Gov't Workers Goof Off on Wiki

Tonight's investigation showed you some of the more interesting changes local government employees made to Wikipedia. How do you feel? Should they be given some slack to pursue personal interests on the internet using computers paid for with your tax dollars, while on the clock? I'd be curious to hear your opinion.

We didn't have time in tonight's story to include all the Wiki changes made by government workers, so here are a few of our favorites that didn't make the cut.

Santa Clara County employees added the names of Latino boxers Roberto Duran, Carlos Monzon, Julio Cesar Chavez and Oscar de la Hoya to a list of the sports greats; contributed six edits to an article about the Architecture of Cambodia, where they posted a photo of an ancient Buddha statue; and inserted a swear word as the middle name of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. To see all the edits from Santa Clara County for yourself, click here and here.

Movies were a favorite topic at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, from Brokeback Mountain to Superman II, but not all the comments were about plot or acting. In an article about Poison Ivy II, one employee wrote that the actress, "Alyssa Milano has some awesome t__s."

Vandalism is a common problem on Wikipedia, but inappropriate comments usually get erased quickly. When someone put the word "love" in front of every reference to "jail" on the San Francisco Sheriff Department's article, the Sheriff's Department logged on themselves to remove the changes. But the vandal persisted, repeatedly posting critical comments about the Sheriff Department's affirmative action program: "Some may say (Sheriff) Hennessey has achieved his diversity goal by hiring and promoting women and minorities who may not have been as qualified as their straight white counterparts." Rehabilitation efforts: "He's even gone as far as to teach criminals from the innercity farming skills just in case one should seek a job in the farming industry." And the canine unit: "The canine unit is basically just for "show" and has been woefully uneffective for years."

When the Sheriff's Department erased those comments, they wrote that they suspected an inside job: "Please block IP vandal...being used to repeatedly vandalize the San Francisco Sheriff's Department entry...possible disgruntled employee."

While in Oakland, one city employee celebrated the end of the work week: "Boogey boogey boo!!! Its friday!"

The Web site WikiScanner was an invaluable tool for tonight's investigation. CalTech graduate student Virgil Griffith came up with the idea after reading about Congressional staffers who got caught inflating their bosses' biographies, and slamming political opponents on Wikipedia. So, he wrote a program that takes all the publicly available data about Wikipedia edits from anonymous Internet Protocol or IP addresses, and cross-matches those records with a database of registered IP addresses, to find out who's really behind them. All you have to do is type in the name of a company, government entity, or an IP address, and you get a list of all their edits.

Griffith says he's going to release an updated version sometime this summer (right now data is only available up to mid-2007). If you have a specific IP address you want to check out in the meantime, you can enter it into Wikipedia's user contributions page for the most up to date information.

And if you discover any interesting edits with WikiScanner, or have a tip about another story we should investigate, send us an email.

Comments

[William]

How do you know they're on the clock exactly?

I think it's pretty normal for people to use the Internet at work during slack time for personal things, so as long as they're putting in a normal day and working on the architecture of Cambodia during their lunch breaks, more power to 'em. Much better that than dooming them to flip through the month-old People magazine in the break room.

Even if this is how they're goofing off on work time, contributing to a public resource is much better than playing minesweeper or jawing with the person in the next cubicle. If a big deal gets made about just this, then the slackers will just slack where we can't track them.

The vandalism, though, is sad, and I'd rather not see that come from a computer that I'm helping pay for.

[bigdeal]

Your next big story must be about government workers abusing taxpayer-funded water coolers by standing next to them or using more than one drinking cup a day.

I am sure your brilliant reporters that uncovered that terrible waist of government resources, are utilizing every last minute of their working hours, day in and day out, toiling tirelessly to dig up and develop earth-shattering news stories such as this one. Yes I am being sarcastic.

[random guy]

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:143.231.249.138

The editor is in the House of Representatives in DC and they've been vandalizing Wikipedia, including other congressmen's pages and has been blocked from editing.

[MKA]

During your investigation did you consider that government entity's have computers available to the public? County Libraries, School Systems, and even hospitals such as Standford have comouters available to consumers. I am not suggesting governemnt workers are perfect. I just wanted to share my thought.

At one time I worked for the county and yes, we used the computers to access personal information during our breaks.

Technology and it's access is everywhere!

I have a suggestion for an investigation that can piggyback on your current findings.

Poll school age kids and ask how many of them have teachers that use cell phones for personal use during classtime, when they should be receiving instruction. Children must keep phones off and out of sight. Let's demand the same of Educators.

[Walter Sobcek]

I didn't watch my buddies lie face down in the muck so these government cronies can type what have you.

However, the Supreme Court has resoundly rejected prior restraint!

Did you ever think about that man?

[MichaelSF]

I don't know that this story has legs beyond a short two minute segment. Sorry ABC, not worth an ITeam expose.

From what I have seen over the past 10 years, most employees, private and government, spend a lot of time on the Net. MySpace, FaceBook, eBay, checking e-mail, shopping, are all popular activities.

I have seen in the private sector many employers enforce "no private time on the Net during work hours" policies.

Generally, most employers look the other way, the same as they do when employees make long distance telephone calls.

But employers do use violation of the rule as an excuse or to fire someone when they want to. So surfing while on the job is at one's peril.

Heck, even judges have been nailed. There's two California Superior Court judges who were kicked off the bench accessing porn sites on their computers in chambers.

For me, I walk by my employees monitors and see Internet Explorer pages minimized on their toolbars that clearly are not work related.

I don't care because they get their work done and accessing the Net to do whatever tends to keep their morale high. They are only prohibited from downloading files or going to any sites that might contain malicious attacks.

We did have a receptionist who was bored to tears at her desk and she was on MySpace her entire time at the desk. That was fine, but eventually she fried the terminal's hard disk because she downloaded a bunch of viruses and trojans.

Fortunately, I made sure her terminal remained isolated from the system, so we simply reformatted the hard disk. She did say "sorry." That was swell considering I had to spend four hours reformatting and reinstalling programs.

[Giovanni33]

Wikipedia serves a legitimate social need in the public's general interest, so I'm perfectly fine with public money being used to help the project, even if this were made official: all employees have to contribute one hour to improve wikipedia, and this goes for private employees, too. Education is a responsbility for all (both to receive it and to provide it), and that does not end at the work place.