Wired magazine published an article yesterday about Wikipedia Scanner, a search engine that lists Wikipedia edits by IP address ranges. (An IP address is the numbers assigned to any computer connected to the Internet.) Wikipedia Scanner was built by Virgil Griffith, a CalTech grad student, to uncover companies, agencies, and political campaigns that make anonymous, self-serving edits to the free, online encyclopedia.
After learning of Wikipedia Scanner, I immediately thought of my article about Whole Foods in which I suggested the company had curtailed its online activities after CEO John Mackey was outed as “Rahodeb” on Yahoo’s stock forums. I wondered if the Director of Publications (user BradyWFM) who once maintained the company’s Wikipedia entry had indeed made anonymous edits since the apparent clampdown. I had suggested as much in the article, and now I had a way to verify it.
Turns out Whole Foods was not making significant anonymous edits to their Wikipedia entry — at least not since December 22, 2006, when an anonymous user inside Whole Foods’ IP range gutted entire sections relating to product quality and the humane treatment of animals. (That day’s edits concluded with this glowing statement: “Additionally, the Company announced that CEO John Mackey will reduce his salary to $1 beginning January 1, 2007 and forgo any future stock option awards.”
Since Rahodeb, BradyWFM has made only one edit — a correction of obvious vandalism. It appears they truly do respect Wikipedia and take care to participate responsibly.
So I perused the search results further. What I found reveals a great deal about the interests of people who work for Whole Foods. While the results included edits to articles on such food- and health-relevant topics as flavonoids, butter, and nutritional yeast, the vast majority of edits were made to far more interesting entries. Here’s a small sampling:
- Bettie Page
- Kiss (band)
- Spontaneous human combustion
- “One drop” rule
- Back and forth idiocy regarding an Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode
- Cannabis
- Donkey punch
My personal favorites are the edits to the entry on oral sex involving some poor soul named Craig Tubbs:
It’s amusing to think these edits would be much, much harder to track down if the ones responsible had actually created an account on Wikipedia and logged in. (IP addresses of logged-in users are not published.) By hiding their identities, these Wikipedia “editors” have actually outed themselves.
(If you’re curious, here’s the full list of all anonymous Wikipedia edits made from within Whole Foods’ alleged IP range.)
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