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"Editing your own entry on Wikipedia is usually the province of vain celebrities keen for some good PR," writes Bobbie Johnson. "But a new website has uncovered dozens of companies that have been editing the site in order to improve their public image. The Wikipedia Scanner [6], which trawls the backwaters of the popular online encyclopaedia, has unearthed a catalogue of organisations massaging entries, including the CIA [7] and the Labour party [8]. ... But the biggest culprit that the Scanner claims to have discovered is Diebold [9], a supplier of e-voting [10] machines, which it says has made huge alterations to entries about its involvement in the controversial 'hanging chad' election in the US in 2000."
Links:
[1] http://dev.prwatch.org/users/13916/sheldon-rampton
[2] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/media/internet
[3] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/public-relations/issue-management
[4] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/secrecy
[5] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fdev.prwatch.org%2Fspin%2F2007%2F08%2F6360%2Fspinning-wikipedia&linkname=Spinning%20Wikipedia
[6] http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr
[7] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/CIA
[8] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Labour_Party
[9] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Diebold
[10] http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2004Q2/history.html
[11] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/15/wikipedia.corporateaccountability