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The Man Who Guards Clinton's Wikipedia Entry
Timothy found a profile in The New Republic of Jonathan Schilling, a 53-year-old software developer from New Jersey who works to keep Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia entry clean and fair throughout the election season. "After he started editing her page in June 2005, Schilling became consumed with trying to capture her uncomfortable place in American culture, researching and writing a whole section on how she polarizes the public... [T]he attacks on Hillary's page mainly take the form of crude vandalism... It's different on Obama's page, where the fans — no surprise — are more enthusiastic, the haters are more intelligent, and the arguments reflect the fact that Obama himself is still a work under construction... The bitterness of the fights on Obama's page could be taken as a bad sign for the candidate. But it may actually be Hillary's page that contains the more troubling omens. Few, if any, Hillary defenders are standing watch besides Schilling. In recent days, the vaguely deserted air of a de-gentrifying neighborhood has settled over her page..."
Maybe I'm just getting older, but this election is really making me lose my faith in the political process. Elections seem to be nothing but bitter slander now. Sure, it's always been that way to some degree, but at least Bill Clinton's first run in the early 1990s, for all the debate and polemics involved, managed to be entertaining (remember Primary Colors ?). This whole process, on the other hand, is just sad.
Just make sure to keep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_articles in mind, Jonathan.
It's not just Hillary Clinton's page.
.com! everything free!"
Just for a laugh, check how often pages on completely neutral and uncontroversial subjects are vandalized.
The Carrot (vegetable)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carrot&action=history
Just in the past week:
- Replacing the entire page with "carrots cause wicked diarrhea"
- Replacing paragraph headers with "==Uses== (I LOVE NICK JONAS)
... that one of the Obama "editors" calls himself "Bellwether".
Until recently, Bellwether, a.k.a. Kevin Bailey, was an analogue to Schilling on Obama's page.
Anyone know what a bellwether is? No? It's a neutered male sheep, with a bell on a cord around its neck. You let it loose in open grazing, and it will find other sheep, and then you find it by listening for the bell ringing as it ineffectually tries to mate with the ewes it's found.
Probably not the best nickname to choose, I'm thinking.
I've bookmarked your reply. I think it's even worse than the article. Not that I read it.
True, the research may be searching for sources. It still looks like he has his own ideas he wants to get across. That might count as POV rather than original research, but is still not very objective. From tfa:
"At the same time, he also believes Hillary the woman is widely misunderstood. "One of the things I've tried to get across in the article was how much people were impressed by her before she got married to Bill," he says."
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
...
:-(
And for those of you who can't be bothered to google for the Wiki entry
"Who guards the guardians".
I thought the whole point of Wikipedia was that is was essentially a public resource, where anyone could add to it. If the whole whing is moderated, who draws the line between "vandalism", and just something that might put the subject "in a bad light" (regardless of the factual accuracy of it).
So anyone looking for "real" opinion may as well stay away from Wikipedia, as it's being managed by some of the same spin-doctors who manage the actual campaigns (and we all know how unbiased they are)
Everywhere?
The opposite of progress is congress
Having browsed through the Hillary Clinton page today I can't help feeling that the article has been vacuumed clean of any real criticism against her. One thing is removing obvious vandalism, but has Schilling (or someone else) gone too far in removing any reasonable criticism of Hillary?
1. Where is the mention of her being criticised for taking lobbyist money?
2. Where is the mention of critisism for her "exaggerating" her own stories for dramatic effect?
These are just two issues I can list at the top of my head which are completely missing from the article. Instead there is ample reference to awards she has been given.
As far as I know, Schilling has no official authority at Wikipedia and at the moment just acts as a self-appointed dictator that spends so much time on it that he manages to keep it "clean". When this happens, it is only fair to question whether he actually has an overly censoring position with regards to this article.
I finally decided to watch one of her speeches the other night and discovered that she has an amazingly obvious tell. If you pay attention to her head motion you sill see that every time she make an affirmative statement she nods her head (as if to agree with herself). Contrary, every time she make a negative statement she shakes her head from side to side. There is also a diagonal gesture to accompany the ambiguous statements as well. She does this for every fact that she speaks, however if you watch her head during her declaratory statements, she does the same thing, but these are the promises she is supposed to be making and she will actually show which ones she really believes in. For instance at one point she made a statement to the effect that
.. this will provide health care for all Americans while simultaneously shaking her head as if to say no, not really, not all - only some.When I watched her speech and payed attention to her body language, almost all the "good" parts (IMNSHO) are qualified as negative or ambiguous and all the self serving political promises are affirmative. If anyone else cares to post some specific examples that lay out what her real intentions are I would gladly like to see them.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
ye insaensitieve clode!
With the first link, the chain is forged.