In my post yesterday, "WikiScanner keeping things real" I pointed to a story about a new website that allows you to see who is editing what on Wikipedia. In this story from Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, CIA and Vatican IP addresses are cited as the sources of edits to pages with obvious self serving intents. The CIA computers are linked to "nearly 300 edits to subjects including Iran's president, the Argentine navy, and China's nuclear arsenal." while an IP address belonging to the Vatican is said to have been used "to remove references to evidence linking Ireland's Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to a decades-old double murder." In a perfect world such measures would not be required to make Wikipedia an open and reliable tool. If nothing else perhaps those with intent to mislead will be a little more careful of where they are making their edits from.
