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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."
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.
In short, this is another example of the old saw: ``Wikipedia is like a public toilet -- when you need it, you're sure glad it's there, but you never know who used it last.''
this is what you have to accept with a democratic ideal like Wikipedia. Much like a real democracy, you might not like what you see, but you have to live with it. Wikipedia is a similar process, except that individuals get a WHOLE LOT more say in the process. And if you bring in guards, who will guard the guards? (and don't say meta-guards, PLEASE!) If this bothers you, do some research, edit the article yourself and play the editing war with that politician's staff.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
> "These edits range from benificial and informative to libelous and childish."
That pretty much sums up Wikipedia
Well. I'm not suprised. But really if you found a page about yourself in the wikipedia full of critisisms you would think about changing them. Really with a world where comments can be changed they probably will be.
Although having people doing this for seems a bit of misuse of resourses.
Could you honsitly say you wouldn't be tempted to change things critisising about you if you could.
With the power to change things to the way one would want them one would.
With Members of Congress like this about information on themselves, is it any wonder nobody there disclosed information on the warrantless wiretaps?
As flawed as the Wikipedia system might be, at least it is known to all what sort of errors are being made.
Anyone with an ounce of intelligence could use the list you posted a link to to their advantage. Chances are that if Republicans are adding material to an article, such information is likely a lie. Likewise, if they're removing information, it is probably truthful information they wish to hide from the public. Likewise for the Democrats.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
That pretty much sums up our house of represenatives.
(me thinks its just an underlying meme of the human condition)
I realize some information is a lot more sensitive than others, but exactly, then, WHO is supposed to edit this information? Isn't this the point of the whole wikipedia excercise? I mean, it is hardly a headline when musicians edit entries about musical intruments, even when a violinist edits an entry adding a comment about the 'harsh tone' of brass instruments. The brass players need to come in and correct their own entries.
By the same model, politicians are probably going to be the ones editing the entries about politics. If a politician doesn't like his own entry, he should get in there and fix it (or tell his staffers to). If entries become too volitile, they will trigger other wikipedia policies.
Frankly, I think the 'meta moderation' of these entries is interesting political infotmation itself. I think the article itself should have some header or hilighting ranking its volatility - I would be more likely to 'trust' stable entries.
Actually, for technical issues Wikipedia articles seem to be ok -- people who write articles are people who care, and thus they usually have reasonable expertise. As a mathematician I can say that the Math articles are quite reasonable. Still can replace MathWorld, but if you need a definition you can look it up. Physics articles are not quite as good, mostly because of popular influences (tend to discuss popular controversies), but are rather reliable. Politics is a different kettle of fish -- because people have a stake and are rather more biased.
If it can be done, do it. No, really. Wikipedia's content (ALL OF IT) is under a license that lets you use it as long as you still retain the attribution to wikipedia.
The software it runs on is free, the content is free, all you have to do it duplicate it and then apply whatever silly editing rules you think will fix the problems with wikipedia.
Hell, someone has even written a tutorial on setting up your own copy of wikipedia.
Do that, and you can edit it however you want, with whatever rules you want. It'll be just like wikipedia, but you can change the rules!
Oh, but you won't have wikipedia's legion of editors! Your copy won't really as good as wikipedia without that, will it?
Oh, wait. Maybe that's why wikipedia is as big as it is... because of the editing rules! Many other rules have been tried. Wikipedia is as big as it is because THESE RULES WORK. But go ahead and set up a copy with your rules. If it's better than wikipedia, people will use it as much as they use wikipedia now.
But I rather doubt you'll be able to convince the wikipedia community to change the very things that make wikipedia wikipedia, but you're welcome to try. Anyone can edit, after all.
For now, at least. We'll see if that's still true after you explain your amazing scheme to fix wikipedia.
I respond to your sigs
Who ever said that getting the whole picture was easy or quick? It's your whole attitude of consulting some other "trusted" source, rather than investigating the matter on your own, which leads to people being easily manipulated.
Unfortunately, that happened to many Americans during the run-up to the ongoing war in Iraq. Most Americans didn't investigate the claims made by politicians and the media, and thus were ignorant to the fact that they were being seriously mislead.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
By reading the page history, and encouraging other users to do so. I think Wikipedia should have a little notation in the heading that shows the number of edits in the past little while, and allows you to quickly view them - perhaps merged into the same document.
About half of the pages look like press releases. On the other hand, a lot of the pages acquire a lot of unsubstantiated rumor mongering, and I don't have a problem with the Rep's staffs keeping an eye on people making false or unsubstantiated claims on the site.
What really gets me is that they're apparently as dumb as they are immoral. They weren't even bright enough to use a proxy to mask their IP address, leaving their greasy fingerprints all over wikipedia for the world to see. Aside from this, I wonder how many other astroturfing operations have gone completely unnoticed by the public.
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
To me, the problem is that wikipedia is presented in "traditional mode" where the user assumes that the current article to be the best of the best, like traditional encyclopedias.
I think wikipedia would be better understood, and therefore a better tool, if it were presented as multiple concurrent articles, instead of the latest winner of a revision war posing as a proper encyclopedia entry.
Some physics entry might have one branch, whereas a controversial subject like abortion would have multiple branches.
The trick is to present the branches to the user so that they understand immediately that there is contention. Otherwise, there is no reason for them to think that Wikipedia should be questionable, since it does *look* like a traditional encyclopedia.
Yes, I am aware that there are mistakes in traditional encyclopedias. However, you are certainly not going to find flames and 0-day trolls in Brittanica. Wikipedia's current interface does a poor job of helping non-technical users understand this.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The system seems to be working: PR inappropriately inserted gets news headline exposing it and more attention directed at the subject being concealed.
What law? This is just how Wikipedia operates. It's what the founders wanted -- a page editable by anyone. Lots of people spend lots of time keeping entries about themselves free from vandalism, removing incorrect statements, or inserting all sorts of puffery. The only difference this time is that a politician was doing it, instead of Jane Doe. What law did he or his staff violate that no one else has?
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Wikipedia needs moderation. Perhaps Slashdot-like moderation. I am all for having a freely edited encyclopedia; I am even all for contributions being shown immediately without editorial oversight, but it's just downright ridiculous that their Anonymous Cowards have just as much power as their excelent-karma'ed, long-time contributors/editors.
Well, at least it'll get the sheep to support the war.
The real justification for that war is far too complex for the average person, never mind a 5-second sound bite.
I don't think the explanation would fit in a few Slashdot posts either, even assuming you are smart enough to follow it. I'll give you a few hints though. It has to do with very long-term world strategy and stability. It has to do with much more than oil or terrorism.
This is exactly what philosopher Harry Fankfurt fretted about in his short book "On Bullshit." The problem with political discourse today is not that we have liars, it's that we have bullshitters--people that don't care about the truth at all. You can see that dangerous thinking with Meehan's chief of staff admitting that he had no objection to deleting facts for PR purposes; Vogel essentially valued Meehan's image over the truth.
Wikipedia is a project that presumes that all parties care about the truth. Sure, people will disagree about the implications of and inferences from the facts, and that can lead to back-and-forth editing. That's good, because multiple editors are more likely to arrive, via peer-review, at a neutral point of view. But editing out known facts is recklessly disregarding the truth, and that goes against the spirit of Wikipedia. Again, the point of allowing anyone to edit is not to allow revisionist history, but to allow neutral interpretation of facts.
PR should never conflict with the truth. You can spin facts, explain them away, downplay them--that's acceptable PR. But you have to acknowledge them. I'm even willing to say that lying about them is better than pretending they don't exist: at least the liar acknowledges there is an objective truth and has the same understanding of facts as the rest of us, even if he chooses to manipulate the game. Vogel didn't even care to acknowledge the facts and that makes his actions quite dangerous to public discourse.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
That illustrates the problem with any cooperative system in which the entire world's population is explicitly trusted.
The unfortunate truth is that there always has been and always will be a percentage of the worlds population who are assholes. It's just a fact that anything given to the world, no matter how good, will be ruined by these assholes unless measures are taken to protect it.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
What law? This is just how Wikipedia operates. It's what the founders wanted -- a page editable by anyone.
And it's worth noting that this story, and the controversy surrounding it, can be seen as part of the corrective mechanism of such a site. Sure, any public figure can modify a Wikipedia page to distort the truth in their favor (or any non-public figure can modify a page to slander someone else), but when the transgression is serious enough, someone points it out, the story becomes public, and then everyone knows what they're up to. I think we can all agree that these particular attempts to rewrite history have blown up spectacularly in the perpetrators' faces.
I think that should be considered in all of the debates raging right now about the validity of Wikipedia as a source of information.
Well, you can rationalize all you want, but the question of whether or not Meehan made a vow to serve only four terms in Congress is a "binary depiction", and quite easily verified. In fact, he was a vociferous leader of the term limits movement. Yet here he is on his eighth term, and his flunkies are flushing that fact down the memory hole. Appalling.
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Don't be naive.
Thanks for the suggestion. I was thinking about becoming naive, but on further reflection I think I'll avoid it.
Your "corrective mechanism" works in both directions.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. The system certainly has its flaws, and I completely agree with the sentiment that Wikipedia should be used as a rough guideline, supplemented by multiple other sources, rather than a definitive source. Probably its biggest weakness is that, like all "democratic" systems, it is subject to the whims of mob rule. So, for example, if Wikipedia were limited to the state of Alabama you wouldn't want to use it as a source of information on evolutionary theory. But the one thing that it is very robust against is a small minority with an agenda trying to dominate an issue -- which is exactly what this was about.
All this means is that those who are looking to manipulate Wiki for their own ends will learn how to hide their IP address behind proxies or whatever and obfuscate their connections to the interested parties in question.
In which case we wouldn't have any definitive evidence telling us who was behind the revisions, but we would know that they happened and be able to easily correct them. Which is what really matters.
The only lesson learned here is the oldest lesson of all: don't get caught!
Which is irrelevant. Whether the culprit is caught or not, his attempts to wipe the public record are not likely to get anywhere.
Not a good analogy. Meehan is a public figure whose election to Congress was expedited by a public vow to stick to term limits. Not only that, he excoriated on the floor of the House those members who did not stick by their vows, before he himself decided to renege too.
Private hypocrisy of the type you are describing is a different matter. It's nobody's business but my own, as long as I am breaking no laws. Politicians and other public figures have to play by a different set of rules, though. If I were a politician who loudly demanded a tightening of welfare eligibility, and it should be found that I was collecting welfare despite being ineligible under the rules I had been promoting, I'd probably lose my next election.
The much more common flip side of this is the limousine liberal who loudly demands higher taxes on "the rich", but pays only the minimum required by law-- e.g. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. It's their business and theirs alone -- again, except while running for office.
I think that it cost John Kerry a lot of votes when it was discovered that he and his idle billionaire wife were paying taxes at a rate of 15%, thanks to clever lawyering, while calling for higher taxes on hard-working dentists and doctors and small businessmen who were already paying 30% or more marginal tax rates. It certainly confirmed my own poor opinion of him when I found that I paid more taxes than he did.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.