San Francisco TV News Dings Bureaucrats for COD4, Bully & Other Wikipedia Edits

San Francisco TV News Dings Bureaucrats for COD4, Bully & Other Wikipedia Edits

May 14, 2008

Activision's uber-popular Call of Duty 4 and Rockstar's controversial Bully are among hundreds of non-work related Wikipedia edits made by city and county government workers in the San Francisco Bay area, according to local TV news.

KGO-7 aired the report, which also noted a variety of non-game Wiki edits, including some related to movies, politics and American Idol. The station used Caltech grad student Virgil Griffith's Wikiscanner application to trace the edits back to government offices.

Spokesman Gregg Sass of the San Francisco Department of Public Health criticized the government employees' Wikipedia activity:

Clearly it sounds as if that's not city business. They're prohibited [by policy] from using city equipment for non-business use, period.

Comments

You know, this brings up some good quetsion

1. Being this is game Politics, what game related changes were made, by who, and what was the content of those changes. I remember in the past Leeland "I'm a lying dirtbag" lee had been caught editing stuff. Can anyone point me to that article?

2. Anyone thought to look at Jacks Wikipedia page and try and track it to see if he Tries to edit it?


Just a thought.

http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr
Jack has actually attempted
Jack has actually attempted to edit his entry on Wikipedia in the past. He allegedly added some highly biased material in his favor and, when it was reversed, threatened to sue the website unless they provided the names of everyone responsible for the writing of his page. Of course, nothing ever came of it. I believe some information is still available in both the "history" and "discussion" archives on the site.
Allegedly?
Allegedly?, come on dude we all know that is right up Jack's alley; his ego is the size of a whale and he loves to feed it
So
Did they say they were murder simulators or something?
I wonder...
Were they trying to upload their super cool high scores?
The quote from Sass

The quote from Sass strikes me a bit unrealistic. Sure, policy is to not use official equipment for anything other than work. Short of a draconian lockdown of the computers and/or the network, that's not likely to happen in the real world. Everyone uses the net for non-work-related purposes at the office, at least occasionally. It might be as little as checking the weather during a coffee break, or it might be editing a Wikipedia entry you're interested in on your lunch break, or it might be posting to a gaming news site when you should be working (ahem).

Whether or not there is a problem here depends on the nature of the edits, and on whether or not the workers in question got their work done anyway. If they're doing their jobs and also making legitimate article updates during their breaks, I don't see it as a big deal.

Oh brother...

This is why you don't have the CFO in charge of IT.  Yes they will be implementing a filter/logger for Internet usage, but who's going to monitor and maintain it?

As for the edits this just underscores why you can't believe everything on the Internets.

Well, what DID they type in it.
I'm just wondering, oy. And I'm surprised that there's conservatives who brave/foolhardy enough to live in San Francisco.
San Fran, Leeland Yee's home base.
I think we need to know what they editted. Seeing that it's the home of one of our most vocal critics.
It's a Gov't workers are lazy, not games are evil report

It doesn't look like the content of the edits themselves is the focus of the report.  It doesn't sound like there was anything we need to get up in arms about.  The report is about bored Gov't workers spending time on the internet.  They note that there were 475 edits in the past three years from the office in question, and it was for everything from Battlestar Galactica to Hitchcock, Wrestlemania, Call of Duty, and even gay porn.


It's sweeps week right now.  That time of year when the local news stations make a big deal out of nothing to try and grab some ratings.  For example, here in Orlando we've had all sorts of crap including "How to get into Heaven", and just last night "What to do when you're flamed on the internet."  I really wish I was making those up too. 

So how do you get in to
So how do you get in to heaven?
And what do you do when you get flamed?

Aside from murder, of course.

Edit: Yay, first GP edit. Glee

ConstantNeophyte: always the newb, ALWAYS.

You know, I don't know.  I

You know, I don't know.  I usually make it a point to avoid the news during sweeps week as the stories they run then tend to piss me off a little due to their absurdity.  Apparently it was a week long thing though and they were asking local religious leaders, of different religions, how to get into Heaven.


I did catch a little bit of that one about people flaming you online though while I was getting my dog ready for a walk.  It was some random guy basically saying prove them wrong.

Gay Porn?

Gay Porn, are you shitting me, why in the hell would a politician be editing thearticle ongay pornand whatwere theyputting upthere.

and no, I'm not going to the history page to find out; nothing against gay people but I'm not really comfortable looking through the gay porn page looking for what could amount to a grammer correction.

yay firs edit

What the hell did you edit?

What the hell did you edit? Cause it sure wasn't spelling or grammar...

-ConstantNeophyte: always the newb, ALWAYS.

Ohhh

Oh God-Fucking-Damnit

First FIRST

 Why can I not edit multiple times?

and yes, yes I know Epic fail

weird bolding

the bold button was bolding every other word and i used a smillie to turn it off and rewrite the words however on my post above not only did that not work it was bolding every word

GP I need you help

spaces

the lack of spaces was probable caused when I was fixing the bolded words and forgot to put in spaces

and yes, I realize that by trying to edit my post I just fucked it up even more

I posted this somewhere

I posted this somewhere else, but when you hit the B I U buttons they stay highlighted, so everytime you hit space you toggle them on/off again.

-ConstantNeophyte: always the newb, ALWAYS.

i know
yes i saw that but i edited my post before you figured that out
Not politicians, government
Not politicians, government workers, there's a world of difference between the two.  Basically think clerks and general office staff.
B I U buttons

GP the bold, italicisz(or however the fuck you spell it) and underline buttons don't umm, unbutton

this needs fixing, oh and the one edit "feature"

 

hehe

G.P. phone home.

G.P. phone home

B I U

Hmm, having played around, it seems the best way to do it is to type first then highlight and B U I etc afterwards. Pressing the buttons without having text highlighted seems to be the screwy bit.

Edit: Now it strikes me that perhaps this is something best mentioned in the "new look" topic.

Edit the Second: Well it seems you can edit a current comment, but not one you have posted and navigated away from, I will now experiment (stand back).

Edit the Third (Known as Dave to his mates): Well that didn't work, maybe you can only edit your most recent post. Stand back; more experimenting.

-ConstantNeophyte: always the newb, ALWAYS.

So....

The proof of the pudding is in the eating... or something.

Edit: Well so much for that experiment. I can edit all my posts except the 2nd one???

-ConstantNeophyte: always the newb, ALWAYS.

GamePolitics ShoutBox

Posted 11/08/09 at 09:02am
DarkSaber: http://tinyurl.com/yez7jyo
Posted 11/08/09 at 09:01am
DarkSaber: Oh for gods sake, the Gearbox pres is gobbing off about Valve again
Posted 11/08/09 at 08:53am
JDKJ: But cheer up, Austin. If the unemployment rate continues to double-digit as predicted for the next few years, your half-dozen stands a better than likely chance of returning to power.
Posted 11/08/09 at 08:46am
JDKJ: @DS: If he had added the line about "or hiring illegals aliens under the table to work as nannies," it would have been a completely perfect descripition. And, yes, it's about the same difference between a six and a half-dozen.
Posted 11/08/09 at 08:31am
DarkSaber: My god, that description makes them sound almost Republican. Still what did you expect, Obama is only marginally more left than republicans.
Posted 11/08/09 at 01:07am
Austin_Lewis: Health insurance, brought to you by the same kind of bureacrats who couldn't, in timely fashion, investigate the comments of any of the men Obama appointed Czars. Or their past. Or their history of not paying taxes.
Posted 11/08/09 at 01:06am
Austin_Lewis: Yes, and what a piece of crap it was. Arresting and fining people just because they don't make a personal choice to buy healh insurance, creating over a hundred new bureacracies, and worse.
Posted 11/08/09 at 12:24am
ZippyDSMlee: JDKJ:the only trouble is a bunch of witless hacks wrote it....its going to be a train wreck....
Posted 11/07/09 at 11:33pm
JDKJ: BREAKING: In a photo-finish at the wire, House passes health care reform bill. Relatedly, in a fit of pique, Austin Lewis kicks innocent dog.
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:27pm
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:26pm
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:23pm
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:18pm
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
Posted 11/07/09 at 03:34pm
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:58am
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:56am
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:51am
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:48am
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:11am
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:07am
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
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