Sony Busted Editing Halo 3 Wikipedia Entry

Halo 3 might be the most anticipated shooter for Microsoft’s gaming console ever since the original Halo helped gamers everywhere rationalize purchasing the first Xbox. In the competitive world of video games, not everyone shares that enthusiasm.

Not everyone tries to tweak Wikipedia to downplay a rival’s game title, though. Sony has been caught doing just that, according to Ars Technica:

The contributor claims that Halo 3′s graphics won’t look much better than Halo 2, citing a Time story from March. Page 52, if you’d like to look it up.

For some crazy reason MaxConsole ran the IP itself and isolated the IP range to a particular place: SCEE’s Liverpool offices. Someone at Sony isn’t too happy with the state of Halo 3′s graphics, and they want to talk about it.

MaxConsole said, “Sony added “Halo 3 won’t look any better than Halo 2″ to the entry, although the page has been corrected and locked from further alterations.”

Though Ars Technica writer Ben Kuchera said the minor edit does have a credible source, “If I were working for any of the big three (console makers) I’d be telling my employees to stay away from Wikipedia. It just doesn’t look good when stuff like this comes out.”

Wikiscanner Shows Whodunnit

Of course, you don’t really have to turn off your computer. There are anonymizing programs and websites out there that help you surf quietly, something the folks at Diebold, the CIA, Congress, and Fox News probably should have learned about before visiting Wikipedia to screw with things.

On Monday, a fun little search tool emerged that allows users to investigate who’s edited Wikipedia entries based on dedicated corporate IP blocks. Wikiscanner, developed by a Cal Tech graduate hacker named Virgil Griffith, can track those types of changes.

And thus, blow the cover off some humorous edits.

For example, Al Franken and Fox News aren’t exactly friends. The O’Reilly Radar’s (Tim, not Bill) Artur Bergman fills us in on that one. Instead of Fox News’s case being "laughed out of court," someone from a Fox IP address decided the lawsuit was "the best thing to happen to [Franken's] booksales."

As Wired reports, voting machine company Diebold didn’t like a large chunk of negative information about them on the site and just deleted all of it.

And the CIA? Well, apparently they’re quite busy monitoring lyrics in an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Your tax dollars at work. See at the bottom of the rubble pile, folks.