Unmasking Wikipedia Bias and Hype

In a new Chronicle podcast, Virgil Griffith, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, talks about the online database he built that lets anyone hunt for Wikipedia authors who are trying to hype themselves or bash their enemies. The database, called WikiScanner, has already been used to spot deletions of potentially unflattering information about groups ranging from the CIA to the theme park SeaWorld — deletions that originated from computers at those groups. —Josh Fischman