Ministries Editing Japanese Wikipedia

[Mulboyne]

IT Media reports (Japanese) that netizens have been having fun with the Japanese version of WikiScanner. WikiScanner lets you review the IP addresses of computers that have been used to edit Wikipedia entries. So far, amateur sleuths have turned up addresses linked to various Ministries and the Imperial Household. In many cases, the edits are for entries which relate to issues which are in the portfolio of these agencies. Others, however, clearly are private interests of individual employees. For instance, the Communications Ministry has edited the entry on electronic voting, particularly security concerns, around ten times. The Education Ministry deleted a reference to the scandal involving Masaaki Honma who resigned as the head of the Tax Commission when it was revealed he was living with his girlfriend in swanky subsididized government accomodation. They also edited an entry on Community Schools to praise their own website. The Health Ministry has edited entries on drugs but one official also appears to have added a lengthy explanation of an adult game based on the anime "Nanatsuiro Drops". Perhaps inevitably, the Imperial Household seems to have concerned itself with editing speculation about the Imperial Family. The Agriculture Ministry has been particularly prolific but most of the entries found so far relate to Gundam (see image above). The article notes that Wikipedia guidelines ask that users refrain from editing entries which relate to them directly.

[dimwit]

As far as the Imperial Household Agency, I have no doubt this has happened. Compare the Japanese and English references to Princess Tsuguko.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Tsuguko_of_Takamado

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%89%BF%E5%AD%90%E5%A5%B3%E7%8E%8B

[Behan]

Your example was interesting so I looked at both.

The English Wikipedia has(but I added the bold face):

Explicit sexual talks
..."Shukan Bunshun" reported Princess Tsuguko had created a profile for herself in a Japanese social network service site adopting the alias and talked on her own sexual interests explicitly.[1]

In contrast to public images of Japanese imperial house members, whose private lives were covered by a veil of Chrysanthemum taboo, her site with childish writing was found so "obscene" to the media even without any sexual pictures.

This article was too sensitive to Japanese people that most of all media in Japan deliberately ignored it and Imperial Household Agency did not published any official statements, but some Chinese newspapers[2] reported this incident

It doesn't look like this is on the Japanese site.

[Catoneinutica]

As far as the Imperial Household Agency, I have no doubt this has happened. Compare the Japanese and English references to Princess Tsuguko.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Tsuguko_of_Takamado

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%89%BF%E5%AD%90%E5%A5%B3%E7%8E%8B

From the Chinese article referenced in the Wikipedia entry:


Japan's very own exemplar of Grimaldi-esque Euro-style aristotrash - yay!

-catone
-yes, I'd hit it (but I'd wear a wet-suit)
-bonus points for the goatee-d, Edwardian-collared dunce behind her.

[Mulboyne]

Takepoo has already posted some of her pictures from Edinburgh in the Random Nihonjin thread.

[dimwit]

It doesn't look like this is on the Japanese site.

Even more fun the Japanese site has been locked preventing any further editing.

[Catoneinutica]

Now, how does this work, Takepoo? If I were to publish a story about the shenanigans of some Eurotrash-acting Japanese Princess, to whom would you mail the bullet, her or me?

[Charles]

From the Chinese article referenced in the Wikipedia entry:


Japan's very own exemplar of Grimaldi-esque Euro-style aristotrash - yay!

-catone
-yes, I'd hit it (but I'd wear a wet-suit)
-bonus points for the goatee-d, Edwardian-collared dunce behind her.

I recognize that goatee. Here's a pic I took of him in 2004:



I was told this was Prince Mikasa but I looked up the pics and that isn't THE Prince Mikasa. Maybe he is some second cousin in the house of Mikasa, but then he wouldn't have been suitable as a representative of the Emperor, at Yasukuni where I took the pic.

[Greji]

I was told this was Prince Mikasa but I looked up the pics and that isn't THE Prince Mikasa. Maybe he is some second cousin in the house of Mikasa, but then he wouldn't have been suitable as a representative of the Emperor, at Yasukuni where I took the pic.

It ain't HIH Prince Mikasa, both (when genki) are regulars at my joint!
How's that grab ya?

[Mulboyne]

I've never been a great fan of the Big Brother approach of many IT departments in checking how employees use the web but this story indicates two things: (a) most government agencies in Japan have no idea what their people are doing on the net (as we also saw when an SDF leaked US military secrets while swapping porn) and (b) when they do use the internet for official purposes, they have no idea of the trail they leave behind.

[Mulboyne]

Adamu at Mutant Frog has an entry on this story including a link to a Yomiuri report. He has also done some digging himself to see what people have edited. Take a look at his findings here.

[Mulboyne]

Mutant Frog again highlighting a report that the Imperial Household has banned editing Wikipedia.

[Mulboyne]

Guardian: Japanese civil servants 'shirked duties to edit Wikipedia'

The Japanese government today reprimanded a group of civil servants after finding they spent hours contributing to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia instead of working. An internal investigation by the country's agricultural ministry found staff had been shirking their duties to update the popular site. In total, the six bureaucrats were found to have posted some 408 entries since 2003 on issues unrelated to farming. One bureaucrat had posted 260 entries on Gundam, the hugely successful animated series about giant robots.

"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," a ministry official, Tsutomu Shimomura, said today. He said the other five bureaucrats had mostly written about movies, typographical mistakes on billboards and local politics. The ministry's investigation came after media allegations that a growing number of Japanese public servants were wasting time on Wikipedia. Anyone is able to edit the site, which calls itself the "biggest, multilingual, free-content encyclopedia on the internet". It contains more than 7m articles.

Today, the ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and introduced a department-wide ban on staff accessing Wikipedia at work. Last month, an Imperial Household Agency official was reprimanded for using an agency computer to delete references on Wikipedia that criticised imperial tombs.

[gomichild]

Sounds like they were doing something useful for a change. Maybe they could be transferred to the Culture office?

[Mulboyne]

Asahi: Web sniffing

In April 2006, a passage smearing the reputation of opposition lawmaker Akira Nagatsuma, a known foe of the welfare ministry, was added to his profile on the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Around the same time, a passage that raises doubts about the Imperial Household Agency's policy on imperial mausoleum research was deleted from another Wikipedia entry. Changes can be made anonymously in the increasingly popular, multilingual Internet encyclopedia that allows anyone to freely contribute, add or edit articles. But contributors can no longer hide behind the veil of anonymity.

Now, anyone can locate, by a simple Web search, the organizations from which the edits originated. And such searches have produced embarrassing results for the nation's bureaucracy. The addition to the entry about Nagatsuma came from inside the welfare ministry itself, while the passage about the Imperial Household Agency was deleted by someone from that particular agency. Case after case has been found of similar revisions being made to the Japanese-language Wikipedia from computers in government ministries and agencies--to present those entities in a better light.

In mid-August, WikiScanner, a program designed by an American graduate school student to track those who edit or create Wikipedia entries, was released. WikiScanner checks the IP addresses--the Internet addresses--of computers, automatically recorded when anything is written in Wikipedia. The search finds out what entities the computers belong to. Since the search tool's Japanese-language version was made available in late August, some embarrassing discoveries have been made, involving computers in government and corporate entities.

A search of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, for example, reveals a list of about 100 revisions. Many are about what individual bureaucrats are interested in, such as their hobbies. But one addition made in April 2006 criticized Nagatsuma, a Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) lawmaker who made a name for himself by investigating the many problems within the pension system.

Nagatsuma gained the moniker of "Mr. Pension" after uncovering the fact that the rightful owners are not known for tens of millions of pension payment records. He also uncovered other blunders made by the ministry and its problem-plagued arm, the Social Insurance Agency. The change to the entry read: "Some point out that (Nagatsuma) is working government officials hard (with his large numbers of inquiries) in order to make money himself." The welfare ministry said it was trying to locate the individual who made the revision and would consider punishing the person. Officials are not allowed to use ministry computers for anything not related to their duties. After learning that the change came from within the ministry, Nagatsuma said, "I was amazed to learn how much free time officials enjoy--especially when the welfare ministry is putting in such sloppy work with regards to its important pension duties."

The Imperial Household Agency, meantime, has verbally warned an official who came forward when the agency began an in-house investigation into the change in the entry on imperial mausoleum research. The official deleted a passage about the agency's regulations on the entry of researchers into emperors' tombs. The deleted passage said some believe the agency is afraid researchers might discover historical facts that could undermine the foundations of the emperor system.

Another revision, made from a Justice Ministry computer in October 2005, criticized other government entities about their noninvolvement in the ministry's Immigration Bureau duties. On the topic of refugee recognition, the addition said both the Foreign Ministry and the welfare ministry do not like getting involved in this "troublesome duty which has no vested interests." Someone in the Cabinet Office in February 2006 deleted a passage about Kuniko Inoguchi, then a state minister in charge of measures against the declining birthrate. The passage said there is criticism against Inoguchi, who often acts "at her own discretion."

In January this year, a computer in the education ministry was used to delete an allegation that Masaaki Honma, a former chief of the government's Tax Commission, was doubly compensated for his business trip expenses. All entities say such use of government computers violates their rules. The welfare ministry changed its computer system to block any writing into Wikipedia from ministry computers in September 2006. The education ministry took the same step after the current controversy arose. Other entities are expected to follow suit.

Hisamichi Okamura, an attorney who is a visiting professor at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, says the guarantee of anonymity on the Internet is a "myth." "There is a possibility that WikiScanner may serve, to a certain degree, as a deterrent to irresponsible postings on the Web that take advantage of anonymity," he said. Wikipedia has been created in more than 250 languages and features a total of 8 million entries. Its Japanese version has more than 400,000 entries and has attracted more than 7 million users, according to the Wikipedia site.

[Behan]

In April 2006, a passage smearing the reputation of opposition lawmaker Akira Nagatsuma, a known foe of the welfare ministry, was added to his profile on the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Around the same time, a passage that raises doubts about the Imperial Household Agency's policy on imperial mausoleum research was deleted from another Wikipedia entry.
...

The addition to the entry about Nagatsuma came from inside the welfare ministry itself, while the passage about the Imperial Household Agency was deleted by someone from that particular agency.

Case after case has been found ...

[Mulboyne]

Asahi: Wiki entries deleted after scandal

References to the multilevel marketing industry--from which an opposition lawmaker was allegedly paid off--were deleted from the Japanese Wikipedia on a computer in the Lower House building on Oct. 10. A spokesman for Yukichi Maeda, who resigned from Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) after the allegation, denied his office was involved. The online encyclopedia's records show mentions of support for the sales method by a Diet members' league were deleted on Oct. 10. The IP address of the computer was from a Lower House Internet connection.

[Behan]

[SIZE="6"]...but you sure as hell aint watching Big Brother.[/SIZE]