Oct 5, 1:22 AM EDT
Japan bureaucrats chided for shirking work, editing Wikipedia
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's Agriculture Ministry reprimanded six bureaucrats for shirking their duties after an internal probe found they spent work hours contributing to Wikipedia - including 260 entries about cartoon robots.
The six civil servants together made 408 entries - on issues unrelated to farm issues - on the popular Web site encyclopedia from ministry computers since 2003, an official said Friday.
One of the six focused solely on Gundam - the popular, long-running animated series about giant robots - to which he contributed 260 times. The series has spun off intricate toy robots popular among schoolchildren as well as adults known as "otaku" nerds.
"The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura.
The other five bureaucrats mostly focused their contributions on movies, typographical mistakes on billboard signs and local politics, Shimomura said.
The ministry's internal probe followed recent media allegations that a growing number of Japanese public servants were contributing to the Web encyclopedia, which anyone can edit, often to reflect their views.
The ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and slapped a ministry-wide order to prohibit access to Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry, Shimomura said.
The ministry, however, did not object to their limited contributions on the World Trade Organization and free trade agreements.
An Imperial Household Agency official was reprimanded last month for using an agency computer to delete references on Wikipedia that criticized imperial tombs.
AP actually used the phrase "otaku nerd"?
...redundant-ant-ant-ant-ant.
well... not necessarily, I mean, in English at least, "Otaku" is a subset, subculture of nerdism, and is specific to Japanese pop culture, more specifically manga/anime.
>>3
This is true, but only self-defined "Otaku" use this word and in this context.
ONE OF US! ONE OF US!
They're everywhere.
"The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam,"
This is a beautiful quote.
I need no further evidence to conclude that certain Weeaboo ministries actually have giant robots, kept secretly, and the wiki entries are the way that certain witnesses can tell us about them.
Anime tells us that mechas will pop out from under school buildings, but they're doing that to hide the truth.
Mechas pop out from under rice fields.
y'all are mighty baka :)