Before enjoying for too long the good news: Brandient is on Wikipedia! (we certainly didn't put it there)—we had to face the bad news: Wikipedia is still open to "vandalism", as they call the mischievous editing of articles by rogue contributors. A high profile case rung the bell last year but you don't pay much attention until it happens to you.

Between January 13 and 19, 2006, the Brandient article was assiduously vandalized in four sessions, with virulent and denigratory entries, before a senior Wikipedia editor noticed, canceled the edits and reverted the article to its original form. The rogue editing started with an innocent correction (e.g. Brandient is not international) but then amounted, by self-induced fury, to a collection of calumnies and ridiculous allegations, my personal favorite being the one regarding the stolen four letters, which speaks tomes about the person who imagined it.

The real shock came when I looked up the Romanian IP from where the entry was vandalized. That really left me speechless and I had to check it twice to believe it. Sometimes IPs can be spoofed, but the text endorsing mainly the Cluj Napoca-based design shop owning the IP makes me think this IP is legit.



It is not this blog's purpose to expose such displays of unethical conducts, but this time I feel that too many lines were crossed without shame. I won't name names, but it is trivial (do a reverse DNS lookup or a traceroute on the IP) for you to find it out yourselves. Discussing this flagrant breach of professional conduit is unnecessary—the gesture itself disqualifies the perpetrator. The log being permanent, he will have to live with the responsibility of his public proof of unprofessionalism.

In spite of the recent scandals regarding the surge in spoof articles and malevolent edits against public persons and hot issues (see the wave of edits and deletes of Islam entry, represented by IBM), it seems that the median time of recovery after vandalism clocks at approximately 5 minutes, as Joi Ito reports. Self-healing democracy at work. Not bad. But that's median time—mine was 6 days, way over 5 minutes.

In the wake of the above mentioned scandals Wikipedia has tighten its policies by allowing anonymous access for editing existing entries only, and now requires registration for creating new entries. While this is probably a good measure for limiting junk creation, it doesn't address the kind of vandalism existing entries are subjected to.

So, under the circumstances, is it a good news if you get on Wikipedia? Or is Wikipedia fabulous only when you're not in it?