Wikipedia has come in for some stick ever since its creation. The ability for anyone to pop along and edit an entry is, to me, it's greatest strength. If any misinformation appears in a book it is preserved forever until the last edition drops into someones bath while any misinformation on Wikipedia is altered in seconds.
Embarrassingly for some, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, has created a software program that traces IP addresses of those who make Wikipedia changes.
So who has been caught vainly adding positive paragraphs or deleting whole swaths of less than complimentary remarks?
Step forward our very own Labour Party, the CIA and even the Vatican.
The Republican party apparently replaced the term "occupying forces" with "liberating" in an article referring to the Iraq war while someone using a computer inside Democrat HQ edited a page on conservative American radio host Rush Limbaugh, calling him "idiotic", "ridiculous" and labelling his listeners as "legally retarded".
Fox News have edited a number of pages about its presenters but the biggest culprit uncovered is Diebold, a supplier of voting machines, which made a huge amount of alterations to entries about its involvement in the controversial 2000 US election.
Amusingly, the New York Times were found guilty of adding the word “jerk” 12 times to George W. Bush’s listing.
4 comments:
It just goes to show you that nothing can be trusted except Falling on a Bruise and Under the Bridge.
Hey! What about being fabulously jinxed? Huh?
Anyway, that's hilarious! I read about a congressman changing his entry once and actually getting banned from Wikipedia. How embarrassing that must be.
Still, I don't trust it. I'll look there for a starting point then fact check myself. I hate fact checking.
The jerk thing, though, is the bomb-diggity.
Agree with you completely Joe although i have been known to change people comments.
Hang on, that isn't me, i have principles.
The jerk thing did make me laugh also jenny but so did the vision in my mind of the Pope sitting at his PC trying to make himself sound more holy.
Great post Lucy!
Now, I'm sticking with Much That Is Hidden - even the name sounds integrous!
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