Politicians and their staffers editing out the bad stuff on Wikipedia

[bkdelong]

I was listening to NPR's Day to Day and heard a fabulous story about people coming from various senate.gov and house.gov IP addresses and editing varying Representative and Senator's entries on Wikipedia - mostly cleaning up "bad" stuff and adding glowing spin. I'm embarassed to say the investigation was kicked off by MA Representative Marty Meehan's entry, (my Rep is John Tierney who rocks), but it's exposed an incredible amount of such editing through the Legislative branch. Apparently Wikipedia has banned the IP range but that won't stop people going through a proxy. However, I think that that people will be watching the entries more closely.

Comments

[ashtur.livejournal.com]

Interesting, but more than anything, it just points out the fundamental weakness that Wiki has in regards to all of its content. Any issue where the facts are "in play," there's a glowing temptation for someone with an axe to grind on any side to go in and change it up to their liking. Fine, so Congressional aides go in and mess up a rep's entry, to make him sound like the reincarnation of Thomas Jefferson. On the other hand, it's just as easy, and likely just as common for those who despise a given congressman to go in and make him/her look like the second coming of (choose your own favorite corrupt pol).

That's one of the reasons that while Wiki is handy for a rapid overview, it will never be a truly reliable source.