The data-mining tool, WikiScanner, which compiles and mashes up information that has always been available, matches IP addresses with the edits stored in the history pages in Wikipedia. The result? Well, let’s just say that for some organizations, it has been a little embarrassing…

Some of the first organizations to get outed for whitewashing their articles were Diebold and Wal-Mart. Of course, it wasn’t long before public sector organizations were also being exposed: in this case, the FBI and CIA.

The question you are all asking now is, what about my agency? Well, preliminary investigations revealed that, yes, some diligent New Zealand public servants had been editing their agency’s Wikipedia page.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this practice, per se. Given that Wikipedia is such a heavily used resource, (according to this Pew survey, Wikipedia has become the number 1 external site visited after Google’s search page, receiving over half of its traffic from the search engine), if your agency does have a page then you want to make sure that it is correct. What you don’t want to be doing is spinning or misrepresenting the truth.

The other thing you really don’t want to be doing –particularly from your work machine– is editing the page of your Minister (or anyone else in Parliament, for that matter).

Now, none of this is in the same class as Exxon Mobil editing the Exxon Valdez oil spill page, which is nothing short of breathtaking in its audacity and, given the transparency of Wikipedia, idiotic in its execution.

It does, however, remind us all that reputation management on the Internet is a very different discipline. Google never forgets, and neither does Wikipedia. Every edit on this mammoth site is preserved for posterity. And, unless you are using a proxy, each and every of those edits is traceable back to the organization that made them.

If you are going to effectively manage your agency’s reputation in this space, remember that, as a public servant, you are held to a higher standard. Make sure you have a thorough understanding of how social media work, and the principles you should be observing when you interact with them.

Update: 24/8/07

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on Australian public servants editing Wikipedia, that really highlights the pitfalls of not understanding the social media you are interacting with.