KEY POINTS:
The academic world has been sceptical of online site Wikipedia since its launch in 2001.
Now the website is suspicious of academics after a scandal in which a world-renowned computer scientist has been banned from editing the collaborative encyclopaedia.
Carl Hewitt, associate professor emeritus in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is alleged to have disrupted Wikipedia for more than two years by using it for self-promotion, tampering with his own biography and manipulating computer science articles to inflate the importance of his own research.
Senior academics in his field say the changes he made have rendered some entries in effect useless.
Hewitt was found to be citing his own work in articles where it was not relevant, obscuring points of view at odds with his own theories, and editing his biography to promote his forthcoming public appearances.
The banning of Hewitt shows that the academic community is actively involved in editing Wikipedia, but may be no more reliable and trustworthy than any other group of users.
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