Wikipedia Search Tool Threatens To Expose Actual Tools
A grad student at CalTech has developed Wikipedia Scanner, a search tool for Wikipedia that allows people to search edits by IP address and see if there are people out there who are trying to spin entries on the site in their (or, rather, their employers’) favor. Wired‘s Threat Level blog is keeping a running diary of egregious self-edits; so far, they’ve only found one music-related one–the above edit by the country singer Roger Hallmark, who at least is up-front about his shilling.*
But if there’s one thing we know, it’s that some musicians’–and music-biz types’–egos are wayyyyy too big for that to be an isolated occurrence. Anyone want to give Wikipedia Scanner a whirl with, say, Warner Music Group‘s IP block? Or, if you happen to know his ISP offhand, Eddie Van Halen‘s, for that matter?
Roger Hallmark [Wikipedia, via ThreatLevel]
* Not that we’re above shilling for ourselves–too bad some Wikinerd-beloved band has already bitten our page title.
