by Amanda Witherell
OK, who read the NY Times article about wikiscanner, the new website that makes it possible to track who’s editing Wikipedia entries?
Very interesting. We, of course, checked to see if our neighbors over at PG&E happened to be editing Wikipedia entries, and if so, which ones.
Heck yeah. Looks like someone over there has made it a regular hobby. Everything from solar power to — ha ha — pubic lice.
The site takes a little savoir faire to navigate, but if you put in the name of a company you’re curious about their IP addresses will come up. Then hit the little [wp] and it will list the entries that particular IP address edited. Then if you hit the [diff] it will show you exactly how they were edited.
There are some real gems from the minds of some PG&E employees — I had no idea that Robert Novak is also known as the “Douche Bag of Liberty.” Or that reality TV star Heidi Montag has a thing for Gremlins after midnight and that’s why she’s hot for Spencer Pratt.
Now, you could draw a lot of speculations from all of this. Here’s one: PG&E employees have too much time on their hands. Remember that when PG&E is making claims that the city could never meet or beat its electricity prices.
Who knows — maybe the boss said to make sure our company and all the shitty things we do looks good on Wikipedia, but clearly this person has other interests and is perhaps more of a sportsfan than a solar energy proponent.