congress banned from editing wikipedia

Webby · Feb 10, 2006

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4695376.stm

BBC said:

Online reference site Wikipedia blames US Congress staff for partisan changes to a number of political biographies.

Computers traced to Capitol Hill removed unpalatable facts from articles on senators, while other entries were "vandalised", the site said.

An inquiry was launched after staff for Democratic representative Marty Meehan admitted polishing his biography.

Wikipedia is produced by readers who add entries and edit any page, and has become a widely-used reference tool.

'Liberal' to 'activist'

Using the public history of edits on Wikipedia, researchers collected the internet protocol numbers of computers linked to the US Senate and tracked the changes made to online pages.

The site lists half a dozen prominent biographies that had been changed by Senate computers, including those of Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, California Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Senator Coleman's office has confirmed that staff there had made a number of changes to his online record.

Where he was described as a "liberal" back in college, this was changed to "activist".

Among other changes, staff also deleted a reference to Mr Coleman voting with President Bush 98% of the time in 2003, despite running as a moderate the year before.

Wikipedia said staffers of Senator Tom Harkin had removed a paragraph relating to Mr Harkin's having falsely claimed to have flown combat missions over North Vietnam, and his subsequent recantation.

A handful of miscellaneous vandalism edits had been made to some senators' articles, it said.

One example was the entry for Republican Senator Tom Coburn, of Oklahoma, who it was falsely alleged had been voted "most annoying senator".
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wax · Feb 10, 2006

Should be very interesting to see what happens regarding smears, in particular.

Horsefly · Feb 10, 2006

Imagine that; Wikipedia can't be trusted. I told you so in post #1038 in this thread:
http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69585&page=3
Wikipedia doesn't sound much like a factual data base. More like a promotional tool with pseudo facts of questionable origins.

Webby · Feb 10, 2006

Horsefly said:

Imagine that; Wikipedia can't be trusted. I told you so in post #1038 in this thread:
http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69585&page=3
Wikipedia doesn't sound much like a factual data base. More like a promotional tool with pseudo facts of questionable origins.
Click to expand...

Well it also said in the article that Wikipedia is as accurate as Encyclopaedia Britannica. Whatever, I'll still use Wikipedia, you don't have to. Anyway I just thought it was funny and lame that Congressmen are having their information edited by their own staffers.

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