Kevin Andrews smells strongly of Roquefort cheese and hate. Or, at least, he did until some upright soul thought to reverse my amendments to the Minister’s Wikipedia page.

Before I could post further elaborate fiction re the Honourable Andrews, Janet Albrechtsen and a vat of baby lotion, I was locked out by an uber-pedian and his troublesome need for “truth”.

This is all a terrible waste of my time, in retrospect. Today I learn I could have been earning actual money as a Wiki-vandal. Why not? Workers in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet do. 

Taking pause from the business of stuffing sweaty money into the lacy thongs of
teenagers, Kevin Rudd spoke with the Seven Network today. “I notice the
Prime Minister is engaging public servants to change Wikipedia,” he told press.
Employees of the PMC, it appears, have enthusiastically thrown themselves into the work of Web 2.0.

If you’ve never bothered to consult the Hive Mind hyperbole of Wikipedia, here’s a stub: it’s an online “encyclopedia” that any twit can edit.

A playful new watchdog site called wikiscanner has emerged to track the activity of twits. If you wish to learn exactly which organisation has coarsened public life the most, you can check it here.

126 edits have been made by the PMC. This, when contrasted with my own graffito, is actually a fairly tepid effort. Although, unlike one of Howard’s most intimate servants, I’ve never offered anything as delectably absurd as “Poo bum dicky wee wee”. 

A far more sterling military commitment affects staff at the Department of Defence. They’ve managed 5000 edits. Nice work, fellas.

This, I think, is hardly newsworthy. Australian Public Servants have always doodled. As a former, and only mildly disgraced, employee of the erstwhile office of Patents, Trademarks and Design, I misused microfiche, fax and telephone. It’s only reasonable that the bored administrative officers of today would misuse the technology available to them.

The truly shocking thing about this story is that anyone takes Wikipedia seriously at all. It is not a final authority. It is not a fixed truth. It’s a post-modern hell of bad spelling, wayward grammar and utter balderdash.

In theory, the notion of “collective intelligence” is admirable. In practise, Wikipedia is a mess of opinion barely concealed as objective fact and drunk mutilation.

I’m glad we’re having a look at this hippy hive. Riddled with inconsistencies, Wikipedia must not be elevated to the status of “authority”. It’s a living testimony to the diminution of our intellectual life.

Poo bum dicky wee wee.