My friend and sometimes co-blogger Brad points me to this page, about a Wikipedia search engine, that finds out who’s editing. It’s a really neat idea, and interesting to read through, but overall I don’t like what the consequences of it will be.  Chances are the people making these edits from various companies are in no way authorized by that company’s leadership to make those kinds of changes to the Wiki.  What this is going to do is cause companies to either block access to this valuable resource, or severely restrict internet usage, at the detriment to their employees ability to find information.
Corporate leaders tend to be very risk averse, think little of their employees, and hate bad publicity. They will respond to this kind of bad publicity in predictable ways, and it’ll be all our loss.
The risk of bad publicity brought about by internet access has been around for at least 10 years now. First it was chat rooms and instant messages, then leaking internal memos on FuckedCompany, and now blogs. Various companies have indeed taken hits, but only the stupid ones cut off internet access and most likely suffered. The rest used the technology to their advantage in creating their own blogs, making their companies more transparent, and thus being more honest about the issues. Wired magazine dedicated an entire issue to this phenomenon.
To apply it to the wikipedia spin jobs, I think that companies will authorize a PR representative to make edits. Instead of some off-the-cuff crap from some bored desk jockey named Brad, they’d get perhaps, some thoughtful, well-reasoned statement that might spur important discussion or bring new information to light.
However, the main reason why I liked the site is that simultaneously exposes multiple devils: corporate & political spin, media bias, and the giant information free-for-all / crap-fest that Wikipedia has become – just to name a few.