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More Wikipedia Shenanegans: Australian addition
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by Jordan Yerman | August 23, 2007 at 08:45 am
896 views | 7 Recommendations | 3 comments
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A new website, WikiScanner - which traces the digital fingerprints of those who make changes to entries in the online encyclopedia - points to the department as the source of 126 edits on subjects ranging from the children overboard affair to the Treasurer, Peter Costello.
On June 28 an employee of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet modified Mr Costello's entry to remove a reference to the nickname "Captain Smirk".
The tool is located at http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr but intense attention has knocked it out of service many times this week.
The free scanner grabs the IP addresses used in anonymous Wikipedia edits in the past five years. By combining that with public information about which IP addresses belong to whom, the scanner reveals Wikipedia changes made from computers assigned to a bevy of organisations.
Many of the edits are predictably self-interested. For example, PCs in the Church of Scientology were used to remove criticism in the church's Wikipedia entry. But others hint at bored office workers, such as the tweaks to Wikipedia articles on TV shows being made from CIA computers.
Examples are being tallied at http://wired.reddit.com/wikidgame - a page run by Wired News.
Mr Griffith wrote on his site that he hopes "to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike".
Whatever comes of it, WikiScanner has a fan in Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. "It is fabulous and I strongly support it," Mr Wales said.
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 19:37 on August 23rd, 2007
jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 22:58 on August 23rd, 2007
Hi jordan,
I checked wikidgame site link. The format of the site needs to be indexed, but otherwise, it's interesting.
merrie
P.S. I rarely visit Wikipedia.
at 23:31 on August 23rd, 2007
Helen Razer writes:
Putting the poo bum dicky wee wee into Wikipedia
Kevin Andrews smells strongly of Roquefort cheese and hate. Or, at
least, he did until some upright soul thought to reverse my amendments
to the Minister's Wikipedia page.
Before I could post further elaborate fiction re the Honourable
Andrews, Janet Albrechtsen and a vat of baby lotion, I was locked out
by an uber-pedian and his troublesome need for "truth".
This is
all a terrible waste of my time, in retrospect. Today I learn I could
have been earning actual money as a Wiki-vandal. Why not? Workers in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet do.
Taking pause from the business of stuffing sweaty money into the lacy thongs of
teenagers, Kevin Rudd spoke with the Seven Network today. "I notice the
Prime Minister is engaging public servants to change Wikipedia," he told press.
Employees of the PMC, it appears, have enthusiastically thrown themselves into the work of Web 2.0.
If
you've never bothered to consult the Hive Mind hyperbole of Wikipedia,
here's a stub: it's an online "encyclopedia" that any twit can edit.
A playful new watchdog site called wikiscanner
has emerged to track the activity of twits. If you wish to learn
exactly which organisation has coarsened public life the most, you can
check it here.
126 edits have been made by the PMC. This, when
contrasted with my own graffito, is actually a fairly tepid effort.
Although, unlike one of Howard's most intimate servants, I've never
offered anything as delectably absurd as "Poo bum dicky wee wee".
A
far more sterling military commitment affects staff at the Department
of Defence. They've managed 5000 edits. Nice work, fellas.
This,
I think, is hardly newsworthy. Australian Public Servants have always
doodled. As a former, and only mildly disgraced, employee of the
erstwhile office of Patents, Trademarks and Design, I misused
microfiche, fax and telephone. It's only reasonable that the bored
administrative officers of today would misuse the technology available
to them.
The truly shocking thing about this story is that
anyone takes Wikipedia seriously at all. It is not a final authority.
It is not a fixed truth. It's a post-modern hell of bad spelling,
wayward grammar and utter balderdash.
In theory, the notion of
"collective intelligence" is admirable. In practise, Wikipedia is a
mess of opinion barely concealed as objective fact and drunk
mutilation.
I'm glad we're having a look at this hippy hive.
Riddled with inconsistencies, Wikipedia must not be elevated to the
status of "authority". It's a living testimony to the diminution of our
intellectual life.
Poo bum dicky wee wee.