January 31, 2006
Congressional staffers try to whitewash Wikipedia
The Wikipedia community is trying to respond to whitewashing of politically-sensitive articles that appear to be coming from congressional staffers themselves (with the staff of Marty Meehan (D, MA) being one of the biggest culprits).
I'm always amazed that Wikipedia works as well as it does — hopefully the bad press Meehan and other congress-critters get over this flap will outweigh any good press specific staffers may have hoped to achieve.
Detailed coverage at Lowell Sun, C|net and Slashdot.
Posted by bug to Media Technology at January 31, 2006 4:31 PM
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So here's my question-- what evidence do the Lowell Sun, C|Net, and Slashdot have that Meehan's staffers are the responsible parties? I mean, we do live in an era where President Bush's right hand man used push polling to suggest his strongest Republican opponent in the 2000 primary race had a mixed race child. The Republicans also took advantage of a less than secure network to obtain strategy memos relating to the judicial confirmation process. How do we know that the parties responsible for the changes (and the decision to report the changes)?
--G
Posted by: Goobermunch at February 1, 2006 5:54 AMThat's certainly an issue in the more general case. In Meehan's case though, the Lowell Sun story says Meehan's chief of staff admits he authorized an intern to replace the existing Wikipedia article with a staff-written biography. That one example can probably be written off as the staffer not understanding Wikipedia's culture of sticking to a neutral point of view (in particular, don't delete facts), though the many, many other edits that remain anonymous clearly don't.
Meehan, BTW, has responded.
Posted by: Bug at February 1, 2006 9:33 PM