The following is a transcript of a report by Team 4's Paul Van Osdol that first aired Feb. 1, 2008, on WTAE Channel 4 Action News at 5 p.m.

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A Team 4 investigation has found government employees learning new ways to waste their time and your tax dollars.

As it turns out, they've been spending lots of time on one of the most popular Web sites, and Team 4's Paul Van Osdol says he knows exactly what they've been doing.

If you use the Internet, you're probably familiar with Wikipedia. It's an online encyclopedia, but it's not like the encyclopedias of old. The big difference is anyone can edit articles on Wikipedia.

Now there's a way to see who's making those edits, and Team 4 found thousands of edits done by government employees on government time using government computers. And few of those edits have anything to do with government business.

They might look like busy bureaucrats, but some of them have been obsessing over Ben Roethlisberger, Beyonce and James Bond. Those names are among the hundreds of Wikipedia pages Team 4 found to be favorites of local, state and federal government employees.

One state employee took time out of his day to edit the Wikipedia page for Lurch, who was the butler on "The Addams Family" TV series. The person wanted to point out that Lurch did not actually play the harpsichord himself.

An Allegheny County employee used his county computer to detail the plot summary for a Star Wars television series.

And employees of the U.S. Navy, Army, the Census Bureau, the city of Seattle and Allegheny County have edited Ben Roethlisberger's Wikipedia page.

In total, Team 4 found 33 Wikipedia edits by city employees, including 202 by Allegheny County employees, 1,536 by state employees and 5,542 edits by congressmen, senators or their staffers.

Keep in mind; Wikipedia is just one Web site.

"They have too much time on their hands, and they're not doing the work they should be doing," said University of Pittsburgh professor Jerry Shuster.

There were about 1,500 Wikipedia edits by state employees, but is that a concern?

Gov. Ed Rendell said it is.

After Team 4 brought the information to his attention, Rendell launched an investigation. He said the state prohibits personal use of the Internet like editing the Wikipedia site for Batman's enemies, as one state employee did.

"It's a fairly strict policy and obviously the policy was violated here," Rendell said.

The policy might also have been violated by a state Senate employee who made several edits to Bada-Bing, the nightclub featured on HBO's "The Sopranos."

"I will talk to my Senate leadership and ask if they're aware of it and then deal with it," said Sen. John Pippy.

You don't have to be a computer scientist to edit Wikipedia, but Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist John Peha did it for Team 4 to show just how easy it is. He used last year's Super Bowl page, where it rightfully listed the Indianapolis Colts as the winners.

"If we just click on 'edit this page,'" said Peha. "If we just delete 'Colts.' So, now we see the Steelers beating the Bears 29 to 17 in last year's Super Bowl."

While Lurch and the Bada-Bing have Wikipedia sites, so do politicians like President George W. Bush, Rendell and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

Team 4 found that some people who work for those political leaders were whitewashing their Wikipedia pages.

Someone at the Department of Homeland Security removed allegations about Bush's alcohol abuse as a young man that he was "excessively uninhibited" and "lost control of the car."

At Rendell's Wikipedia page, a state employee removed negative comments about Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll's "supposedly odd behavior," a reference to several embarrassing misstatements she made.

Van Osdol: "Somebody took some negative information off your Wikipedia page. Was that something you directed someone to do?"

Rendell: "No."

And then there's Ravenstahl. Last year there were controversies involving allegations of an altercation with a police officer at a Steelers game and the demotion of police Lt. Catherine McNeilly.

All of it was removed from Ravenstahl's Wikipedia page by a city computer.

Van Osdol: "Did you have anything to do with that?"

Ravenstahl: "I did not, and I'm unaware of it, and I'd be happy to take a look at it for you, but I'm unaware of it. And certainly did not direct anybody to do that."

Someone later added the controversial information that had been removed.

Identifying the individual responsible for changing a Wikipedia page is difficult. Wikiscanner, the Web site that allows you to see who's editing Wikipedia, will tell you the Internet provider responsible for the change but not the specific person.

But when an Upper St. Clair High School student was making inappropriate edits, Wikipedia contacted the school, and the school tracked down the student who did it.

"It was one particular student putting inappropriate, it wasn't even accurate, inappropriate material on Wikipedia," said USC Principal Michael Ghilani. "But that's really the only incident we've had."

That's what he though, but Team 4 showed him some of the 2,300 edits that had been made from school district computers. Some of them were sexual in nature while others were jabs at school rival Mount Lebanon, which is "very yucky bad bad," according to a Wikipedia edit by someone at USC.

"I can assure you that's something we're going to look at," said Ghilani.

Peha said he hopes the revelations of questionable edits will cause everyone to look at Wikipedia in a new light.

"It's a great resource to use, but you always have to remember it is not an authoritative resource," he said. "It's going to have some inaccuracies in it."

A spokesman for Wikipedia said they have used Wikiscanner themselves to investigate questionable edits. Two years ago, Wikipedia said they found six senators had their Wikipedia pages vandalized by others using house or Senate computers.

To check out Wikiscanner, visit Wikiscanner.virgil.gr/.

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