewers of partiality and bias from our state broadcaster! Yay!
You spoil me Ed. The thanks are really due to the developer(s) of the Wikiscanner tool and our anonymous reader who tipped us off about the BBC’s edits. I’ve written my own take on recent events, and have just posted it above.
link to damian thompson’s article is removed again. he has an “axe to grind” apparently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Criticism_of_the_BBC#Blogs
but of course, the link to the BBC Editors blog is left on , because they dont have an axe to grind. apparently.
(pardon me while i take a slug of beer, and try to stop my head exploding)
“I have just had a look at the site which tracks wikipedia changes by organization.
The time period it covers is 5 years.
7 thousand edits over 5 years?
If this is correct, its a tiny number bearing in mind how big Wikipedia now is.”
It’s about 4 edits per day (if they’re evenly distributed, which I doubt – I would expect it to be much lower at the beginning, and much higher at the moment) and can only examine anonymous edits (ie. those not made using accounts – http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/). Given that regular editors will almost certainly make accounts, all we’re seeing here are a small number of casual edits.
But as has been said before, the point isn’t that the BBC has destroyed wikipedia under a deluge of biased and puerile editing – obviously wikipedia is too big for that. The point is the underlying political bias that they edits portray. That cannot be simply handwaved away.
Well maybe just a little, Andrew :-). I, probably more than most though, appreciate that it takes guts to put something together and pursue it aggressively and consistently. Not so easy.
MDC
“But as has been said before, the point isn’t that the BBC has destroyed wikipedia under a deluge of biased and puerile editing – obviously wikipedia is too big for that. The point is the underlying political bias that they edits portray. That cannot be simply handwaved away.”
Oh goodness. I think it’s worth saying most of the edits are about engineering and music and plenty of other stuff. I don’t dismiss the couple of idiots who’ve posted, but I think many of the contributions from BBC staff do add to Wikipedia.
BBC ‘its mostly corrections of factual and technical data’ – really has that been studied to show that?
Anyway how does that make the BBC different from the CIA or the Vatican who claim to be doing the same.
BBC ‘its only 7000’ – it didnt stop you saying how bad this number would be for other organisations.
Anyway that only 7000 using BBC IP addresses, there could and probably are lots of BBC amendments made fromother IP addresses too which would seriously drive up that figure.
What was worst of all was the rank hypocrisy of rushing to trumpet the anti CIA (and Vatican) and by extension anti American and anti Christian line when the organisation was guilty of doing just the same.
Too many at the BBC are in denial, this scandal on top of the recent ones on celebrity wages, the Balen report, the slipshod memo, the Queengate, Blue Peter fiasco and fake phone line quiz scandals, public confidence in the BBC, such as it was, is draining away all too fast.
David Gregory could have a good point (for once) about how many of those wikipedia entries from the Beeb are positive and informing. But to be positive and informing, you’d surely have to submit an entire article, not dally around with a few nouns here and the odd adjective there.
Minor Wikipedia edits seem to be the vocation of small minded pedants – of which the BBC is choc-a-block.
How many articles have the BBC submitted in it’s entirety ‘on music and engineering and lots of other stuff?’ as David put it. Thereby placing some of it’s massively acquired knowledge – that we have been forced to pay for – back into the public domain?
Let me ask David Gregory (BBC), are the BBC’s edits reflecting a balanced spectrum of views, some from the left, some the centre, and some the right, or all of a PC-Guardianista type? We know the answer, don’t we! I suggest that until the BBC performs its public duties of providing a balance you keep schtoom within your PC-bunker.
I prefer BBC employees to concentrate on making programmes to spending their licence-payer-funded-time making very political alterations on Wikipedia.
BKK: Well we don’t know how many BBC staff have proper logins and do just that.
John Gibson: Well there you go. You can say that, but I would say we don’t know the answer. I’m just trying to find the LGF link but even they say there are one or two “good” edits. I will try and dig it out.
I think the BBC would prefer it’s staff to make programmes rather than political edits on Wikipedia! But contributing to an article about Ceefax in your lunch hour? I think that’s fair enough, and once again that’s what nearly all of these contributions are about
David Gregory (BBC): have we established whether the “wanker” Bush amendment was a lunchtime or a working-time contribution?
We’ve established that whatever time of day it happened it was a silly thing to do.
I thought all BBC content was “in the public domain” already?
Nick R: “I thought all BBC content was “in the public domain” already?”
In which case, can we start submitting orders for past BBC programmes, that ‘we’ have already paid for, for the cost of producing and distributing the media then please? Even with a healthy 100% mark-up to cover incidental expenses the cost of BBC DVDs will then be very much less (contrast the retail price of DVDs with the pence that newspaper giveaways cost!). Easy, reasonably priced access to the BBC archives would be a marvellous cultural resource for the UK (and the world), and would serve to remind the world of what the BBC is (well, was) capable of before the PC rot set in at BBC News & Current Affairs…
Well funnily enough Andrew we are trying to start to do some of what you are asking for. Have you looked at the open archive? Or tried the iPlayer? Or downloaded one of our audio podcasts?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory/
“Oh goodness. I think it’s worth saying most of the edits are about engineering and music and plenty of other stuff.”
…and no one is complaining about them. If they made up 100% of all edits, no one would be complaining at all. What is your point?
“I don’t dismiss the couple of idiots who’ve posted, but I think many of the contributions from BBC staff do add to Wikipedia.”
Again, what’s this got to do with what I said? A number of the edits expressed political bias. Now obviously individuals are bound to have political bias so that doesnt necessarily reflect on the BBC, except that all these people have the SAME bias. That is what is so important here – it is important that the BBC’s staff seems to be homogenous in its bias towards “loony left” views.
And the fact that they try to bias wikipedia to get these views into the public consciousness when they think no one is watching raises serious questions about the content they produce for public consumption in their professional life.
This whole episode, or should I say, never ending series, smacks of a broadcasting corporation going beyond its proper remit. It is supposed to report news and reflect the views and analyses of a (balanced) range of commentators***. It is not supposed to try and make the news. Incidentally, the latter is part of the CIA’s proper remit. (One does, of course, know that the majority of BBC employees dislike the CIA with an intensity much greater than that towards the KGB).
*** Something which it has rarely done, reflecting mainly from a Guardianista position, and rubbishing any coming from a Telegraph position (the latter being a much bigger set of licence payers.
Nick Reynolds
Iplayer keeps crashing, is slooooooooow and has so many things wrong with it not least that it only works within Windows XP (and not very well either). It also causes larger bandwidth usage.
It is a beta not a finished product despite the Beeb’s claims to the contrary. I had to delete it from my machine after 3 days of pain and anguish. Give us the cheap DVDs instead please! Did you know if you are a school you can get CDs of Radio plays and educational progs for around £5 from the BBC? If so why can’t we get them as taxpayers who pay for the things in the first place?
“I thought all BBC content was “in the public domain” already?
Nick Reynolds (BBC) | 17.08.07 – 10:38 am”
I presume ‘content’ doesn’t include the Balen Report?
“I thought all BBC content was “in the public domain” already?
Nick Reynolds (BBC) | 17.08.07 – 10:38 am”
and the impartiality seminar?
MDC: Again, what’s this got to do with what I said? A number of the edits expressed political bias. Now obviously individuals are bound to have political bias so that doesnt necessarily reflect on the BBC, except that all these people have the SAME bias. That is what is so important here – it is important that the BBC’s staff seems to be homogenous in its bias towards “loony left” views.
But it’s only a few out of 7000. And there in that 7000 edits that even LGF’s classes as “good”
I’m just trying to make a distinction between what most staff have been doing and the posts of one or two idiots.
We’re not talking about 7000 edits that attack Israel, President Bush and Capitalism. Though they do exist they are very very few and there are even some (though fewer) that B-BBC might approve of.
John Gibson: “One does, of course, know that the majority of BBC employees dislike the CIA with an intensity much greater than that towards the KGB” You may believe that, but it’s not true. Do you really believe that? Seriously? I’m just curious.
A transcript of the seminar is now on the BBC Trust’s website as an appendix to the impartiality report.
David Gregory: re CIA vs. KGB. It’s difficult to establish my point without a mountain of work, but I note that the BBC site has 434 pages on CIA and 110 pages on KGB. Certainly, the BBC often run hostile stories on the CIA, who surely are doing some good work against those sort of people who flew an aeroplane into the Pentagon, but not so often on the KGB.
How about this hypothesis: the majority of BBC employees dislike George W*nker Bush with an intensity much greater than that towards Vladimir Putin. … Or have, BBC employees, unbeknown to us been making hostile Wikipedia edits on Putin?
David Gregory: have the BBC examined whether the KGB has been doing edits on Wikipedia, and would you run such a story, if it were true, with the same (initial) enthusiasm with which you ran the CIA story?
John Gibson:
David Gregory: re CIA vs. KGB. It’s difficult to establish my point without a mountain of work, but I note that the BBC site has 434 pages on CIA and 110 pages on KGB.
Fair enough. But I think that’s a function of news not bias. The Telegraph site has 97 pages on the KGB and 237 on the CIA for example.
I really can’t claim all BBC staff like President Bush. But then that’s something that’s true of America too.
But I do want to say once again, the person who made the “wanker” edit was a total idiot and broke Wikipedia and BBC rules.
I just wanted to point up this comment because I believe its important to say that BBC staff (or the ones I know) are not these CIA hating, KGB loving, anti Israel, anti US etc etc people many posters here think they are. Really.
That’s not to say some of these edits don’t prove the point you are making. But so many don’t and so many show what the BBC is all about, passion and wanting to inform, educate and (yes) entertain.
Once again I restate my offer for B-BBCers to come and visit me at work. To see what BBC staff are really like.
John G: That would be a great story! Although nothing shows up on Wiki Scanner.
Can I just say I appreciate the support of Nick, and hope no one feels the need to report me for posting here. I’ve always enjoyed the debate here. I think it’s important and I always try to post before work, lunch, and after work.
Promise.
Nick Reynolds:
I’d love to use the Iplayer to watch some of the occasionally worthwhile sitcoms the BBC has produced over the years, but can’t for 2 reasons:
1) I’m on a Mac. And we all know the Beeb signed a deal with Microsoft to shut out Mac users from using Iplayer. So much for public domain.
2) None of those sitcoms are available for download anyway. So much for…uhm…public domain.
Apart from that though, it’s a fantastic idea.
Or how about this hypothesis: the majority of BBC employees don’t dislike George Bush, and are far too sensible to do something silly on Wikipedia?
BBK – The BBC has not signed any deal with Microsoft to shut out Mac users and a version of the Player which will work on a Mac is being worked on.
See this:
http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2007/08/defective_by_de.html
Maybe a bit off topic for this thread, but this article suggests there’s rather more to the iplayer decision, for Microsoft, if not the BBC:
What tricks is the BBC up to with Microsoft?
Other interesting nugget of info from here
“Erik Huggers, former director of Microsoft’s Windows Digital Media division, was appointed controller of the future media and technology group at the BBC in May.”
Nick:
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so literal in my terminology.
The BBC knew from the beginning that the Iplayer would not be available for the Mac, and of course it would have been Microsoft’s intention.
The BBC have signed a deal for Microsoft to supply the Iplayer, correct? And of course by doing so, they have shut out Mac users. And of course the BBC were totally aware of it.
Hopefully this clarifies my point.
BBK
Follow nick’s link and you’ll see the iPlayer will be available for Mac and Linux – they’re working on it.