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."

Comments

Waiting for the outrage

[prisoner-of-enigma]

According to the Lowell Sun, U.S. Rep Marty Meehan's staff has been heavily editing his Wikipedia bio...

But, since Meehan is a Democrat, expect this to get absolutely no mention in any news outlet. Nor will there be any huge outrage on Daily Kos, Slashdot, or any other website with a decidedly large portion of liberal-leaning (and thus Democrat-leaning) users. On the other hand, had Meehan been a Republican, there would be no end to diatribes condemning this as an assault against Free Speech, a symptom of the corruption of the Republican Nazis, part of the grand imperial planning of Emperor Bush, usual liberal ranting, etc. etc.

Go ahead and mod me down for saying this, but everyone knows this is the is the absolute truth. Democrats get a free pass for this kind of behavior, but Republicans get called everything but a child of God for the same kind of actions.

Disclaimer: I'm a card-carrying Libertarian, not a Republican, so take your conspiracy theories elsewhere. I call 'em as I see 'em.

Orwell's 1984, anyone?

[reaktor]

This wikipedia news, along with the PATRIOT ACT makes Orwell's 1984 a reality, unfortunately.

Re:It's easy to see the edits.

[zotz]

"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. In fact, you might learn more from the histoty of editing than from the article itself. (On "hot" topics.)

"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."

This assertion makes no sense. It is just as reasonable to assume that there would be continuous efforts to fix blatant errors.

For instance, if I were to go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon

and constantly make edits explaining that the moon was made of green cheese, do you not think that they would be removed over and over?

all the best,

drew
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http://www.ourmedia.org/node/145261
Record a "copyleft" song and you could win a $1,000.00

Re:Wickipedia Edits

[drgonzo59]

I can make my IP change every hour, by changing the MAC address.