Seems a bunch of code monkeys in Germany has created a web site that tracks and displays the changes made to a Wikipedia entry, and they now have nabbed at least one Philadelphia-area company: AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE: AZN) of Wilmington and London. According to Ed Silverman at Pharmalot, the site called Wikiscanner has found that somebody from an IP address at the drug company removed negative references about the antispsychotic drug Seroquel from a Wikipedia page about the drug. The references were about suicide warnings for some young users of Seroquel. We're putting in a call to AstraZeneca.
Of course, collective editing and re-editing of information is exactly the point of Wikipedia and all wikis. Anybody who uses the information without bearing in mind the potential slant is, well, misusing the information. The point here is that companies now can be caught explicitly shaping the message in Wikipedia, where before the writers/editors were mostly anonymous. This just confirms and brings out in the open what has been, until now, merely a safe assumption about Wikipedia information.
So what other companies are doing it? Well, we'll let you know as soon as the traffic onslaught at the site cools off. We can't get through.
