AstraZeneca should note that the kind of people who can hack into a multinational company's servers from the outside are not the kind of people who would support corporate coverups, and are exactly the kind of people who expose them.

S. Murthy, Oxford,

No surprise here that Labour are trying to sanitize their history and I'm sure Blair & Buish will be next.

Mike, alicante, spain

they better not edit my page!

jonny rocket, earth, www.sugarusa.us

Well, you cannot say that large corporations do not learn from what others do. In Stalinist USSR entries in the Soviet Encyclopaedia, particularly those relating to non-persons and those purged, were always being altered and subscribers were instructed to cut out the offending pages and then replace them with revised pages.

Similarly, in "1984" such changes were regularly made.

However, we should praise the inventor of WikiScanner because his innovation allows us to see the relevant corporations for what they are, once their PR efforts are negated by their own actions.

Daniel Cramer, Welwyn, Herts,

In Response to Rob, Halifax, Canada
"The 25km security zone around the conference to be enforced by the US military doesn't help." If the U.S. Military is in Canada, I believe that the political transition has already occurred, look at the scandalous 2000 election when George Bush was installed, look at the scandalous election in Ohio to keep them in power. Look at the uproar in Mexico when Felipe Calderon claimed victory with a definite Rove aftertaste, look at Canada and Stephen Harper, that election was not without question. These people were installed by the N.W.O.

Folks they are united in their effort to succeed at any cost, so you should too because if we remain DIVIDED as they want us your children's future is going to be a damn ugly one.

Mike, Pinellas Park, Fla

That happened to me. Someone from UnumProvident kept deleting bad references (Which were all cited news articles, or links to official sites regarding govt probes.) from their Wiki entry. I'd put them back in, and a few days later they'd be deleted. I got tired of messing with it so it's probably a totally laudatory article again ;')

Jim Mooney, Tempe, AZ

basically i have on and off over the last 20 yrs, campaigned against big business's, (though since illness, stopped, me campaigning recently(. I have always said 'multi-national corporations are taking over the world, more and more, and some even run countries, a lot of blue-chip companies also wouldnt like it known that they, also backed germany while actually at war with them politically. So it does not surprise, me that some companies want to change there history in reference media !

jonathan rose, Torrington,

Case in point:

The North American Security and Prosperity Partnership is occuring August 20 and 21, 2007 in Montebello, Quebec with 30 of the top North American CEOs, George Bush, Felipe Calderon and Stephen Harper, and very few Americans, Canadians and Mexicans even know of this meeting and its significance.

You can read all about the meeting in newspapers in China, but most North American papers won't touch the issue. The 25km security zone around the conference to be enforced by the US military doesn't help.

Is anyone really surprised that corporations are fighting to turn the internet into a source of misinformation? These same corporations are trying to prevent democracies from functioning.

Rob, Halifax, Canada

In my humble opinion, I'm sure there are just as many non-scandalous edits being made by corporate employees to subject articles about there firms, where they are correcting or removing unsourced nonsense that anonymous, individual, volunteer editors have inserted into Wikipedia. We won't hear about those edits, though, because it wouldn't sell newspapers.

Tell me, what is a company supposed to do when it finds within its Wikipedia article, "XYZ Widget Co. kidnapped my mother and tortured her by immersing her in a 42-gallon barrel blackberry compote"? Wikipedia administrators tell us the business should interact on the "talk" pages, or contact an anti-vandal team within Wikipedia, but how functional is that on the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"? "Justfixit" is an age-old credo on Wikipedia -- but it doesn't apply to businesses. Corporate entities are supposed to participate in Wikipedia with one hand tied behind their backs, while reckless teenagers have free rein.

Gregory Kohs, West Chester, Pennsylvania

This is the biggest non story i have read for some time. |The purpose of wikipedia is to enable everyone to have their say. That is the best way of getting a balanced view.

You seem to be saying that companies/politiciancs should not have a say because by definition of being a company/poltician they must be bad?

leeInLondon, London,

Not quite sure why this is an issue - the beauty of Wikipedia is that, overall, people will keep editing an article till it is factual(ish).

And it allows any entity to present its point of view on an article about itself. For example when I was working at a Software firm, we had to occasionally edit Wikipedia entries because some user was putting up codenames for pending products - while not the biggest disaster, this could still be a security issue.

And if an article isn't factual due to corporate manipulation, well, people should know that Wikipedia isn't a 100% accurate. It cannot be.

Mangald, Bombay,

No one should be allowed to alter pages on the Wikipedia that freely. They should be required to be registered and checked and identified as securely as credit card holders are when they go internet shopping. Also, any alterations made should appear as additions without the original being deleted. The identity of the persons making the additional comments and their affiliation should always be revealed.

The principles for good a good public internet encyclopaedia are:

1. All information is part of a debate; it´s never definitive. The debate should reflect in the presentation of any article. Therefore there should never be alterations, only additions.

2. There should be no anonymity for contributors. The Wikipedia is a powerful and popular tool. Millions use it and hope it is reliable. Anonymity is bound to lead to corruption of information and disinformation by interested parties. No surprise there!

Arjun Sen, Mijas, Spain

I don't know why this should surpise anyone. Wiki encourages editing, and also tries to remain neutral. I've written a couple of articles. Roving editors (some very ill informed) were not shy about adding and deleting from my articles. Some were good and very useful suggestions, but others were just ignorant and even inappropriate. That's Wiki! The worst are the vandals who put erroneous info just to see if they can get away with it. So why wouldn't companies edit an article to their advantage? They may even think they are correcting an error. And they may be.

Tony Francis , Wichita, KS/USA

Also, someone at the BBC has been caught changing the "W" initial in US President George Bush name to something rude.

Richy, tokyo, japan

This is truly unfortunate. Wikis offer the technology to aid in the learning of and about almost anything discovered by any man or woman. As a tool there is nothing like them. What is so unfortunate is that there is no way to correct the problem this article raises. Distorting the truth is profitable when done correctly, and blocking editing destroys the nature of the wiki.

Philip Sullivan, Baltimore, US

I wonder what wikipedia will say under the heading of G.W Bush and I can only imagine what his dad will re write 15 minutes later.
The conquerors have always written their own verson of history,this is just the modern version,hence why Winston Churchill is considered a great man in the UK but you only have to ask an australian and a kiwi who sacrificed all the ANZACS in Gallopoli and Churchills name is never far from the top of the list.

luke, perth, australia

People and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

Hegel

Richard Straughan, Bath, UK

Where there's brass, there's muck...

Bill Bird, Wallasey, Wirral

The tremendous potential of the internet to inform is unfortunately also available to those who would use it for their own self serving purposes to misinform. Corporations, politicians and their think tanks have figured this out.

McLuhan was right: the media has truly become the message.

Rob, Halifax, Canada

The corporate denials are hysterical. You only have to extrapolate what they're trying to use as an excuse... "well you see, some one either hacked into our computers, or otherwise faked an IP address, all in order to edit Wiki entries to be favorable to us!"

These are just the stupid ones, the smarter PR folks including political campaigners in the U.S. just know to do all this activity from public or anonymous IP addresses like coffee shops or home broadband connections that would be virtually impossible to trace back to individuals working for an organization without subpeonas and the like.

JC, boston, US

I'm afraid it's inevitable. Does it surprise anyone that a company or a political party would falsify publily available records? In any case, Wikipedia is not the bible some seem to take it for -- it's a resource of questionable and inconsistent value.

John Lynch, Whittington, UK

The wording of the article suggests that these are officially sanctioned attempts to rewrite history by the companies concerned. Another explanation is that it's all down to some proud employees acting on their own (and stupid enough to do it from their work computer). Whilst every employee is a representative of their employer and has a responsibility not to cause disrepute, they aren't necessarily acting with the blessing of their employer.

Ricky Pedia, Miami, Florida

I used this webpage and alledgedly the house of commons have made numerous changes to wiki pages interestingly pages on iraq and the scottish socialist tommy sheiridan in fact there were changes to over 2000 pages. The labour party has also made changes to pages about charles kennedy and some conservative party members.

louise, glasgow, scotland