An investigation by The Southern Reporter has revealed computers in Border schools were used to post racist and anti-gay comments on a popular online encyclopedia.
Dozens of illicit entries were submitted to Wikipedia between October 2005 and January 2007 and, despite having since been removed from the site’s main pages, can still be accessed by the general public.
Scottish Borders Council this week admitted
it had been unaware of any such activity and announced a full investigation would be launched using information uncovered by TheSouthern.
Police also confirmed they would take any matter of this nature seriously and would be working with the education department to identify offenders.
Sergeant Helen Birrell said any racist comments or behaviour would not be tolerated.
“I was not aware of this incident but will certainly look into it and where necessary firm action will be,” she said.
In one case, an article about the 2005 Pakistan earthquake was altered to describe the event as a “niger [sic] destroying earthquake”, while the phrase “kill the niggers” was entered in a feature on slavery.
The comment “prepare to die, you f****ing Jawa sand monkies [sic]” was added to an article about Iran.
Other additions included lewd and offensive remarks aimed at the gay community, including specific attacks on TV presenter Dale Winton.
One entry on Hawick was altered to read: “Hawick people speak funny”, while others contained personal messages.
Various other names were also mentioned in full, allowing education chiefs to this week trace the source to two secondary schools, one of which is believed to be Peebles High.
The entries, which were all made during school term dates and between the hours of 8am and 4pm, were originally linked to the local authority using software which tracks computers by their IP address, the unique tag which identifies a particular computer or network.
And SBC yesterday confirmed the IP address used by the foul-minded offenders belonged to the council’s curriculum network.
Leona Bendall from the education department said: “This appears to have originated from two small groups of S3 and S5 pupils at two different schools.
“We will be looking into this and discussing appropriate disciplinary action with the schools immediately after the October break.
“The council’s corporate IT team is looking at ways to better manage access to Wikipedia but we would not want to block the site as it provides a valuable education and business resource.”
The free online encyclopedia was set up in 2001 and has become one of the internet’s largest and most popular reference websites.
The full article contains 436 words and appears in Southern Reporter newspaper.
