TOKYO - Japan's Agriculture Ministry reprimanded six bureaucrats
after an internal probe found they spent work hours contributing to
Wikipedia on topics unrelated to farm issues including 260
entries about cartoon robots.
The six civil servants together made 408 entries on the popular Web
site encyclopedia from ministry computers since 2003, an official
said Friday.
One of the six focused solely on Gundam the popular, long-running
animated series about giant robots to which he contributed 260
times. The series has spun off intricate toy robots popular among
schoolchildren as well as adults known as "otaku" nerds.
"The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said
ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura.
The other five bureaucrats scolded for shirking their duties
focused their contributions on movies, typographical mistakes on
billboard signs and local politics, Shimomura said.
The ministry's internal probe followed recent media allegations
that a growing number of Japanese public servants were contributing
to the Web encyclopedia, which anyone can edit, often to reflect
their 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,
Shimomura said.
The ministry, however, did not object to their limited
contributions on the World Trade Organization and free trade
agreements.
An Imperial Household Agency official was reprimanded last month
for using an agency computer to delete references on Wikipedia that
criticized imperial tombs.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071005/ap_on_hi_te/japan_wikipedia_reprimands
