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Wikipedia Entries 'Cleaned' By Political Staffers
worb writes "According to the Lowell Sun, U.S. Rep Marty Meehan's staff has been heavily editing his Wikipedia bio, among other things removing criticisms. In total, more than one thousand Wikipedia edits in various articles have been traced back to congressional staffers at the U.S. House of Representatives in the past six months."
Oh, and here's Meehan's page on house.gov.
they've been busy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:143.231.249.141
Yeah! Who cares if the DMCA has absolutely nothing to do with this? Or if civil suits don't lead to prison time? Or if you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about?
But you do know who used it last, and what specifically they changed. It's extremely easy to compare different versions of the same article. You can even be shown exactly what text differs between the two, for instance.
So rather than suggesting it's a flaw that anyone can change the most recent copy of the information, we need to realize that it's beneficial that we can see past edits, and who performed them.
Indeed, if we see a trend of certain information being edited out of articles about Republicans, it could be quite safe to assume the information that was removed is completely valid, and is being removed because it is the unfortunate truth. The same would go for the Democrats, or basically any other group, for instance. At least, however, we can see what was changed, and what it was changed from. That's just as beneficial as the information itself.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
What's so awesome about wikipedia is that even after editing, the original information is still available. That being the case, part of one's research (especially when dealing with people of the political persuasion), should include past versions. At least this way, those seeking information can get the whole story, regardless of any sanitizing efforts by those in office.
Hell, the government shouldn't even be printing money, whether backed by precious metals or not, since the Constitution allows it to coin money:
Keep your eyes to the sky.
He supports the reintroduction of the gold standard for christ sake.
And the financial system based on usury we have today is better?
Most Americans, if they had any clue how the federal reserve works, would be absolutely horrified. That the value of their money is not decided by Congress, even though the constitution explicitly grants them that right, is even more outrageous.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Don't tell me you actually prefer this!
The energy ones are edited by oil company representatives or lobbyists too. They edit a pro-oil message all day long in every energy topic. Put links to it in every other energy topic.
p ment
It's quite subversive, they set up pages of false claims, then edit them in to wikipedia as facts.
This one,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_energy_develo
is edited by a guy Ultramarine who is also the same guy as SillyBilly. Try editing some of the junk in that topic and you'll get an instant revert.
FUCK! Do you people give yourselves lobotomies every morning before your coffee?
from http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=coin
Verb
* S: (v) coin (make up) "coin phrases or words"
* S: (v) mint, coin, strike (form by stamping, punching, or printing ) "strike coins"; "strike a medal"
I really wish Wikipedia could be used as an academic reference.
Why would you want to do that?! Encyclopedias in general are not good academic references becuase they don't represent original work, but rather a collection and summary of information from other sources. If you find yourself citing Encyclopedia Britannica frequently in academic papers, you might want to consider improving your research methods.
It could be done. The current system is just too open for the kind of abuse described in the article.
Sure, it could be made more reliable, but you'd have to make some fundamental changes. First, you could only accept writing by experts who can prove their credentials. Second, you'd have to have a formalized peer review and editing process. This would cause a big delay between writing and publishing the articles. It would also limit the scope of the encyclopedia, and would greatly increase its cost. In other words, it would become a traditional encyclopedia. That niche has already been filled.
The strengths of Wikipedia are that it is more complete, it is up to date, and it represents a wide variety of viewpoints of many subjects. It's a great way to find a review of some subject and find references on that subject. Sure, it's not authoratative, but who really expects it to be? In my opinion, the best thing that could be done for it is to put a disclaimer prominantly displayed at the top of each page saying that it can be edited by anybody, changes are not reviewed before becoming visible, and no garauntee is made on the accuracy of the content. In other words, things you and I already know, but which the average joe might not. I don't think this will happen, because the people who control it seem to be too proud to admit that it might be inferior in any way to other encyclopedias.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
After seeing the article running in The Lowell Sun, I was the one who combed through the entire history of wikipedia contributions. I was surprised to see that there were hundreds (pretty close to 1000 entries).
Though I was pleased to see that there were a fair amount of edits updating dates and facts to be current (everyone switching from the 108th to the 109th Congress), I was shocked to see that there was a large propaganda and misinformation campaign as well.
Some were personal attacks saying things like "He is generally not a good person," and childish things like adding Scott Mclellan (Bush's press secretary) to the entry for Douche; other were of a much more serious nature. The entry for Ralph Neas (Director of a the liberal People for the American Way) was edited to say he was a Socialist, and the more subtle but equally effective changing the description of MoveOn (a progressive political organization) to be categorized as "left-wing."
Many Congressional offices were removing any negative inormation or simply replacing the entire article with their official House bio. Emily Lawrimore (Communications Director Congressman Joe Wilson, emily.lawrimore@mail.house.gov) posted, on the discussion page for her boss "I work for Congressman Joe Wilson (listed as Addison Graves Wilson). Could you update his bio with information from the following official bio too?"
Some political officials like Congressman Jim Ramstad (R-MN 3rd) just wanted to remove any references to the word "liberal". The articles for Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ 2nd), and Rick Renzi (R-AZ 1st) were completely erased and replaced with official House biographies.
Getting even worse Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA 11th) and Governor Bob Taft (R-OH) removed references to their ties with Jack Abramoff (who in a recent Washington scandal pled guilty to three felony counts, conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion). Congressman Mark Green (R-WI 8th) removed any mention of his ties with the recently indicted Tom DeLay and generally removed any unflattering or scandal related information. A full list of the effected articles is available.
The possible most egregious entry was editing the article "2003 Invasion of Iraq." Erasing legitimate information, adding knowingly false information and generally purporting that there were links between Iraq and al Qaeda.
This appears to be a somewhat serious problem as this is one IP address of who knows how many. See the discussion page for this IP address at Wikipedia to see some of the known staffers who have been editing articles.
I am a Wikipedia editor and am personally going through all edits that have come through the U.S. Congress IP range. It's mildly entertaining, like a made-for-TV horror comedy, as I look through these. The government is spreading propaganda into Wikipedia. There are edits that seem to be useful, and true, but there is a majority of vandalism that disturbs me. Edits range from articles to articles like the ones on the Superfriends and the Pope, to inserting the name of the White House press secretary in odd places, and what appears to be an extremely puerile form of libel against certain senators.
Many people think that Wikipedia is freely open for editing, this is not the case.
Wikipedia is meant to be a Encyclopedia in eternal progress of completion. Every entry needs to have the bias and unfactual points shaved out to a NPOV as well as adding additional factual support.
As Wikipedia exists on the web more and more it's catalogue of articles becomes increasingly more full and any POV or bias is shaved down slowly with an effective moderation team.
People think that wikipedia is free for editing and unreliable, however this is not the case.
Gold has no more intrinsic value than a dollar bill has. Take away that, and the rest of the argument falls apart.
It is true that value is subjective. However, prices are generally set by supply and demand. Therefore, when the government increases the supply of dollars, the price of dollars decreases. In other words, the prices of goods in terms of dollars generally goes up. The advantage of tying the dollar to a number of gold ounces (similar to the way a house deed is "tied" to one house) is not that it gives the dollar value; the advantage is that it prevents the government from easily inflating the money supply.
As an example, consider Argentina in 1990:
"...the "convertibility law," which pegged the peso one-to-one to the dollar, thereby limiting the Argentine government's ability to create money".
"In nearly a single stroke, Argentina's battle with hyperinflation subsided, as the annual figure plunged from 4000% at the advent of the convertibility law to 4% by 1994. Concurrently real GDP growth exceeded 5% per annum each of those years."
Does that mean the dollar had more intrinsic value than the peso? No, they are both fiat currencies. The reason the peg helped was because it prevented the Argentine government from increasing their money supply faster than the supply of dollars. Likewise, pegging the dollar to gold would help us fight our inflation problems.
If you think that the U.S. has its inflation problem under control, keep in mind that home prices were removed from the consumer price index in the 1980's, because the effect home price increases had on the CPI was embarrassing the Reagan administration. Of course, rising home prices still eat away at people's purchasing power; the index has changed, that is all.
Yeah, gold was such a precious metal for the Mayas and Aztecs/Mexicas... oh, wait, gold had a near-nonexistant value for them and what the most precious commodity was jade (which used to go by the name of chalchihuitl in nahualt)...
I guess you're wrong and don't know shit about human history, but please don't let that trouble you.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
but exactly, then, WHO is supposed to edit this information
Wikipedia policy clearly says that you are not supposed to edit articles about yourself, see Wikipedia:Autobiography. While correcting factual stuff like a birth date is ok, adding praise or deleting true but unfortunate facts about yourself (such as this one from the IP from the new article?) is a definite no-go.
FYI, Wikipedia does not have a policy banning musicians from editing articles about musical instruments; musicians are knowledgeable and their edits are appreciated and assumed to be truthfull and neutral. On the other hand, creating an article about your own band, your own website, or your own one-man company is frowned upon.
But, since Meehan is a Democrat, expect this to get absolutely no mention in any news outlet.
Boston Globe
CBS 4
The Associated Press is also running this on their general news wire.
Apparently you decided to respond to a post you didn't actually read, so let me quote it
We don't care if you think it's unethical or not. It's against both Wikipedia's rules as well as the government's rules. So now it's OK not to follow rules just because you don't agree with them?
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
wikipedia does have ip blocking and it is possible to get the ip for registered although that access to that feature is somewhat restricted for obvious reasons.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You can do that, just link to an old page in the history: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prostate _cancer&oldid=6782986
The three-revert rule will get the host that's doing the reverting banned. You'd probably have to do it from a botnet, and even then the page is likely to get protected.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That's not entirely true. If you stick around Wikipedia long enough, they'll make you a moderator, which gives you the power to lock pages, delete things, etc. Also, just signing in gives you the ability to mark you changes as "minor" etc. So, it's not as though there's no karma at all. It's just the karma isn't automated like on /..
I can make my IP change every very often by changing the MAC address and getting a new lease from my ISP's DHCP server.
Yeah, and then the page gets protected, as I mentioned above. Wikipedia has dealt with this issue before, you know.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Wikipedia is open for potential abuses like these, but then again Wiki has always been a good reflection of society, and this is precisely what political agents do with the rest of society/PR outlets.
Wikipedia isn't a good reflection of society, as most people out there haven't even heard of it. In addition, the articles you read are often heavily edited by the most fanatical people, not necessarily the most "normal" people.
Think of it this way: If an article is under debate and getting edited back and forth, who is going to win- a normal person who doesn't have much of an emotional attachment to the subject, or a member of the lunatic fringe who's made it their life mission to debate advocate a certain subject?
Did you actually RTFA? Really? You couldn't have.
a) You are not supposed to write about yourself on Wikipedia, except to correct factual information such as birth date.
b) They clearly were not doing anything constructive, unless you define constructive in such a way that linking a senator's name in the "douche" article is acceptable.
c) They did not go through the proper channels, that is, after a dispute, work it out on the talk page. Instead they kept reverting, and kept making FALSE and in many cases, childish, edits.
d) Crticism != political smearing. If a Senator or Representative had connections to Abramoff, it is in the public's interest to know that, and definitely encyclopedic. Therefore, these employees were unequivocally wrong in removing the information.
The only reference I can find to multiple grand juries is in the Wikipedia entry on Tom DeLay. There it says there were three grand juries - the first, which indicted. Then Tom moves to dismiss the indictment, and Earle asks a second grand jury to indict. They refuse. Then Earle asks a third grand jury to indict, which they do.
I don't know the legality of all of this... I'm not sure why you would get a second grand jury before the motion to dismiss has been accepted, or whether it's OK to get a third GJ if the second one doesn't do what you want (when the first did). But at least according to Wikipedia (the only resource I can find with any details), your facts are dead wrong. There were three grand juries, two of which indicted.
What I found was interesting is that it appears the only reason DeLay is prosecutable is that he waived his right to be excused due to the statute of limitations. I don't know if that applies to all charges or just some subset.
Oh yeah, and I wasn't entirely accurate above... I did see one quote about there being four grand juries, from one of DeLay's spokesman. The spokesman did *not* say that three of them failed to indict. He just left you to assume that.
Wikipedia has so far been used as a source in about 100 peer-reviewed published articles.
http://www.brookesnews.com/theresa_heinz_kerry.htm l
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh112404.shtml
The second one cites the AP and Washington Post and I can't attest to their standards.
No, due to investing in tax free state bonds. If you want to get tax free income the same way you don't need a fancy lawyer, just take the rate of interest that is adjusted downwards to compensate for the tax exemption.
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