Sunday, March 23, 2008

Thomas the Tank Engine IV: or how 206 = 208

We have already noted the edits made by a Rogers customer to the wikipedia articles related to Thomas the Tank Engine (see here, here, here).  At about the same time, the same editor (one assumes) was responsible for a number of edits of the series' founder, Britt Allcroft. The first eight  edits of the article's history can be seen here:
    19:10, 31 December 2003 66.185.84.208 (Talk)
    21:42, 27 December 2003 66.185.84.208 (Talk)
    21:31, 27 December 2003 66.185.84.208 (Talk)
    (diff) 21:31, 11 November 2003 66.185.84.208 (Talk)
    (diff) 06:38, 11 November 2003 Jimfbleak (Talk | contribs) m (it's-->its)
    (diff) 00:46, 11 November 2003 66.185.84.208 (Talk)
    (diff) 00:45, 11 November 2003 Angela (Talk | contribs) m (fmt)
    (diff) 00:44, 11 November 2003 66.185.84.206 (Talk)
What we see here is similar what we've seen before. Wikipedia logs read from the bottom, so the very first edit to the article was made by x.x.x.206. Within a minute, a signed in user, Angela (presumably on what is now called new page patrol) noticed the new article and edited it to conform with the wikipedia
 manual of style. Within another minute, the original editor returns, but now as x.x.x.208, which he or she still had (or perhaps had again) when they returned to edit the article six weeks later.