British Politicians Delete Negative Wikipedia Descriptions Before Election

EwanPalmer writes: The Wikipedia pages of dozens of UK politicians had references to sex scandals, fraud and opposition to same sex marriage removed in the run up to the UK general election. Dozens of MPs had negative aspects of their online biographies removed or altered prior to the election in a bid to make them more electable. The changes include several instances of MPs' expense claim scandals being removed, as well as details of arrests and the use of 'chauffeur-driven cars.' The edits were made using computers with IP addresses registered from inside Parliament.

Comments

Obilg Orwell

[seven of five]

'There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,' he said. 'Repeat it, if you please.'
'"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,"' repeated Winston obediently.

Re:Surprised those edits weren't reverted

[rockout]

Well, that may be true if an editor gets involved in a protracted edit war with another editor. For anon IPs, such as the ones doing the edits described in the summary, it's trivial to revert the edit, and if anon IPs continue to remove sourced material, the IP addresses tend to get blocked for a few days, or a week, or a month, depending on the individual circumstances surrounding the edit war. An administrator is going to back a registered editor over an anon IP pretty much every time, so there's no danger of getting banned.