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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.
I know "US Government Caught Manipulating Wikipedia" is a cool title, but seriously, does anyone think the US government, the CIA or the Vatican would be stupid enough to get caught if they actually wanted to influence a wikipedia article?
They'd probably at the very least get their 'operatives' to go home, get one of those free AOL CDs (etc), and do it from a public IP range.
What's more likely is that this is someone who got bored at work (at the Vatican etc), and decided to put their personal opinions in. The nature of their work usually implies their beliefs are coincident with that of their employers.
As for TFA, it states "One has to wonder how reliable an encyclopaedia is when it peddles government propaganda in an almost Orwellian manner"; Seems a bit like FUD to me. The whole point of wikipedia is that it is constantly peer reviewed. If things are incorrect, people will eventually correct them - I fail to see how that's Orwellian. If anything, changing pages in this manner actually brings MORE attention to the issue.
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You mean individuals within the government can edit "the encyclopedia anyone can edit", too?
*Pause for stunned silence*
Or do we only let people not affiliated with governments edit Wikipedia? Or perhaps only from home?
Or perhaps we'd prefer that governments edit Wikipedia from unattributable IP addresses...?
Or could it be that a person with a "House of Representatives IP address" is actually acting of his or her own will, making what they feel are appropriate changes to a Wikipedia article, which can be vetted, reversed, modified, and discussed, as can any change on Wikipedia?
How does one person with a House IP equate to "US Government Caught Manipulating Wikipedia"? The biggest surprise about this story is that it didn't read "Posted by kdawson". Seriously, is this the kind of politically-charged meaningless garbage that passes for front-page material on slashdot now?
Oh, wait, I guess I must speaking for the government now, and not myself. Perhaps this post is even propaganda...after all, anyone who works for "the government" can't possibly have their own views and beliefs, some of which might even differ from others. Oh, it's the Weekly Standard, so it doesn't count? This whole article is couched in assertions such as it being "bizarre" to make a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.Except that such a connection was explored in various ways for a decade, long before Bush was in office.Oops.
No link was ever really substantive, but there were links, and that shouldn't be surprising in the region. But that isn't even the point.
Those who want to paint all these issues as black and white, or say that some official or another "lied" about complex issues related to WMD in Iraq, OIF, etc., are the ones who are effectively the liars -- by ignoring everything that doesn't neatly support their own political positions. They lap up the new Iran NIE like it's gospel, while simultaneously writing off anything else that doesn't support their own views as lies. How convenient...and disgusting, for people who fancy themselves as enlightened intellectuals.
You and your precious online encyclopedia. The one that can be edited by anyone. The one that contains absolutely no bias. It's so cute.
Why is it a bad thing if our government representatives, staff and employees are contributing to Wikipedia? Its no worst than yellow journalism or biased professors at a university. For that matter can't Saddam supporters contribute also? Biased information is great for historical reasons, all we really need is attribution so we can judge the bias ourselves.
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...
Except that 'constant peer review' means that if two people disagree on which facts are pertinent to an entry. The last person to get bored gets their version to stand. /. style moderation and karma system so that any peer can review it without having to change it and indicate to other which are the best entries and editors.
I've had this happen so very rarely edit.
What is needed is a
The edits were spelled correctly and the grammar was tolerable... I guess the culprit is not from the Oval Office.
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"Visitors do not need specialised qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all ages and cultural and social background can write Wikipedia articles. With rare exceptions, articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link. Anyone is welcome to add information, cross-references or citations, as long as they do so within Wikipedia's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. For example, if you add information to an article, be sure to include your references, as unreferenced facts are subject to removal."
I don't see any rules against government, people editing their own pages, etc. Only that facts be added, if they aren't they should be removed.
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
only unbiased contributions should be allowed to edit Wikipedia. That's a simple rule to implement, right?
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I know that this insertion of propoganda was not appropriate but hypothetically speaking on the idea of US Government representatives writing in wikipedia, I'd argue this is a good thing (if they can follow the guidelines).
..." or "The current cost of the war according to the GAO is ". I'd rather hear it from "the horses mouth" than the condensed version from news organizations who report the news as it meets an agenda.
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? Would the US Forest Service agent who was present in the California Wildfires in 2007 be the perfect source to write (if he could be objective, and without bias) of the factual events of the fires, such as "At 8PM 27 fire engines from 6 counties began working on and achieved containment at 10PM". Or In a "perfect" system, would not an encyclopedia only contain factual data such as "On 12/12/2007, this person was quoted as saying
Even from elected officials, such as congressmen, I think it would be great to have themselves or staff or a Gov't official append their voting record to their wikipedia page. I think having a wikipedia page for every bill voted on in congress with a short summary, the bills sponsor, the committee's vote, and the houses of congresses voting record, along with any Congressional Record indexing information would be a very useful resource, and one that would give Wikipedia's flexibility and limitless nature (as opposed to a print encyclopedia) a real advantage.
Just having the data there is a valuable work as other contributors help grind the content down to a consensual view. Someone just has to get the ball rolling and if the original author does a great job, we'll get a solid article sooner than if we start with a crap one.
I'd say the only problem would be is that politicians and "neutral-point-of-view" don't usually go hand in hand, but you have a certain level of bias in any peice of writing.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Given the hundreds of millions required to be spent to gain the Whitehouse... We have the CEOs or other high ranking executive officers of various multi-nationals involved. I'm not convinced that incompetence is the explanation. For this or any of their other actions.
Deleted
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.
If a pretty white woman were waterboarded by 2 black cops in Atlanta, and died during the "interrogation", and then they packed the body in ice and faked the death certificate to say "heart problems," there would be no question in anyone's mind, least of all of the Attorney General or Vice President, that this constituted torture.
Our uncertainty as to what torture means is a sham--it's only torture because it's brown people who worship Allah and look sort of like towelheads. And everyone damn well knows that.