Japanese ministries “make” history
The Asahi Shimbun (Japanese) September 8 morning edition headline story reports on the discovery that computers at a number of Japanese government ministries and agencies have been used to edit the Japanese Wikipedia site in ways that present respective agencies in a favorable light. Agencies involved include the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare and the Imperial Household Agency.
Examples given of the edits are the addition of statements critical of a Diet member and other government agencies, and the removal of text casting suspicion on the agency’s policies.
The agenies contacted for comment indicated that the edits were cases of individuals acting outside their job responsibilities and that the “criminals” would be strictly warned when found.
The edits were discovered using the program Wikiscanner, which analyzes Wikipedia edits and the organization associated with posting IP addresses.
Personally, I think Wikipedia is a useful resource, within limits, and I don’t have a problem with government workers editing it (as long it doesn’t interfere with doing their taxpayer-funded duties), but this is clearly a case of conflicting interests and shows one weakness of Wikipedia. Always assume its editors are biased.
Contributed by: papa
One should assume that about anything they read, so this is not a weakness unique to Wikipedia. What is unique to Wikipedia is that mistakes are corrected almost as soon as they are found. In print media, the changes have to wait for further editions, while the ones already printed just stay there forever.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:43 amIn fact it’s the very advantage of Wikipedia that it allows us to catch these edits. True, a given govt dept may have less chance to influence a printed text, but we would have far less chance of detecting and correcting that.
September 11th, 2007 at 8:10 amIt wasn’t my intention to disparage Wikipedia as opposed to print media. Readers should be aware of possible bias in any source.
However, one feature of Wikipedia as a medium is that, where with a book or newspaper I can look at the cover or the masthead and tell whose bias I’m dealing with, with a Wikipedia article you have an amalgam of additions and corrections made over years by a host of often anonymous editors. Even though Wikipedia’s stated policies are aimed at producing accurate and unbiased articles, there are few controls to prevent an editor from posting sub-standard material and having it appear exactly the same as the legitimate stuff.
Community vigilance usually works, but it’s not perfect. Obscure pages can fail to attract notice, and even when the community acts it doesn’t always do the right thing.
Better or worse than books? Both, but more importantly, just different. The Asahi Shimbun article serves as a reminder of that.
September 11th, 2007 at 3:37 pm[...] Now that it’s possible for all to see who exactly is editing entries on Wikipedia (courtesy of WikiScanner), there has been a number of interesting revelations, including those reported on here at Japundit last month. [...]
October 8th, 2007 at 8:01 am[...] we have been hearing about how people working for various government agencies in Japan and elsewhere have been editing Wikipedia in order to make their group look good or competing [...]
October 9th, 2007 at 12:00 am