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Japanese Agriculture Ministry officials reprimanded for Wikipedia usage
Bureaucrats spent work hours contributing to blogs about Anime, cartoon robots
October 9, 2007—Six bureaucrats have been reprimanded after an internal probe uncovered that they had spent a majority of their work hours contributing to Wikipedia entries unrelated to farming or agricultural issues including, but not limited to, some 260 entries about cartoon robots, according to a report from the Associated Press.
Together, the number of entries totaled 408, and many focused on the Anime program, Gundam, an extremely popular series about giant robots. Gundam fans, known in Japan as “otaku” nerds are largely responsible for the Internet posts relating to the show. The problem, of course, comes when the “otaku” use business hours for personal Internet usage.
Each of the six officials, dubbed the “Gundam Six,” by bloggers, possibly in playful reference to recent “Jena Six,” incident in Louisiana, received a verbal reprimand from the ministry, a new order that prohibits Wikipedia access while at work has also been enforced, and access to the site via any of the ministry’s computers has also been disabled.
“The Agricultural Ministry is not in charge of Gundam,” said ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura in a statement to the AP.
Worldwide, according to ComputerTimes.com, 50 percent of respondents spent more than 10 percent of their time at work daily using the Internet for personal usage. Further, 75 percent of those surveyed have “accidentally” visited a pornographic Web site while at work. Of these people, 15 percent have visited these sites more than 10 times. 46 percent of online holiday shopping takes place while at work, and 92% of online stock trading occurs between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm.
This practice of using the Internet for excessive personal use is known as Internet abuse, and anything that reduces employee productivity can fall into this category, including, but not limited to: personal research, Ecommerce or eBay activities, personal banking activities, and job searches. Not only is this type of Internet usage counterproductive, but it can also, according to NetSweeper.com, can pose serious legal liabilities for the corporation.
Embarrassing or questionable content, according to the site, has been known to create hostile and uncomfortable workplace environments, and has resulted in both expensive and embarrassing lawsuits for several corporations.
Many feel that the problem of workplace Internet usage stems from the fact that corporations are either unwilling or unable to effectively regulate it.
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