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Companies and individuals have been known to meander onto Wikipedia during the wee hours of the night in order to modify their Wikipedia entries.  One company can modify a competitors information or a company can remove hurtful but factual information from their own Wikipedia page.  So what has changed?  Well the blanket of anonymity has been removed thanks to Virgil Griffith a graduate student from the California Institute of Technology.  Virgil has put together a piece of software code that allows you to see where the Wikipedia edits are coming from.  From my understanding Virgil has created something that matches IP addressees from people that make the Wikipedia edits with the database of IP addresses used and registered by different companies.  Put the 2 databases together and now you can see who is making changes on Wikipedia.

There are a few other features that Virgil has created for his “Wikiwatcher,” you can read more about the tools and some of the PR disasters that have been uncovered, here.

There is some dispute over where this new Wikiwatcher tool is a good idea or not, but according to Virgil,“Wouldn’t you want Wikipedia users to be held accountable for what they change?”

What do you think of “Wikiwatcher?”  Is it an invation of privacy or a necessary tool?

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