GGL Wire

Someone behind the Electronic Arts firewall is trying to erase the legacy of founder Trip Hawkins.

Shacknews discovered the shenanigans using Wikipedia Scanner, which tracks changes to the open-source encyclopedia. Someone at the IP 159.153.4.50 — “within a range registered to Electronic Arts’ Redwood City headquarters” — removed references to Hawkins, as well as mentions of criticisms of the company.

Some examples:

Before	After
Established in 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible for their games.	Established in 1982, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible for their games.
Electronic Arts has from time to time been criticized for its employment policy of requiring employees to work extraordinarily long hours — up to 80 hours per week — as a general rule and not just at “crunch” times leading up to the scheduled releases of products. “The current mandatory hours are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.—seven days a week—with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behaviour (at 6:30 p.m.).” The company has since settled a class action lawsuit brought by game artists to compensate for “unpaid overtime” EA management demanded of its employees. The class was awarded $15.6 million. As a result, many of the lower-level artists are now working at an hourly rate. A similar suit brought by game programmers was settled for $14.9 million.	Electronic Arts has led the industry in reforming work/life balance issues that are endemic to the software industry. The company has settled a class action lawsuit brought by game artists to compensate for “unpaid overtime”. The class was awarded $15.6 million. A similar suit brought by game programmers was settled for $14.9 million.

Shacknews:

The IP in question is the most active Wikipedia user among the IP addresses registered to EA, accounting for a third of the 1,351 changes made by the lot of them. Many of the changes attempted by this EA-registered IP have since been reversed by the Wikipedia community. It’s certainly in a company’s interest to correct mistakes regarding its operations on a publicly available Internet information site, but one has to wonder where the line should be drawn.

Link.