• John Breslin
• Mon, 10/08/2007 - 21:21
• Comments

Six civil servants in the agriculture ministry of the Japanese government have been reprimanded for their combined 408 edits to the Wikipedia.

The most prolific of the six made 260 changes to pages related to "Mobile Suit Gundam", a Japanese animation show (or "anime") about giant robots.

A representative for the ministry, Tsutomu Shimomura, said: "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam." He also confirmed that a ministry-wide order and site ban is now in place to prohibit access to the Wikipedia from their offices.

The other five officials had fixed some typos and edited various articles about movies, billboard signs and local politics. An article relating to a former senior ministry official was edited from a ministry computer to alter the phrase "losing by a landslide" to the much more positive "losing by a narrow margin."