A buddy of mine who I went to highschool with builds datacenters these days, he also plays EVE. So, he built an application we've come to call Iris, termed for the center of the human eye, as it is mostly a search tool. What it basically does is it takes a database of information from EVE, and cross references it with data from third party websites such as Eve-who and eve-kill, along with eve-search and such. In short, it has the capability to back-search data such as corporation history of characters, their kills and fleets in order to build a general idea of the group of people they call their friends.
So, where would we get such a database? Using the EVE API over the course of one or two months, we compiled a rather huge mound of data. This, along with contributions from certain other parties we had access to, we were able to build something rather nice for ourselves.
What did we do with it, you ask? Well, you may recall I had a fascination with finding Smedley's EVE character. From the start, I had had my suspicions regarding the identity of that character. I had already known a few things to start with:
- He was allegedly a director of EVE-Uni, but was confirmed he was/is a member of EVE Uni.
- he joined the CFC about the same vague time that EVE Uni went to nullsec as blues to TEST. This was narrowed down to a span of having happened within a specific timespan of a week and a half.
- He has since not been shy about offering up the information that he is apart of a corporation in goonswarm federation,
- but not goonswarm proper.
- supposedly, he has remained in this corporation since joining the CFC. The fact he might have changed corporations a couple of times cannot be ruled out and must be allowed.
- participant of hulkageddon 2012, probably on an alt. though goonswarm being goonswarm, their IT and logistical arms aren't something to laugh at. Sec status does not mean anything for those that actively live in null, so while the alt bit could be important, it cannot be given full weight. main characters must also be considered on equal footing.
For most human beings, this is scarce enough to retain anonymity from those who would look into it. The idea of doing actual footwork and research deters most people.
Not Iris. Iris returned a final list of about 40 people that met the majority (half of any of it, with a focus on certain, specific details and spans of time) of the criteria above, much smaller and workable than the thousands in the CFC.