Date published: 2007/08/16
The BBC says:
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.
It also purportedly shows that the Vatican has edited entries about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
The tool, developed by US researchers, trawls a list of 5.3m edits and matches them to the net address of the editor.
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopaedia that can be created and edited by anyone.
Most of the edits detected by the scanner correct spelling mistakes or factual inaccuracies in profiles. However, others have been used to remove potentially damaging material or to deface sites.
This is a misleading article. For one thing, the Scanner did not show that "the CIA was involved in editing entries", or that "the Vatican has edited entries", etc. It just shows that someone inside these organisations (or someone clever enough to access their network or spoof their network address) edited entries. There is no way of knowing whether there was any official approval for this to happen. And indeed, someone inside the BBC itself edited the page for George Bush, changing his middle name from Walker to Wanker. But even if the BBC had been honest enough to mention this edited entry, they would not have said that "the BBC was involved in editing entries", because (one assumes) this is not the official BBC view of Bush (although most UK citizens view Bush that way).
(Not surprisingly, lots of people noticed that there were edited entries with a BBC address, and the BBC was forced to add a groveling statement at the bottom of the article saying "BBC News website users contacted the corporation to point out that the tool also revealed that people inside the BBC had made edits to Wikipedia pages", but singularly failed to give examples.)
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