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US Government Caught Manipulating Wikipedia
surfi writes "As The Inquirer points out, someone with a House of Representatives IP address has been feeding propaganda into the 'invasion of Iraq' article on Wikipedia."
Well at least they are in good company with trustworthy institutions like
the CIA and the Vatican.
What I found more interesting is that apparently the Register doesn't like Wikipedia because they refer to it as "whackypedia", and the statement that the edits were made by a "Bush friendly" source inside the House. Maybe the Bush friendly angle is true -- the Register article asserts it to be so without quoting the edits or commenting, but there is no way to tell by an IP address.
Which tells me that the Register article is basically shoddy journalism. No fact digging, no fact checking, polemics instead of the who what when why where that journalism is supposed to accomplish. So -- with all due respect to GOOD journalism, and while not a Bushie or US Govt. fan, I have to say that this tidbit is yellow all under.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Well, lying to a whole country repeatedly and systematically to the point that you get more than half of them to actually believe in what you say, lying---satellite pictures and all--to the whole world, etc, and get lots and lots of people killed as a result... Grand juries are essentially trivial in comparaison.
Looking at the top two hits on this Google search, it looks like people in Government don't even know the basic functions of Microsoft Word.
Those that do not learn the mistakes in File ---> Versions history are doomed to repeat them.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
Maybe my understanding is off, but wouldn't the US government be the perfect entity to write encyclopedia article given that they are the primary source in the scope of their job?
Well, you would think so, but you'd be wrong. Wikipedia does not allow original research, so if you are the source, you can't add the info. You have to get the info from some other notable source, and cite it. Also, if you're calling those edits "propaganda" I have to wonder if you looked at the changes at all.
everything in moderation
Yes, someone at that IP address made some ideologically slanted edits. However, if you go and look at the talk page for that IP address, you will note that there are *many* warnings which have been issued to that user. If you go further, and take a second to look at the pages it was being warned about vandalizing, several of the 'bad' edits are things like "Tom Sucks!" and other edits which were almost certainly made by interns, not at the behest of some nefarious Representative but out of mundane immaturity. So, while a serious, ideologically slanted edit like the one highlighted in the summary may well be the result of government misdeeds, it is clear that there are plenty of people who are capable of editing from that location, and that it is not provable that the edits were...'government' sanctioned.