Companies and party aides cast censorious eye over Wikipedia

* Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
* The Guardian
* Wednesday August 15 2007


Editing your own entry on Wikipedia is usually the province of vain celebrities keen for some good PR. But a new website has uncovered dozens of companies that have been editing the site in order to improve their public image.

The Wikipedia Scanner, which trawls the backwaters of the popular online encyclopaedia, has unearthed a catalogue of organisations massaging entries, including the CIA and the Labour party.

Workers operating on CIA computers have been spotted editing entries including the biography of former presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, while unnamed individuals inside the Vatican have worked on entries about Catholic saints - and Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams.

Meanwhile, an anonymous surfer from Labour's Millbank headquarters excised a section about Labour Students which referred to "careerist MPs" and criticisms that the party's student movement was no longer seen as radical.

And somebody from a computer traced to Democrat HQ edited a page on conservative American radio host Rush Limbaugh, calling him "idiotic", "ridiculous" and labelling his 20 million listeners as "legally retarded".

But the biggest culprit that the Scanner claims to have discovered is Diebold, a supplier of voting machines, which it says has made huge alterations to entries about its involvement in the controversial "hanging chad" election in the US in 2000. The company was criticised in the wake of the disputed results, but edits made by its employees on Wikipedia have included the removal of 15 paragraphs detailing the allegations.

"In August 2003 Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold, announced that he had been a top fundraiser for George W Bush ..." the deleted text read. "When assailed by critics for the conflict of interest ... he vowed to lower his political profile."

The change, made two years ago, was quickly reversed and the culprit warned off for "vandalism". A Diebold official was not available for comment.

It is not the first time people have been found editing their own Wikipedia entries, which is considered a breach of etiquette on the site. Last year some US Congressional staff were found to be removing information they deemed unsavoury from the profiles of the politicians they worked for, and this year computer group Microsoft back-pedalled after it was revealed to have offered money to experts to "correct" entries about it on the site.

The Scanner, built by Virgil Griffith, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, works by comparing 5.3m edits made on the encyclopaedia against the internet addresses of more than 2m companies or individuals.

(more) (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/15/wikipedia.corporateaccountability?gusrc=rss&feed=technology)

For example:

Fox News scrubs Wikipedia entries. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/14/212516/918)

The fact that entries can be edited, or "scrubbed", at all, speaks volumes about the validity of any information contained on Wikipedia.

The fact that entries can be edited, or "scrubbed", at all, speaks volumes about the validity of any information contained on Wikipedia.
This sort of reasoning is yet another reason why I think critical thinking is a rarity, and not the norm.

The fact that entries can be edited, or "scrubbed", at all, speaks volumes about the validity of any information contained on Wikipedia.
I agree. Just the fact that anyone can edit the entries has always made me wonder about the legitimacy of the content at Wikipedia.

The fact that entries can be edited, or "scrubbed", at all, speaks volumes about the validity of any information contained on Wikipedia.
People who say this have not researched the issue enough.

People who say this have not researched the issue enough.

From the Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

"Studies suggest that Wikipedia is broadly as reliable as Encyclopedia Britannica, with similar error rates on established articles for both major and minor omissions and errors. There is a tentative consensus, backed by a gradual increase in academic citation as a source, that it provides a good starting point for research, and that articles in general have proven to be reasonably sound. That said, articles and subject areas sometimes suffer from significant omissions, and while misinformation and vandalism are usually corrected quickly, this does not always happen. (See for example this incident in which a person inserted a fake biography linking a prominent journalist to the Kennedy assassinations and Soviet Russia as a joke on a co-worker which went undetected for 4 months, saying afterwards he "didn’t know Wikipedia was used as a serious reference tool.") Therefore, a common conclusion is that it is a valuable resource and provides a good reference point on its subjects, but like any online source, unfamiliar information should be checked before relying upon it."

I wonder how factual the Bio of Herr Minister of
Propaganda - Joseph Goebbels - Is.?
Cuz he also was in charge of Enlightenment.
I wonder how those 2 endeavors conflicted compatably.

Talk about selective reading! Just goes to show you, people only hear what they want to hear.

Talk about selective reading! Just goes to show you, people only hear what they want to hear.

Show ... Joe Blow...SchMoe !
We're talkin about READING WikipediA.
Now,I realize you done got a special software program,that actually
reads it fer ya,like a Grimms Fairy Tale.
That was nice of yer parents ta git ya fur Christmass.
So's you'll stay in yer room and not wonder off too far,and all.

I should say, I was responding to moderate.

Talk about selective reading! Just goes to show you, people only hear what they want to hear.


Thats funny. But when they print this type of disclaimer, I tend to believe them.

"Therefore, a common conclusion is that it is a valuable resource and provides a good reference point on its subjects, but like any online source, unfamiliar information should be checked before relying upon it."


Or are you saying this is an invalid disclaimer?

It's not a disclaimer, dumbass, it's an explanation.

It's not a disclaimer, dumbass, it's an explanation.


Go read their site, diaper boy. They even list the same words in their disclaimer section. :upyours:

Wikipedia, in common with many websites, makes its disclaimers highly visible, a practice which at times has led to commentators citing these in order to support a view that Wikipedia is unreliable.
You mean this?

You mean this?


No, child. The one below, plus those listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disclaimers

"That is not to say that you will not find valuable and accurate information in Wikipedia; much of the time you will. However, Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here. The content of any given article may recently have been changed, vandalized or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the relevant fields."

People at the universities use it all the time, they'll just either cite it as from another source (cause not many professors are going to take the time to read through them all and check them all anyway), or not cite it at all.

People at the universities use it all the time, they'll just either cite it as from another source (cause not many professors are going to take the time to read through them all and check them all anyway), or not cite it at all.
I use wikipedia by going to the sources at the bottom of the article and citing the info from there. It's really a good place to go to find sources if it's not a reputable source itself...

No, child. The one below, plus those listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disclaimers

"That is not to say that you will not find valuable and accurate information in Wikipedia; much of the time you will. However, Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here. The content of any given article may recently have been changed, vandalized or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the relevant fields."
That's great. Now why don't you read what I quoted, then what you said at the beginning of the thread. I know this "reading everything" bit is hard for you, but I'm sure you'll be able to hack it, one day. I have faith in you!

It's not a disclaimer, dumbass, it's an explanation.

Um,yer speakin from firsthand experience I take it.
Cuz,word round hears has it,there was more Danny One
Dis!claimer on yer Birth Certificate,BTW

wikpedia is shit. it is the typical thing of the internet. it is easier to fake and give erroneous info on the net. and people are dumb enough to swallow it hook line and sinker.

you could change information easily by just printing a book, but it took time and made people really research something if they thought it wrong. but the net? people seem to be getting lazier as time goes by and don't try to verify stuff.

wikpedia is shit. it is the typical thing of the internet. it is easier to fake and give erroneous info on the net. and people are dumb enough to swallow it hook line and sinker.

you could change information easily by just printing a book, but it took time and made people really research something if they thought it wrong. but the net? people seem to be getting lazier as time goes by and don't try to verify stuff.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed.

Wikipedia:Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies. The others include Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in Wikipedia articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability

It's really a good place to go to find sources if it's not a reputable source itself...
Reputable has nothing to do with it. Wikipedia is not a source at all. By definition. Neither is any other encyclopedia.

It's really a shame that just about everything, including encyclopedic information, has become politicized. Unfortunately, this is the postmodern condition: the idea that bias or self-interest underlies all discourse.

But none of this wikipedia stuff should really be that much of surprise because there are countless instances in which we seek to impose value systems by modulating the flow of information. School boards have long censored social studies textbooks that discuss homosexuality in the context of American society; the same school boards are probably also in the business of carefully reviewing science textbooks that discuss evolution.