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WikiParanoia: Who Watches the Watchmen? |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
Rants
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Friday, 28 September 2007 |
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Wikipedia is, of course, a marvel and the wiki philosophy in general deserves every accolade thrown its way. The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free content license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." Nothing wrong with that.
 The complaint, sensibly registered by many commentators, is that
anyone can write and edit wiki entries, and so wiki sources are not
reliable in the traditional academic sense. While certain
self-correcting mechanisms contain this to a degree, it's a fundamental
problem, made more interesting by reports like these .
It seems the Wikiscanner feature, designed to identify the most
prolific authors and editors on the various wiki sites, has uncovered
some interesting contributors. And by interesting, I mean totally
predictable. Among the busiest contributors -- the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency, the British Labour party, the Vatican, and the
Church of Scientology. As expected, these groups are constantly
monitoring and cleaning up their own entries. Which stands to reason:
Any conspicuous government or commercial enterprise is going to get its
entry defaced regularly on Wikipedia. They also evidently spend a good amount of
time shoring up other entries potentially related to their concerns.
For instance, the CIA has edited entries on presidential biographies
and military operations.
The Australian Broadcasting report is rather breathless about it all,
but really -- this can hardly be considered shocking. And, technically
speaking, the CIA spooks have as much right to wiki as anyone else.
Besides, it lends a nice flavor of suspense to the proceedings.
Frankly, the CIA, the Vatican, the Scientologists -- these guys don't
even scare me anymore. Reality has long ago surpassed my wildest
conspiracy fantasies. I can guarantee you that Hollywood and Madison
Avenue do 1,000 time more wiki manipulation -- they're just smarter
about covering their tracks.
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