In the Technology section of Sunday's, NYT's; , there was an interesting article about corporations gaming Wikipedia, Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits. The impetus for the article is the launch of a neat little service called Wikiscanner that "cross-references an edited entry on Wikipedia with the owner of the computer network where the change originated, using the IP address of the editor's network."
The reaction to Wikiscanner?
The conversation this weekend seemed to follow two threads of logic:
-the service exposes flaws in Wikipedia (bad Wikipedia, bad!)
-the service exposes the corporate "PR" gaming that's going on behind the scenes (bad PR people, bad!)
From my perspective, Wikiscanner looks like a good thing. Shining a bit more light on what businesses are doing is a good thing - for both Wikipedia and the business people who take care to make their movements in Wikipedia transparent.
I think I liked David Churbuck's post the best!
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