SA and Australian Governments caught editing Wikipedia

IT Web yesterday broke a story that the South African government was attempting to censor the largest human edited encyclopedia, Wikipedia. In their article they report that

Wikipedia’s edit history for the article “HIV/Aids in South Africa” shows repeated vandalism from IP address 164.151.130.36. This address resolves to a machine called mx1.statssa.gov.za, located just off the Ben Schoeman highway in Centurion, and is owned and operated by the South African government.

As if this isn’t bad enough I just finished reading an article on TechCrunch about the Australian Prime Minister’s Office having been caught editing Wikipedia as well. TechCrunch have reported that

Staff from the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC) edited Wikipedia entries that were damaging to the Goverment, including pages covering the Children Overboard Affair and Mandatory Detention. Other edits included deleting the nickname of “Captain Smirk” from the Wikipedia biography of Australian Treasurer Peter Costello, and a range of bizarre edits, including the addition of the line “Poo bum dicky wee wee” to a Wikipedia article on Bubishi, a book related to Martial Arts.

These recent plots by Governments have been uncovered by the Wikiscanner which lists anonymous Wikipedia edits from large corporations. The question this raises (and has done so for some time in my mind) is just how reliable Wikipedia really is. I’ve always implored the effort of Wikipedia but as with anything opened to public consumption you leave yourself open to cheating and blatant propaganda that can’t really be combated.