[WikiEN-l] University COI

[David Goodman]

there's an article just out in the online Chronicle of Higher Education,

http://chronicle.com/subscribe/login?url=/weekly/v54/i08/08a00601.htm

"The Wiki Watcher
Scanner catches colleges embellishing their online-encyclopedia entries

Boosters beware: An online database developed by Virgil Griffith, a
graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, makes it
easier than ever to catch self-interested parties polishing their own
Wikipedia entries. Computer IP addresses serve as a kind of electronic
signature. Mr. Griffith's WikiScanner correlates those addresses with
the institution that owns the network, identifying who made changes in
Wikipedia articles. Here is what users on some campuses edited in
their own colleges' entries, misspellings and all. ..."

The full article is available only to subscribers. I'll be glad to
email the descriptive listing to individuals, as permitted by the web
site, but I can't fairly post it here.

some of it is polishing--others polishing only in the satyric sense of
the usual undergraduate vandalism.  None of it strikes me as a serious
problem, and none is very recent.
-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.