
Vandals want to add, but improve is not in their vocabulary. Wikipedia now faces a controversy that could undermine its whole philosophy - a community of people free to add and improve on its entries. This month it was revealed that a prominent and long-standing editor had lied about his identity to win arguments with other Wikipedians: 'Essjay' claimed to be a tenured university professor on his personal user page, when he was actually a 24-year-old community college drop-out. Wikipedia has been accused of being unreliable and inconsistent, and in 2005 American journalist John Seigenthaler blasted it as 'flawed and irresponsible' after libellous claims were introduced into his biography. Many question how an encyclopaedia written on this basis could ever work. It has become very powerful in the world of the internet and is used as a reference tool for everyone from students to politicians. With only seven paid administrative employees, the encyclopaedia depends on the altruistic collaboration of its four million registered users, as well as countless others who edit the site anonymously. Launched in 2001, it quickly became the world's most popular non-profit website and is now among the top 10 visited on the net, containing more than six million articles in 250 languages. Wikipedia is one of the great internet successes of the decade. And whereas MySpace and YouTube employ centralised moderators, Wikipedia relies on the goodwill of loyal members of the community to weed out malicious contributions. Any site that relies on well-meaning contributions from the public is vulnerable - MySpace, Slashdot and YouTube have all been victims - but Wikipedia is particularly susceptible because it is the encyclopaedia anyone can edit, including those whose sole aim is to undermine it.

The internet has always been a magnet for bored people looking for amusement, but while some write a blog and others search for pornography, a growing number get their kicks by sabotaging high-profile websites. Since the death of Steve Irwin - the Australian television naturalist who was struck in the chest by a stingray's barb last year - the entry has become one of the online encyclopaedia's most regularly vandalised articles.

In fact it was a piece of 'internet vandalism' by a growing band of cyberspace guerrillas that is targeting sites such as Wikipedia.
