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ESA, EA Caught Editing Their Own Wikipedia Entries

Posted by Zonk on Tue Aug 21, 2007 02:12 AM
from the that's-a-no-no dept.
The Internet Entertainment Games
With the whitewashing of Wikipedia now an easily-reviewable record, it's been noted that games-related organizations are not above tweaking their public image online. Joystiq notes that EA, for example, is unabashed about removing founder Trip Hawkins from their entry. More ominous edits from the Entertainment Software Association are reported by GamePolitics. The organization, which you may recall backing the recent raids on mod chippers, has made a concerted effort to cast mod chips in a negative light. " In one paragraph, someone at ESA deleted a nuanced discussion of mod chip legality, replacing it with a flat assertion that mod chips are illegal. Less than a minute later, a lengthy section on the positive uses of mod chips was deleted, as was a notation that the US Supreme Court has not yet dealt with the DMCA. Finally, a sentence stating that mod chips are legal in Australia was removed."
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Decius6i5 writes "Caltech grad student Virgil Griffith has launched a search tool that uncovers whitewashing and other self-interested editing of Wikipedia. Users can generate lists of every edit to Wikipedia which has been made from a particular IP address range. The tool has already uncovered a number of interesting edits, such as one from the corporate offices of Diebold which removed large sections of content critical of their electronic voting machines. A Wired story provides more detail and Threat Level is running a contest to see who can come up with the most interesting Wikipedia spin job."
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ESA, EA Caught Editing Their Own Wikipedia Entries 25 Comments More /

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  • I hope there's a wiki page (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pembo13 (770295) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @02:52AM (#20301533) Homepage
    listing all the individuals, organizations, and businesses who are caught doing this. The name of the individuals, along with whom they represent should be posted clearly on a wiki page.

    • so what? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Geoff-with-a-G (762688) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @01:26PM (#20307147)
      Why should someone try to list this? Who cares, and why?

      Of course people from various companies or organizations edit the Wikipedia entries for those organizations. They're likely to be more knowledgeable and more interested in the subject matter than the average contributor. That's normal.

      If someone created a Wikipedia page about me, and claimed that I cheated on a Geology paper at Harvard, I would probably edit the page and remove it - seeing as how I never went to Harvard or took Geology. Are you telling me that's unfair or unethical of me? That I should wait patiently for someone else knowledgeable and motivated to go make that correction for me? That principle seems absurd to me.

      If the edits they make are untrue, if they're trying to give a falsely positive impression of themselves, then fix it. Correct it. Revert it. The fact that they want to do so is neither surprising nor any worse than if some random third party wanted to post falsely positive (or negative) information about the organization in question. If I'm some random crazy jerk and I decide to vandalize Linus Torvalds' entry to say terrible things about him, how is that better than if he himself edited it to say untrue but positive things about himself? Either way it's just someone posting false information to Wikipedia, and either way you should just correct it to the best of your ability and move on.

      There shouldn't be some sort of blanket principle or policy that an organization can't update its own Wikipedia page. I'd imagine there are IBM employees who know more about IBM than you do. I'd expect there are EA employees who know a lot about EA. They should be free to contribute that knowledge. If they're lying, correct their lies like you would anyone else's.

  • Change it back? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ludomancer (921940) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @03:05AM (#20301595)
    Now that we've caught these people exploiting the part of wikipedia that NO ONE should exploit simply because it undermines the very principle of this community-based system, who will change these entries back? WILL these entries be changed back?

    It seems kind of limp to blow the horn on them but not remove the erroneous edits they made. Even if this information is subjective, if a company edits this info to benefit said company, that doesn't seem fair. As a slave/consumer in this country, it makes me cringe every time a large corporation gets away with this kind of bullshit. When is enough, enough?
    • Generally speaking, with regards to consumer abusive corporations, immediately after a successful class action law suit ;). So come on you blood sucking sharks, here is an excellent opportunity to stick to a whole bunch of corporations for vandalising a community based system ;).

    • Re:Change it back? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Enlightenment (1073994) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @05:17AM (#20302191)
      Of course they were changed back. The whole point of this article is that people found out and weren't pleased with the disinformation being spread. Would they then allow those edits to remain? Besides, I've been checking, and I've found that yes, the redacted information has been restored. So don't worry. :)
    • As far as I can tell, at least some of the edits were reverted within minutes of being made, anyway.

      • Re:Fairness? Depends on which party you are. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ludomancer (921940) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @08:16AM (#20302941)
        You can't dismiss another persons concerns about the world simply by tagging their arguments as "teen angst". That in itself is an imature perspective.

        I'm 30, and as I watch my country slip into a sick pit of capitalistic facism, I think speaking out about it is the best way to show concern and encourage others to act as well. I live in america where our whole world is controlled by entities such as these. I have every right to be irate about the level of dishonesty and corruption in the corporate world. They slight us all on a personal level every time they pull something like this. If you really feel that's being overdramatic, then as a member of "the real world" I implore you to not care about my angst. Please.

  • Fundamental Flaw In Wikipedia? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GaryPatterson (852699) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @04:26AM (#20301981)
    This exposes an issue I have with Wikipedia - who edits last wins.

    If these people had used IP anonymisers, they'd never have been picked up and the edits would have looked just like arguments back and forth until someone gave up. The problem is that a company can be far more tenacious than any one person, even paying marketing people to make sure Wikipedia has the 'right' information.

    The answer I see from Wikipedia fans is "just edit the page when you see an error." That's great, but if someone's determined enough, they'll edit right afterwards, making the entire thing pointless.

    The greatest strength of Wikipedia is the reason I believe it must ultimately fail.
    • In cases where that happens, isn't editing of the page often locked? That's certainly the case for some higher profile articles...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by nlitement (1098451)
      Oh, really? Or then the dumb idiot pulls of a three-revert, or the good user brings it up on the talk page, or even better, notifies an admin of a badly behaving IP and gets someone to solve the whole issue. The greatest weakness of Wikipedia is the prejudiced approach that people often hold against it and how it handles vandalism/etc.

    • Re:Fundamental Flaw In Wikipedia? (Score:4, Informative)

      by LKM (227954) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @06:48AM (#20302521) Homepage
      Please check out the change history. In most of the cases, the changes were reverted within minutes. It doesn't matter who makes the edits, if the edits are wrong or uncalled for, they will be reverted.

      Constantly changing back would lead to the article being locked. Being tenacious does not matter one bit if the article can't just be changed anymore.

      If you doubt the information in a Wikipedia article, check out its history. It's there for a reason.

  • I am shocked, shocked... (Score:5, Funny)

    by advocate_one (662832) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @05:10AM (#20302175)
    to discover that companies edit their own wikipedia entries...
  • Just because the IP belongs to the company doesn't mean it's a company decision. I've made plenty of edits from school/work. It doesn't mean those edits were endorsed or even known to the company.

    With Wikipedia, you edit the topics you're interested in. If you work in a certain industry or a certain company, you'll most likely edit pages related to it.

  • wikipedia fundamentally flawed. Time for better! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by swordgeek (112599) on Tuesday August 21 2007, @10:46AM (#20304541) Journal
    ...also known as citizendium. [citizendium.org]

    Wikipedia is a great idea, and a great interface, but leads to exactly this sort of behaviour. If a company edits their entry to reflect their side of the story, is it editing or abuse?

    He who edits last, wins. Over the long run, that doesn't work. That's why one of the founders of wikipedia (Larry Sanger [citizendium.org]) decided to take the idea of wikipedia and add in some accountability. The project was named citizendium, and was started just about a year ago. It is based on three fundamental differences from wikipedia:
            * all contributors must apply for membership in the project under their real names, which are then visibly associated with all articles
            * all articles are reviewed by experts in their particular fields, offering suggestions and criticism as the articles evolve with the goal for each article to be "approved"
            * that vandals, trolls, and disruptive editors are quickly and permanently banned from further work on the project.

    It's MUCH smaller than wikipedia at present , but also not loaded with garbage and editorial pissing matches. Take a look, join the community, and help make the next generation online encyclopedia better.

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