A computer in a Canadian government office was used to remove Wikipedia's homosexuality listing and replace it with religious anti-gay slurs, a new website has revealed. The WikiScanner, a website launched on Monday by an American graduate student, tracks the origins of millions of edits to the popular online encyclopedia. The site shows that one user, with an IP address that points to a government office in Ottawa, removed Wikipedia's entire entry on homosexuality several times on the 20th of July 2005, and replaced it with such sentences as: "Homosexuality is evil," "Homosexuality is wrong according to the Bible" and "Homosexuals need our help and counselling." The IP address responsible for that edit continued to deface the entry on homosexuality a total of 24 times between July 2005, and July 2006. Wikipedia volunteers identified the edits and reversed the changes each time it was defaced. The same computer was also used to edit more than 500 other articles, on topics such as epidemiology, Ebola and Canada's version of TV game show Deal or No Deal. Wikipedia is an open-source encyclopedia controlled and maintained by its community of readers. Anyone may contribute to an article, inserting or subtracting text regardless of its veracity or point of view. However, with thousands of users constantly monitoring content, the site operates on a kind of honour system in which users monitor articles for inflammatory or false information. WikiScanner has uncovered dozens of other inappropriate and conflict-of-interest Wikipedia edits, including companies deleting criticism on entries about their products, the CIA and FBI apparent editing of the Guantanamo and Iraq war entries, and online shopping websites adding their links to entries about celebrities. The WikiScanner website is on the link below. If your searches reveal any local homophobic edits or other noteworthy amendments, please alert us to them by clicking the 'Contact Us' link on the top left of GayNZ.com's webpages. Ref: Globe and Mail, GayNZ.com (m)
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Saturday, 18th August 2007 - 5:58pm