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In a move a la Stephen Colbert, a computer registered to the multinational energy corporation tried to spiff up its Wikipedia entry late last week, coinciding with the announcement that it will not increase discharges of ammonia and suspended solids into Lake Michigan from the planned expansion of its Whiting, Ind., refinery.
According to the record of edits on Wikipedia, on August 23, a computer at the IP address 63.84.4.0, registered to BP Amoco, added the corporation's announcement to the entry. Of course, now that a smarty pants grad student at Cal Tech has built a handy little Wikipedia Scanner — allowing users to search entries to see who is editing them — expect to see more news of anonymous revisions of recent history on the collaborative encyclopedia. Already Fox News, Diebold and Wal-Mart, among others, have been criticized for changing their entries to reflect more positively on themselves.
While there is no evidence that this was a coordinated or planned move — certainly an employee with a sense of company pride could have taken matters into their own hands — it does add a new wrinkle to the drama that has occupied the minds of people who live near the lake recently.
Image via E Pluribus Unum.
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[Insert my obligatory outrage comment here.]
It's = it is.
Its = possessive.
I don't know why you keep making this mistake.
Kevin are you trying to make a statement about corporate power in America?
My god, such power.
So, if I understand this; BP indicating that they are NOT discharging more ammonia into the lake, when in fact they are NOT going to discharge more ammonia into the lake, on a website set up to provide such information in the very manner specified, by editing entries, is bad and/or wrong how??
I can understand if they edited the entry to say they were not going to discharge this stuff, if in fact they were going to, maybe then you have a story.
The more interesting story from this is the organizations that edit entries- you conveniently left off the democratic party, UC itself, environmental groups etc...(but of course that wouldn't play into your 'hate corporations and conservative ideas' shananigans).
5: Good points, though I think all the edits are interesting, including those done from media Web sites.
And this story is more than a week old. I wonder who is coming to Chicagoist and learning about this for the first time. Do some people actually rely on this site for real news?
The story might be a week old, but I think its more about recaps for public debate
There's corporate and political spin taking place on Wikipedia?! Say it isn't so! I always thought their entries were carefully vetted, which is why I always go there to do research for my dissertation.
Which is why I always go there to do research for my dissertation.
I thought your paper "My Time as a Jagoff, a Year Posting in the Chicagoist Comment Section" was wonderful!
oh the horror! where is the outrage at wikipedia editing the wikipedia entry?
Actually, their edits were pretty fair.
This post is Bullshit
whats the big deal?? What am I supposed to be pissed about?
This site is taking a slow dive to the cold outskirts of hell.
"It does add a new wrinkle to the drama..." Really? How so?? Or are you hoping it will?
If you want people to hate corporate America or fox news, then post a story about fox news changing words around. It's not difficult to click the link and discover that NYtimes did, greenpeace did, etc... You can also see at the top of the page all the organizations that have linked to that guy's 'scanner' page- They run the political spectrum- ultra conservative to liberal wackjobs- I still don't get the point of this post after writing this long reply. What a joke.