Wikipedia Scanner reveals who is editing entries

Corporate shenanigans to be exposed, scandals to quickly follow?

15 August 2007 16:11 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Wikipedia is a big, beautiful, yet ultimately flawed concept. Both its strength and its weakness lies in the fact that anyone can hop on and edit the online encyclopedia.

In the past this has led to doubts and problems with the reliability of the information from simple errors and lack of citations.

Wikipedia is no doubt about to hit the headlines again for a more sinister reason - revelations about companies, as well as individuals, altering their Wiki entries for PR reasons.

A "data-mining" service has been launched that will reveal exactly who is editing specific Wikipedia entries.

The Wikipedia Scanner, invented by Virgil Griffith, a Cal Tech grad student, reveals the IP addresses of those altering pages, something previously anonymous to the majority of the population.

Griffith was inspired to create the scanner after news that American politicians were caught editing their own Wiki entries.

In the corporate world there is much potential for scandal as millions of Wikipedia edits can now be traced back to the their company sources.

It has already been revealed that an article on an e-voting machine was hacked about by the company that sold the device and Wal-Mart made changes to a line about their pay policies.

There's a link to the Scanner below...