The entry, which mentioned the doomed Malaysia Airlines MH17, claimed that the Russian government had been involved in the plane crash. It had accused Russia of providing missiles to terrorist attackers which were then used to bring down the commercial airliner.
The original text, according to the Global Voices website, states that the MH17 was shot down "by terrorists of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic with Buk system missiles, which the terrorists received from the Russian Federation."
The Donetsk People's Republic of eastern Ukraine is part of the self-proclaimed Federal State of Novorossiya. Along with Ukraine, it shares border with Russia and the Lugansk People's Republic, the latter being classified by Ukraine as a terrorist organization.
The Buk system is a family of missiles that belong to the medium-range surface to air missile systems which has a self-propelling feature. It was developed by the Soviet Union and the succeeding Russian Federation. This type of missile had been designed to counter-attack smart bombs, cruise missiles, nonmanipulated aerial vehicles, and fixed and rotary wing aircraft.
In the unedited Wikipedia text, it mentioned about the system's involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. The plane, which was a Boeing 777-200ER, was carrying 298 passengers when it crashed in Donetsk Oblast found in eastern Ukraine.
The revised copy of the Wikipedia article now suggests that the shooting down of flight MH17 should be blamed on the Ukrainian military. The move to edit the misleading information came as a monitoring result of the Russian state's IP address through its Twitter account.
Every time the Russian state agency's IP address shows that an edit was made on Wikipedia, it sends out a tweet through a programmed software. The software, dubbed as "If This Then That" (IFTTT), allows customers to trigger a chain-like reaction whenever a web-based action occurs.
Wikipedia adheres to the rules on transparency by making IP addresses visible on its editing page. All Wikipedia-made edits are logged permanently and show information regarding the username and IP address of an editor.
While Wikipedia welcomes edits to its articles, most of the edits are made to suit business and political interests. Controversial incidents such as the recent MH17 plane crash have caused a great concern regarding making its historical account more accurate and perhaps, more favorable to the entities mentioned in the entry. Russia, on its part, had only one purpose in mind and that is to deny any of its involvement in the tragic incident.
