Yahoo! Picks add to my yahoo! View RSS Feed
August 21, 2007 Previous | Next
The WikiScanner

No matter how settled the Web becomes, it will always retain something of the wild frontier. One muckraking cowboy can still blast into town, infiltrate the shady goings-on, and kick up a hell of a storm.

Enter Virgil Griffith. This 24-year-old grad student and "disruptive technologist" has unleashed The WikiScanner, a search tool that scours Wikipedia for anonymous edits and connects them with the IP addresses the edits came from. This means that if, say, a change was made to the Wikipedia entry for ExxonMobil and it came from ExxonMobil's IP address, The WikiScanner will reveal it. And so far, it's revealed a lot. Such governmental, religious, and corporate notables as the C.I.A., Wal-Mart, Diebold, the Vatican, and the A.C.L.U. have logged unsigned and—sometimes—eyebrow raising changes to Wiki entries.

Don't take our word for it, though. Get the lay of the land with Wired's "wall of shame." Then hop back to the site and investigate a few organizations of your own. Let the PR showdowns begin.

Post or read comments

Email this Pick    Save to del.icio.us    Save to My Web    Digg This
 
2007 Picks of the Year
Don't miss the 2007 Picks of the Year.
Recent Picks

Jan 01, 2008
Good-Bye From Yahoo! Picks - Good-bye!

Dec 31, 2007
Long Awkward Pose - smile for the camera. Keep smiling.

Dec 28, 2007
Starship Dimensions - space invaders.

Dec 27, 2007
Kiddie Records Weekly - the gang's all here.

Dec 26, 2007
Japander.com - money changes everything.

More

Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy - Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy