Wikipedia

Internet congregation: Herald forth unto the uncomputerized masses

bedarkened — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:10:19 -0700

If you are reading this, you are probably aware of the fact that there is a diminishing handful of wayward Luddite souls who are nothing like you: They do not share your electropurian addiction to all things digital. They have no idea of what RSS is, they don't give a rat's knuckle about Joost, or the iPhone, or the new iMac, or Ruby on Rails, or new Linux distros. They couldn't care less about Gmail, they have never seen Chocolate Rain on YouTube, and they certainly have no use for Web 2-point anything.

Wikipedia sounds less like an informational site and more like one of the following:
A) The definitive guide to pagan worship
B) The science of weaving bamboo strips into Herman Miller chairs

Boing Boing Outs CIA and FBI on Wikipedia Edits

wynand32 — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 15:53:26 -0700

Boing Boing reports on a Reuters story talking about the CIA and FBI making edits to Wikipedia on topics such as the Iraq war and Gitmo.

The quote:

People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, according to a new tracing program. The changes may violate Wikipedia's conflict-of-interest guidelines, a spokeswoman for the site said on Thursday. The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a Web site that was quickly overwhelmed with searches.

Web Tool Shows Wikipedia Edits by CIA, Dems, and Vatican

wynand32 — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:07:02 -0700

A new Web tool traces the IP address of Wikipedia editors back to their organizations of origin. Some of the perpetrators of edits in this BBC story: the CIA, the Democrative Party, and the Vatican. Now, before everyone gets their anti-CIA shorts in a bunch, note the edits made:

By the CIA:

On the profile of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the tool indicates that a worker on the CIA network reportedly added the exclamation "Wahhhhhh!" before a section on the leader's plans for his presidency.

So, some CIA employee got bored. Big deal.

So, what about the Democratic Party?

The site also indicates that a computer owned by the US Democratic Party was used to make changes to the site of right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

read more

Germany to Fund Wikipedia Propaganda

wynand32 — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 21:16:53 -0700

This is truly bizarre: Germany is going to pay people to post "accurate" articles on Wikipedia. I guess they just can't get propaganda out of their system.