The massive amount of anonymous entries on the anybody-can-edit online encyclopedia we all know and love called Wikipedia, isn’t so anonymous anymore.

She’s become transparent, thanks to the effort of Virgil Griffith, a California Institute of Technology graduate student who recently launched the application, WikiScanner.

Enter the name of any Organization or Government entity, and you’re only a few clicks away from the once-was anonymous edit world, created via the IP address of those very Organizations or Government entities, throughout all of Wikipedia.

There is a firestorm of data available. The contributors, their agenda(s), organizations embellishing their data, politicians attacking their competitors, blatant misinformation, all exposed.

Here are three examples of some recent finds:

Fox News Edits Details on Keith Olberman

 

State Farm Insurance and Katrina Related Deletes

where an IP from State Farm Insurance deletes all references to Katrina lawsuits and the related evidence.

 

This one I thought was rather peculiar.

Monsanto themselves edited the wiki page for Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease.

Their edit was to add milk to the aggravating factors:
Avoid milk and heavily milk based products

 

Peculiar since Monsanto has vested interest in milk.

 

Would be interesting to know who exactly at Monsanto typed in that factual edit.

**If the links to the finds and/or the wikiscanner do not open successfully when you attempt, return for a try at another time. Virgil has indicated the application is receiving a great deal of traffic worldwide.

Stumble it!

A shortcut to be updated as to when new articles are published is here.

Wikipedia Is Now The Gotcha Machine