As you probably already know, the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia can be edited by anyone. You can edit it and leave your name, or you can do it anonymously and leave an IP address.

Virgil Griffith has designed a very simple piece of software [WikiScanner] that scans Wikipedia entries and makes note of all of the IP addresses that have edited it, and what exactly they changed. The results are pretty fucked up:

http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/

The CIA, FBI, Walmart, congressional politicians, you name it and they've all edited their own entries or entries that will impact unfavourably upon them. Much of the edits are somewhat innocuous, but I suppose that's a matter of opinion. Walmart, for example, removed sections that dealt with the fact that they pay their employees peanuts when compared to other stores.

Democracy in action!

Check it out, and be careful what you take as truth from Wikipedia

EDIT: Here's an interview with the software's creator:

http://prisonplanet.com/audio/300807griffith.mp3

He mentions Diebold (the company responsible for the electronic voting machines) and how this company has removed any criticism of their machines, namely the stuff about how they aren't secure and are easily manipulated/hacked etc. Interesting.

Dude! This is bulllshit! I'm not surprised... just disappointed.

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Me too, I love reading through Wikipedia. I knew it was bound to be prone to misinformation from time to time because of the anonymous editing system, but my faith has been shaken even more with this latest bollocks. I suppose this is the price of "open source" information, though. Gotta roll with the punches somewhat. I think if everyone is aware of the danger it won't be such a big deal.

their pretty much deleting anything negative about something whether its true or not?? thtas kinda ridiculous

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That's pretty stupid if they are.

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Yep pretty much. How gay

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Well thats Wikipedia for you - what else do you expect? I like Wikipedia for a quick summary of trivial subjects but its common sense that you can't rely on something that can be edited by any unqualified person. Same rule goes to why you shouldn't eat up what John Doe tells you about LSD or abortion.

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Don't 'eat up' what John Doe tells you about Wikipedia either, ^

What a douche. Haha.

yeah... how can anyone be surprised? YOU ALREADY KNEW IT. (or seriously should have). hasnt anyone learned their lesson by reading album reviews??? metal-archives taught me all about that, years ago.

there are still a great number of things that will hold relevancy, on wikipedia, because there are things that people just have no interest in lying about. although, of course, im not fond of all the bullshit that IS on there.

Our government just got egged for changing their own Wiki entries. Very cool site.

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Since most big organizations that care about their self-image try to edit their own histories (because it's easier and better than just not doing shitty things to begin with), what, exactly, is surprising about the fact that they edited their own entries on a site that allows you to do so, and on which virtually every single contentious page has a banner claiming that the page has been edited by somebody involved in the topic? Don't go to wikipedia if you want truth.

But it is funny that the government got caught. I can't believe there are people who think these assholes are competent enough to have pulled off any of those conspiracy theories.

I heard about this on either Jon Stewart or the Colbert Report about a week ago. They said the Exxon report about the Valdez oil spill had been changed lessening it's impact on the environment.

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I don't know what kind of coverage this has had in the US, but I'm annoyed that I have to go to a the forum of a fucking tab site to find out about this. Though, still, I'm not at all suprised.

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Yeah, I wasn't surprised either, but it was interesting because we now have incontrovertible proof that a.) Wikipedia cannot be trusted, at least not as much as it seems to be, and b.) our beloved government(s), intelligence services and corporations have been caught red handed doing what we already know they were doing - being a shower of lying, scheming bastards

The chap who designed WikiScanner was talking about perhaps doing something similar with Google Video, that is, trying to figure out when, where, how and why certain videos are censored or have their view count reset to zero to knock them off the top 100. I love when Big Brother gets a taste of his own medicine hehe.