Farm ministry busts Wikipedia 'otaku'

The farm ministry has 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 agricultural matters — 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 with schoolchildren as well as "otaku" (nerd) adults.

"The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry is not in charge of 'Gundam,' " ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura said.

The other five mostly focused their contributions on movies, typographical mistakes on signs and local politics, Shimomura said.