Adam Maguire

This is a story that was supposed to be published in The Irish Times way back when but for some reason or another it wasn’t.

It relates to wikipedia edits made by someone in a Government department and was researched and written back when the joys of the WikiScanner was discovered by everyone.

To the best of my knowledge this particular angle was never actually picked up on, so in the spirit of blogging I publish it below the fold for your enjoyment:

The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs has started an internal inquiry after it was revealed that a civil servant there had made offensive changes to a Wikipedia article on ‘English people’.

The changes, which were made from one of the Department’s computers in August 2005, claimed that English people are World renowned “larger louts” who are “well know for their lack of ability to hold their drink and act in a violent and lewd manner when drunk”. It also described them as the most hated people on Earth.

The Wikipedia is a popular resource which acts as an online encyclopaedia. Anyone can edit articles on the website; however their computer’s IP address is logged when they do so. A recently launched tool called the Wikipedia Scanner allows people to search these logged IP addresses and ranges to see what changes were made from them.

“This Department has strict policies in place for the use of both email and the internet. In this context, the editing of Wikipedia articles to include material offensive to any community or any individual would be strictly forbidden,” said a press officer for the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. “Minister Ó Cuív has been made aware of the issues and senior management in the Department has assured that appropriate action will be taken when the investigation is complete.”

Other edits made from the Department’s IP address in August 2005 include a change to a ‘County Londonderry’ article to replace ‘Londonderry’ with ‘Derry’ and the creation of an article on a civil servant working at the Department. In July an edit was also made to the ‘Republic of Ireland’ article, and the user removed the sentence: “Although it has less than 1% of the Union’s population, it has received 16% of all “first warnings” issued on environmental issues”.

A scan of the Government’s entire IP range turns up a long list of edits over the past three years, most of which are innocuous changes to articles of general interest. The few edits made to political entries, such as one made to the ‘Bertie Ahern’ article, are also only minor corrections or grammatical changes.

The Wikipedia Scanner tool has already been used to find an edit from a Northern Ireland Civil Service computer which changed an article to call Irish people evil. Internationally, a computer at the Vatican was found to have edited an article on Gerry Adams, while many large corporations have been found to be editing articles to make their businesses look better.

No word on what came of that investigation – anyone want to find out?