When Does a Campaign Biography = An Encyclopedia Entry? Ask Senate Staffers.
Wikipedia has put up a wiki entry describing how unknown people using U.S. House and Senate computers have been sanitizing or defacing politician’s Wikipedia entries:
The following is a partial list of U.S. Senator biographies on the english-language Wikipedia edited by Senate employees.
- Senator Conrad Burns’ page was edited to remove negative comments as positive comments were added.
- Senator Norm Coleman’s page was also edited to remove negative comments while positive comments were added.
- Senator Robert Byrd’s page was vandalized
- Senator Tom Harkin’s criticism section was deleted, a major section on Israel & military removed and later vandalized by a different IP
- Senator Joe Biden’s page had a major edit removing significant criticism
- Sen Tom Coburn’s page was vandalized more than once
Similar activity took place on the House side, leading Wikipedia to block edits from the House’s IP addresses for a week while they figure out what to do.
We looked at the edits to Senator Barbara Boxer’s entry, but found only evidence of deluded fans, not staff-created PR.
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H/t: Good Morning Silicon Valley, which referenced Evan Lehmann’s initial story here.
Technorati Tags: wikipedia
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