The online news has been buzzing with the story of a US college student’s “Wikipedia Scanner” as reported in Wired, BBC and numerous other places.

No wonder it’s getting attention. The tool lets you see who is really editing Wikipedia pages, and shows clearly what many in the web community have known or suspected for some time – in addition to the outright and very obvious problems of spam and articles being defaced, Wikipedia’s open editing policies have also allowed company owners and corporate as well as government spin-doctors to quietly remove any references they don’t want published and ever so softly insert their own versions.

Bizwiki, on the other hand, requires users to register before making changes, and certain key parts of business records require approval by trusted editors.

As a business site, it’s vitally important that users can trust and rely on information, and we believe that registered users are much less likely to make careless or malicious edits of competitor’s information.

All personal details are kept private, but by removing the ability to anonymously and instantly change sensitive sections of pages we safeguard the articles from a lot of potential spam and defacing. There will still be issues, of course, but only allowing registered users to edit and reviewing key information should help to alleviate a lot of the problems associated with wiki style content while still keeping the great part – anyone can write on Bizwiki!

We welcome anyone to write on Bizwiki, add companies and details and help increase the amount of information available.