Now You Can Track Who Doctors Wiki Entries!

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Scanner Tracks Who's Changing What on Wikipedia
You might have suspected it, and ignored it until now in your online life: Wikipedia isn't the most reliable reference. It's just often the first source to come up when you do an online search.

Now a new Web tool offers proof that you shouldn't use Wikipedia to write your school reports or compile biographical facts about your favorite singer (without checking elsewhere as well) because the company or the band you're researching is likely to have enhanced or polished its Wikipedia image.

It isn't illegal. The whole point of the online encyclopedia is that it is collaborative and multi-sourced.

I would have thought that it would be obvious that Wikipedia entries could easily fall prey to occasional inappropriate doctoring. The BBC News approach to this story is um, interesting:
Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits'
An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organisations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries.

Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the agency's computers made edits to the page of Iran's president.

The rest of the article follows a similar track.

Hubby had already told me last night about the doctoring of Rush Limbaugh's entry by someone connected to the Democratic party. I thought it was funny. Stupid, but funny.

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