Wikipedia's Contorted Entries
The Herald Tribune reports that "Last year, someone edited the Wikipedia entry for the Sea World theme parks to change all mentions of orcas to killer whales, insisting that this was a more accurate name for the species... There was another, unexplained edit: A paragraph about criticism of Sea World's "lack of respect toward its orcas" disappeared. Both changes, it turns out, originated at a computer at Anheuser-Busch, Sea World's owner."
"Dozens of similar examples of insider editing came to light last week through WikiScanner, a new Web site that traces the source of millions of changes to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The site, wikiscanner.virgil.gr, created by a computer science graduate student, Virgil Griffith, cross-references an edited entry on Wikipedia with the owner of the computer network where the change originated, using the Internet protocol address of the editor's network."
...So, read what you will on Wikipedia with a huge grain of salt.
"Dozens of similar examples of insider editing came to light last week through WikiScanner, a new Web site that traces the source of millions of changes to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The site, wikiscanner.virgil.gr, created by a computer science graduate student, Virgil Griffith, cross-references an edited entry on Wikipedia with the owner of the computer network where the change originated, using the Internet protocol address of the editor's network."
...So, read what you will on Wikipedia with a huge grain of salt.
Labels: editing, encyclopedia, internet, misinformation, research, wikipedia
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