The power that Wikipedia has on our lives is really something. For many it's the first port of call for any information on a topic. Some (myself included) often search for a topic on the public encyclopaedia before even Googling it (inevitably, Googling a subject almost always brings its Wikipedia entry as one of the first two SERP results).

I have lost count of the times at varsity that the core of our last minute research would, to our lecturers’ disdain, be drawn from the online encyclopaedia’s entries. And I can’t even hazard a guess as to how many hours I spend every week hopping from one random subject to another. It’s gotten so bad that this addiction is mutating, and as a Star Wars fan I now find myself hopelessly trapped in the clutches of Wookieepedia.

Don’t laugh…

Unfortunately, as with so many offerings, Wikipedia’s main strength is also its greatest hindrance. The fact that users can edit entries has detracted greatly from its credibility as a reputable source, and there have been reports of many corporations and politicians altering their own entries to portray themselves in as favourable a light as possible.

With Wikipedia being such a powerful hub of information almost any large scale Online Reputation Management campaign would start with “tidying up” the relevant entries. This has created a massive amount of scepticism among academics and the public at large, and perhaps as a result of this we have seen the spawning of some parodies, with Uncyclopedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica being two of the best known.

For an example of the disdain with which some folk hold Wikipedia take a look at the former’s entry on our topic of discussion.

(For an absolute laugh take a look at the entry on aardvarks.)

Now a tool has been developed that’s set to provide some insight into the objectivity of Wikipedia editors. WikiScanner has the capacity to trace the source of changes to the world’s most popular encyclopaedia, and has already uncovered some interesting findings:

• The New York Times Company has changed the entries of George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice, adding the word “jerk” 12 times to the former’s page and replacing “pianist” with “penis” on the latter’s.
• The CIA added “Wahhhhhh!” before Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s stated plans for his presidency.
•  The US Democratic Party labelled Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing talk show host, a “racist”, a “bigot” and “idiotic”.

WikiScanner can’t tell you the individual that made the changes, only that they originated from a specific network. So, for now, it’s safe to assume that it was in fact a NY Times employee that displayed leftist tendencies or that a black-suited, grim faced CIA operative suddenly developed a sense of humour.

I reckon it’s quite a cool advancement, but it’ll only be a matter of time until ORM experiences escalation. Now that we can track who made the changes to the most popular source of information on the Internet, how long will it be till organisations start framing each other?