Wikipedians at work

A chap called Virgil Griffith, a student, started something that will put the brakes on a lot of hype that sometimes creeps into Wikipedia entries.Unlike many who work late into the night contributing to this dynamic knowledge repository, Griffith has come up with a rudimentary but powerful tool to help us peer through the curtain and check out who’s been goosing the system.

The tool is called Wiki scanner looks like a search engine. There you could type in a company name –say Walmart, or Starbucks– and see details of the edits that took place over the years. Among those who’ve fixed things and been exposed (here, here, and here) are Diebold, Dell, the CIA, BBC… the list is too long. WIRED even has a challenge out there for readers to scan through Wiki scanner, and submit names of companies with their fingers in the wiki jar.

This is transparency at its best.