Traveller Wikki TAS News section

[Cryton]

While looking over the Traveller Wiki, and going through the TAS news entries there, I discovered that some wonderful human being has gone through and changed the entries for the rebelion era so that they read that "Empress" Ciencia survived the 132-1116 assinations, and modified most of the entries in the regular section to reflect it.

Did a pretty good job of messing up what were supposed to be TAS news for the rebelion era. Im not sure if the alternate Gurps timeline TAS news entries were messed up, as Im not as familiar with them.

Still. Pretty lame, as a lot of people worked pretty hard to set up and make the wiki, and to have one person come in and start messing up other peoples work, is jusr reprehenible and juvinile.

Figured Id let people know.

~Rich

 

[whartung]

While looking over the Traveller Wiki, and going through the TAS news entries there, I discovered that some wonderful human being has gone through and changed the entries for the rebelion era so that they read that "Empress" Ciencia survived the 132-1116 assinations, and modified most of the entries in the regular section to reflect it.

Did a pretty good job of messing up what were supposed to be TAS news for the rebelion era. Im not sure if the alternate Gurps timeline TAS news entries were messed up, as Im not as familiar with them.

If the old content was good, and you think this was done in error, or maliciously, then change it back. There should be some ready way to undo changes to the respective changes easily. Wiki vandalism is common enough that all modern wikis can recover from them fairly easily.

Are you talking about http://traveller.wikia.com/ or some other wiki? I didn't find any references to any "Ciencia" save for a single page as a "Grand Princess". Maybe the search facility is just plain awful, but I don't know.

 

[Cryton]

That would be the wiki. ANd I am unable to correct the entries as I dont have the source material to do so, nor do I know how to recover the original data.

 

[Cryton]

Heres the link to the damaged section:

http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Traveller_News_Service

Fom what I can tell, it looks like every instance where Emperor Lucan was printed, Empress Iphenigea (ciencia iphegenia )was subtituted. I can not tell for sure however, and some of the entrys look changed even more than that

 

[rancke]

This looks very, very odd. Wikis are supposed to preserve the older versions, but the oldest version available (dated December 19 2006) already has the false entries. There doesn't seem to be anything to do except to restore the originals by hand. But I'll wait a few days to see if Thomas can do something about it before I do it myself.

What a pointless act of vandalism...


Hans

 

[Spinward Scout]

What a pointless act of vandalism...

So don't let it be pointless. Work it into a storyline or a TAS news article where members of the 'real' Strephon faction infiltrated whatever runs the Imperial Encyclopedia updates and changed the entries. Turn it to your advantage.

 

[rancke]

So don't let it be pointless. Work it into a storyline or a TAS news article where members of the 'real' Strephon faction infiltrated whatever runs the Imperial Encyclopedia updates and changed the entries.

Already did that one.


Hans

 

[whartung]

This looks very, very odd. Wikis are supposed to preserve the older versions, but the oldest version available (dated December 19 2006) already has the false entries. There doesn't seem to be anything to do except to restore the originals by hand. But I'll wait a few days to see if Thomas can do something about it before I do it myself.

Is it even possible to remove old history? Typically no (that's kind of the point).

I'm not familiar with the material at this level of detail, but does anyone recall ever seeing it correctly? Perhaps it was consciously entered this way from the beginning. The tagged author was apparently rather active (up to less than a year ago). Mind I'm talking solely about the TNS 1116 entry, I have not looked at the rest.

 

[Cryton]

I'm not familiar with the material at this level of detail, but does anyone recall ever seeing it correctly? Perhaps it was consciously entered this way from the beginning. The tagged author was apparently rather active (up to less than a year ago). Mind I'm talking solely about the TNS 1116 entry, I have not looked at the rest.

Ive been using the entries for a few years for my games as I dont have the original JTAS mags. The change happened within the last year or so. And its all the entries from 132-1116 on...

 

[whartung]

I'm not going to suggest that something hasn't happened.

But the big issue is simply the scope of the hack.

For the 1116 entry, the data goes all the way back to (according to the wiki) the original article -- in 2006.

If something was done to his page, the wiki isn't recording that. Since this is a public wiki server, participants don't have the capability to edit the history of pages. Even the administrators (i.e. those who admin the individual wikis, not the guys who run the entire site) have no real ability to edit history pages. They certainly don't have the ability to change timestamps.

So, assuming that this data was correct at one time, the scope of the hack means that not only did they update the current entries, but they managed to somehow go back and modify the entire history of all of the entries.

Now, perhaps the admins exported the site, made the changes, deleted the originals, and then reimported the pages. Not sure if they can do that or not.

But a basic premise of a wiki, particularly MediaWiki (which is what this uses, and is also the same software the Wikipedia uses), is to preserve all of the change and discussion. Typically, you can't even delete something from these wikis, as they can be UNdeleted later.

Anyway, my basic point is that whatever may have happened here is not something casual. It was a great amount of effort to "cover their tracks" and not some random act of vandalism.

And what ever damage was done, appears to have been done as far back as July, since that's the last page dump snapshot of the site they have, and the changes are in there as well.

The Traveller Wiki has two admins: Tjoneslo and Dcorrin. I would suggest contacting them (perhaps their respective Talk pages on the wiki), or you can simply start a discussion on one of the actual pages, and ask them to look in to this.

 

[Dragoner]

Yes, there is something strange going on, if you go to the editor to try look at history the page freezes as well.

 

[arbitrary.remora]

I initially blame the Hivers.

But given the hamfistedness of the alterations, my suspicion is on SolSec.

-a.r.

 

[tjoneslo]

This is either a very clever hack or the original source was corrupted. There's more than the simple name substitution going on, as several entries are rewritten with correct pronouns and further altered text. Based upon the changes compared with a known, probably good, source, I suspect the latter. Though I find that difficult to believe as the original poster was a dedicated Traveller who wouldn't have made that kind of mistake.

I'll work on restoring the entries from known sources. I've also contacted the Wikia administrators to see if they have any ideas.

 

[whartung]

This is either a very clever hack or the original source was corrupted. There's more than the simple name substitution going on, as several entries are rewritten with correct pronouns and further altered text. Based upon the changes compared with a known, probably good, source, I suspect the latter. Though I find that difficult to believe as the original poster was a dedicated Traveller who wouldn't have made that kind of mistake.

I'll work on restoring the entries from known sources. I've also contacted the Wikia administrators to see if they have any ideas.

Well, the OP seems to feel that this has changed in the last year.

If it was a hack, I'm very curious as to how it was facilitated, especially if it wasn't you or Dcorrin as this suggests a deeper vulnerability within wikia itself. The fact that someone would do it on a Traveller wiki, and what they did, is even more boggling.

I hope you'll keep us updated as to what the Wikia admins have to say, tjoneslo.

 

[Sstefan]

This is either a very clever hack or the original source was corrupted. ....

It may well be that the origiinal source was corrupted. When I copied the source I had been absent from Traveller for quite a few years (decades?) so I might have been using a source that reflected the "alterations" and accepted them as canon.

But then again, I've always held the posisiton that the history of any event is written by the victorious ones ( or some possibly drunk scout who doesn't really care) and thus subject to some degree of bias.

 

[tjoneslo]

Just to update: I've fixed the TNS entries for the years 1116, 1117, 1118, 1119 and verified them against Survival Margin. I've also checked the entries for the years 1120-1125 to make sure they are correct, though they didn't have the large scale edits. In addition to entries from Survival Margin, these later years include a few entries from the HIWG project with permission, and they need formatting into the standard used by the earlier years. The TNS entries for 1126 to 1130 (the virus shutdown) still need to be transcribed.

I'm going to be working through these slowly as time permits. Though if there are sections you'd like to see prioritized, please let me know.