Hatrack River Forum: The Great Edit of Wikipedia

This is topic The Great Edit of Wikipedia in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :

Or maybe not so great. Apparently congress is getting a little self concious.

quote:
Wikipedia began an investigation after a Democratic representative, Marty Meehan, admitted that he had spiffed up his online biography page.

Spiffed up? Haven't heard that in a while. I'm sure he was just correcting items like hair and eye color [Roll Eyes]

quote:
Wikipedia also stated that there had been some "vandalism" of biographies, such as an entry for Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, which erroneously claimed he had been voted "most annoying senator."

So I guess a few 30+ year old men/women thought it would also be ok to "spray paint" another's bio.....

Ok, I know most of us don't use Wiki for anything you really need good hard evidence on, but this is still really rediculous.

Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :

ridiculous too.

Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :

quote:
So I guess a few 30+ year old men/women thought it would also be ok to "spray paint" another's bio.....

Assuming it was other senators that had performed the vandalism, and not college-age political kids.

If the pool's public, someone's gonna pee in it.

Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :

The IP addresses were from congressional office buildings. I don't know if that's in Stan's link, I haven't followed it, but I read a couple articles about this a few weeks ago. They know it's staffers or members of congress.

Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :

I guess it's better than spraypaint?

Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :

Yep, the article mentioned that as well, ElJay.

quote:
It was found that articles on other senators had been changed, sometimes significantly, and that the edits could be traced to computers on Capitol Hill.

Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :

Well done. Personally, if I were to spiff up my Wiki article, I'd play up my superpowers. Right now Wikipedia doesn't acknowledge all my abilities.

Posted by Pelegius (Member # 7868) on :

In fairness to wikipedia, most vandalism is quickly removed and vandals are banned.

Posted by Puppy (Member # 6721) on :

Yeah, the Orson Scott Card article has to be reverted every couple of weeks.

Posted by rCX (Member # 8503) on :

Here's a list wikipedia made of the all the government IPs that made edits. Here are examples of the kind of edits made.