Japanese Bureaucrats Reprimanded for Wikipedia Editing

sufijazz writes "Six bureaucrats in the Japanese agricultural ministry have been reprimanded for working on the job ... for Wikipedia. The six officials were publicly chastised for editing hundreds of Wikipedia entries during work hours. These included over 250 entries about robots in anime. '"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said a ministry official, Tsutomu Shimomura ... The ministry's internal inquiry followed recent media allegations that a growing number of Japanese public servants were contributing to the internet encyclopaedia, which anyone can edit, often to reflect their personal views. The ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and slapped a ministry-wide order to prohibit access to Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry, Mr Shimomura said. '"

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... no? You're at work, do your job. Don't screw off editing Gundam articles on Wiki.

Man, with attitudes like this, no wonder the Japanese are overtaking Americans economically...

Re:Censorship

[timmarhy]

People are far to quick to cry foul and scream censorship.

they aren't prevented from doing the edits, they just have to do it in THEIR OWN TIME. government computers and resources are not there to contribute to wikipedia.

Now here's some news

[hellfire]

From TFA:

The ministry, however, did not object to their limited contributions on the World Trade Organisation and free trade agreements.

I was about to have a slashtantrum about this not being news. As everyone should be thinking "You can't be wasting your employers time working for anyone else like that, even if it is Wikipedia." That would have been 'nuff said.

However this above statement disturbs me. It's okay if they spend time updating WTO and free trade articles, but not anime pages? They shouldn't be updating either pages. Anime pages are one thing, and they can and should be reprimanded for that. But I shudder at the thought of governments paying employees to update Wikipedia. Why aren't the head bureaucrats getting reprimanded by someone!!! ugh.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

I disagree with that assertion. I often use Wikipedia to look up terms that a client asks me about that I have never heard before, if only so that I can get someone more informed to contact them. For work use I find it invaluable.

Re:Censorship

[stephanruby]

Seriously. Sure, these people may have been doing it during work, but a ban on what's probably one of the world's most popular encyclopedias because people are contributing to a compendium of knowledge (leaving their biases aside)? Isn't that a little ridiculous and over the board?

Yes, a little bit. They could have just blocked wikipedia's url arguments for editing and discussing pages.

Re:Censorship

[vtcodger]

***And yes, surfing the Wikipedia is almost always personal use. It is not a legitimate resource that you would use while writing a proposal you intend to turn in to your boss.***

I don't know how you came to this quite remarkable conclusion, but I think that there is a flaw in your thinking somewhere. Increasingly Wikipedia IS a legitimate resource for getting a first take on a subject that one is not familiar with. I wouldn't base an important decision entirely on what the Wikipedia says, but as a starting point, it is often (I'd say usually) a better starting point than a broadly focused Google search.

Just to make sure that I'm not fantasizing, I picked some subjects that I know enough about to judge the adequacy and where the knowledge was not gained through the Wikipedia. The articles on Black Hole Routing and Forland Basins (a geologic term) were perfectly OK. On the other hand, there wasn't anything on Python's for ... else construct. (Conventional for loop followed by a block to be executed it break is not used to exit the for loop).

Overall, I can't think why one wouldn't go to Wikipedia first. If you're doing serious research, you need to go further of course. But you need to do that with any encyclopedia -- including Britannica which is far from error/bias free and was (the last time I looked) weak on many fields like Information Technology where Wikipedia is pretty good.

The article deals with a different issue -- employees playing with Wikipedia when they are supposed to be doing what they are paid for. In fact, it specifically says that the objection wasn't to the Wikipedia per se and that there wouldn't have been a problem if the employees had been editing Wikipedia entries on subjects related to their work.