Viewable Online Here
Published Online Aug. 27, 2007 by newser. com
Viewable Online Here (link operational as of Dec. 19, 2007)
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, has enjoyed tremendous popularity and success. Its success owes to the immense number of articles on virtually every subject in over a dozen different languages found on its servers.
People, particularly college students, use Wikipedia to such an extent that “wiki-ing” has become an accepted verb, much like “googling.” Part of the allure of Wikipedia is that anyone can create new articles and edit virtually any existing article.
Thus, the strength and appeal of this groundbreaking encyclopedia lies in its pool of user-editors, who create new articles about previously unreported subjects and edit existing articles to a higher degree of accuracy.
By preparing and disseminating information to the masses, these users are anonymous, benevolent, tech-savvy Big Brothers for the whole of the Wikipedia community.
Unfortunately, a darker version of the Big Brothers has recently been exposed. In the past, there was no reliable way of knowing just who edited what. A new tool called Wikiscanner lists every edit made to any article, along with the IP address of the computer from which the edit was made.
A computer’s IP address is unique to that computer. Thus, knowing the IP address of a computer reveals its exact physical location and the organization that administers it.
The vast lists of edits and IP addresses are searchable by organization and physical location of the editing computer. This newfound insight had led to some interesting findings.
As reported on “The Colbert Report,” and confirmed by this columnist’s independent findings using Wikiscanner, computers from the Exxon company (now ExxonMobil) edited the article about the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
An article covering what remains one of worst environmental disasters in history was edited to read “that there has been no long-term severe impact to the Prince William Sound ecosystem.”
This is highly inaccurate.
According to a 2001 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report, 58 percent of test sites still had significant oil residue, and several species had very low recovery rates in oil-affected areas. Other companies have also been shown to edit articles related to them and their products. Edits to the Wikipedia “Pepsi” article from IP addresses registered to PepsiCo removed an entire section related to the health risks posed by Pepsi.
While both these heinous and misleading edits have since been corrected by other users, they raise important questions regarding corporate responsibility and the accuracy of information presented as factual.
Wikipedia has transcended the mantle and stigma of a mere encyclopedia. Wikipedia received over 46 million visitors in May of this year alone, according to a July 2007 Reuters article.
That makes it the most popular news site on the internet. Even Wikipedia’s harshest critics, who condemn what they see as insufficient regulation of content and a lack of accuracy controls, have to agree that Wikipedia is one of this generation’s most widely-read sources of information.
In the age of internet-based mass communications, Wikipedia is the premier vehicle; it is the new flagship broadsheet.
Given this, it’s lamentable that corporations would resort to underhanded ploys to boost their public images. This kind of deliberate misinformation is more difficult in other forms of mass media, such as newspapers or magazines, because the culprit can be quickly identified.
Exposure would lead to a public relations nightmare, which is exactly the opposite of what corporations intend to happen when they engage in propaganda activities.
The threat of exposure alone serves as an effective deterrent. In internet-based operations, particularly open ones such as Wikipedia, it is a different story.
Companies and other entities can easily conceive of and execute deception with relative impunity. Organizations and corporations can and do publish egregiously incorrect claims within Wikipedia’s framework of trust and openness.
Furthermore, they capitalize on Wikipedia’s popular image to pass those claims off as facts. The relative success of Wikiscanner seems to suggest that these malicious practices will decline significantly.
Since its first appearance, Wikiscanner has received wide-ranging coverage in numerous media outlets, and public awareness of its existence appears on the rise. It has the full support of Wikipedia’s creators, who see it as a very useful tool to make Wikipedia as fair and accurate as possible, particularly for controversial topics.
Given the violations that Wikiscanner has already uncovered in a relatively short time, it would appear that a very powerful deterrent to malicious Wikipedia-editing has finally arrived and is here to stay.
While it is shameful that a relatively benign and helpful site such as Wikipedia would be tainted by a few entities wishing to improve their public images, it is human nature to make oneself look as good as possible to the world.
Many see an unflattering Wikipedia article as something that must be tweaked in order to give a more favorable portrayal.
Into the arena has stepped Wikiscanner as the standard bearer of another unique facet of human nature: to catch offenders red-handed and hang them out to dry for the whole world to see.
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