A stealth edit occurs when an

online resource A web resource is any identifiable resource (digital, physical, or abstract) present on or connected to the World Wide Web.< ...

is changed without any record of the change being preserved. The term has a negative

connotation A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation. A connotation is frequently described as either positive o ...

, as it is a technique which allows

authors An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

to attempt to retroactively change what is written. A common scenario would be a

reporter A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

posting a diatribe against something, followed by a

blogger A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...

posting that the reporter is too extreme, followed by the reporter stealth editing the original post to be less extreme. The result is that the blogger looks like the one who is too extreme, since the public can't tell that the original post has been changed. The existence of stealth edits may often be detected by comparing the current contents of a web page against

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

cache Cache, caching, or caché may refer to: Places United States * Cache, Idaho, an unincorporated community * Cache, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Cache, Oklahoma, a city in Comanche County * Cache, Utah, Cache County, Utah * Cache Count ...

of the same page. In some cases, stealth editing of online content can be manually identified by making use of a

web archiving Web archiving is the process of collecting portions of the World Wide Web to ensure the information is preserved in an archive for future researchers, historians, and the public. Web archivists typically employ web crawlers for automated captur ...

service.

Non-stealthy edit

A variety of non-stealthy techniques exist when making corrections or updates: * The title of the page can have an update notification prepended or appended to it, along with a brief description of what has changed

* File deletion, Deletions may remain but be crossed out, while additions are made in a different colour

* Publicly accessible

change log A changelog is a log or record of all notable changes made to a project. The project is often a website or software project, and the changelog usually includes records of changes such as bug fixes, new features, etc. Some open-source projects i ...

s may be kept for every edit. The common feature is that all these methods explicitly let the reader know that an edit has been made. A grey area exists when the edit is trivial (such as a

typographic error A typographical error (often shortened to typo), also called a misprint, is a mistake (such as a spelling mistake) made in the typing of printed (or electronic) material. Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual type-setting (typography) ...

). Some organizations flag all updates; others make a judgment call about what is considered a substantive update.

Non-stealthy edit

See also