Thursday, January 3, 2008

Don't tamper with Wikipedia...

Over Christmas we've had a small edit war over the ABB article in Wikipedia. Someone, apparently associated with the company, tweaked the article in several places to paint a positive picture of the company and it's history. But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a collection of marketing material, and sentences like "ABB is rated Number One in Power Technology in the World" has no place in an encyclopedia.

These edits were done on Dec 26, and probably thanks to Xmas it took several days before most of the changes were removed. But after that edits went back and forth several times in a small edit war. Hopefully it has calmed down by now, so the article will not be blocked from further changes in the future, waiting for tempers to calm...

The original changes are clearly not in compliance with Wikipedia's NPOV (Neutral point of view) policy., which is absolute and non-negotiable. There was no source quoted for this claim of supremacy. And while it may be correct that ABB on some occasions(s) have been "rated no 1 in power technology in the world" it is pretty obvious there is no institution entitled to bestow such an honour on an individual company. So it is pretty obvious that some of our competitors can claim the same.

As stated by Wikipedia, "The neutral point of view is a point of view that is neutral, that is neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject". This also mean that a careful selection of facts to support a specific view is a violation of the policy.

Be aware that also "anonymous" edits can be found out, by tracing the user's IP number using wikiscanner.

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