h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We all know how susceptible Wikipedia is to vandalism. anyone can just hop onto their site and make changes to pages, and I've always found it quite funny to read in Private Eye that a particular politician has edited his biography there to make him sound better, or employees toadying up to their bosses by improving their company profile. Tonight I found a site that helps you find these for yourself.

It's called Wikiscanner, and it works by tracking the IP addresses that changes were made from. You can search for, say, the BBC, and Wikiscanner will cheerfully give you a list of all the edits people on the BBC network have made to Wikipedia articles. This probably sounds quite dull, but there are some fascinating ones:

The National Rifle Association, edits its page to say that it doesn't do hunting programmes, but instead works for 'wildlife conservation and management' - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=82632709

A Pepsi employee removes all references to long-term health effects of Pepsi consumption - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pepsi&diff=prev&oldid=37360894

BBC staff have fun putting Tony Blair's heart scare down to alcohol http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Blair&diff=prev&oldid=6578494

Reuters deliver a verdict on President Bush - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_W._Bush&diff=next&oldid=13990756

The American Civil Liberties Union really don't like the Pope - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=12530341 - but the CIA think he's pretty cool - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Benedict_XVI&diff=next&oldid=14165845

My favourites are the Exxon edit that showed the Valdiz disaster did no damage at all http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill&diff=next&oldid=8931331 and WalMart's edit of their wages http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=13283596

There are more at http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/vote-on-the-top.html#submit and you can search for your own at Wikiscanner at http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/

That's fantastic

I see where the ip addresses of the changelings are, but how does one find, for example, that a pepsi employee is tinkering?

Oops, I see - nevermind

Oh, that's great!