Wikipedia Entries 'Cleaned' By Political Staffers 720
worb writes "According to the Lowell Sun, U.S. Rep Marty Meehan's staff has been heavily editing his Wikipedia bio, among other things removing criticisms. In total, more than one thousand Wikipedia edits in various articles have been traced back to congressional staffers at the U.S. House of Representatives in the past six months."
Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:5, Interesting)
"These edits range from benificial and informative to libelous and childish."
Re:Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:5, Insightful)
That pretty much sums up Wikipedia
Re:Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:5, Insightful)
(me thinks its just an underlying meme of the human condition)
Re:Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so much you, Jeff; the whole modern age seems just a little too pouty over the fact that the Information Age brought more ambiguity than transparency.
Not "modern age"... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or you really believe there is an entity called Truth?
Re:Not "modern age"... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shades of Meaning (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical hypocrisy from a politician (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a good analogy. Meehan is a public figure whose election to Congress was expedited by a public vow to stick to term limits. Not only that, he excoriated on the floor of the House those members who did not stick by their vows, before he himself decided to renege too.
Private hypocrisy of the type you are describing is a different matter. It's nobody's business but my own, as long as I am breaking no laws. Politicians and other public figures have to play by a different set of rules, though. If I were a politician who loudly demanded a tightening of welfare eligibility, and it should be found that I was collecting welfare despite being ineligible under the rules I had been promoting, I'd probably lose my next election.
The much more common flip side of this is the limousine liberal who loudly demands higher taxes on "the rich", but pays only the minimum required by law-- e.g. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. It's their business and theirs alone -- again, except while running for office.
I think that it cost John Kerry a lot of votes when it was discovered that he and his idle billionaire wife were paying taxes at a rate of 15%, thanks to clever lawyering, while calling for higher taxes on hard-working dentists and doctors and small businessmen who were already paying 30% or more marginal tax rates. It certainly confirmed my own poor opinion of him when I found that I paid more taxes than he did.
-ccm
Re:Typical hypocrisy from a politician (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh112404.shtml [dailyhowler.com]
The second one cites the AP and Washington Post and I can't attest to their standards.
Re:Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wickipedia Edits (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot Headline: "Wikipedia Entries 'Cleaned' By Political Staffers"
CNN Headline: "Democratic Staffers edit World Wide Web Encyclopedia"
Fox News Headline: "Democrats attempt to Rewrite History; Republicans clarify Wikipedia entries."
MSNBC: "Tonight: Chris Matthews Examines the Democratic attempt to modify web databases."
Contrast this to the "bipartisan" Abramaoff bribery scandal, where no money was given to Democrats and Abramoff's clients decreased their giving to Democrats at Abramoff's direction.
*sigh* I know it's a hypothetical, but given the minimization of every single Republican scandal in the past several years, do you really think it's far off base?
Re:Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:5, Funny)
FARK Headline: [OBVIOUS] Congressman's staff corrects "sloppy writing" in his Wikipedia entry, like the part where it mentioned that he broke his promise not to serve more than four terms
Two days ago, even. Link [fark.com]
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:5, Funny)
If you're looking for an innocent victim of scandal here, Tom DeLay is probably not one.
Re:Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:5, Insightful)
What law? This is just how Wikipedia operates. It's what the founders wanted -- a page editable by anyone.
And it's worth noting that this story, and the controversy surrounding it, can be seen as part of the corrective mechanism of such a site. Sure, any public figure can modify a Wikipedia page to distort the truth in their favor (or any non-public figure can modify a page to slander someone else), but when the transgression is serious enough, someone points it out, the story becomes public, and then everyone knows what they're up to. I think we can all agree that these particular attempts to rewrite history have blown up spectacularly in the perpetrators' faces.
I think that should be considered in all of the debates raging right now about the validity of Wikipedia as a source of information.
Re:Wikipedians expose the "congressional edits" (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be naive.
Thanks for the suggestion. I was thinking about becoming naive, but on further reflection I think I'll avoid it.
Your "corrective mechanism" works in both directions.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. The system certainly has its flaws, and I completely agree with the sentiment that Wikipedia should be used as a rough guideline, supplemented by multiple other sources, rather than a definitive source. Probably its biggest weakness is that, like all "democratic" systems, it is subject to the whims of mob rule. So, for example, if Wikipedia were limited to the state of Alabama you wouldn't want to use it as a source of information on evolutionary theory. But the one thing that it is very robust against is a small minority with an agenda trying to dominate an issue -- which is exactly what this was about.
All this means is that those who are looking to manipulate Wiki for their own ends will learn how to hide their IP address behind proxies or whatever and obfuscate their connections to the interested parties in question.
In which case we wouldn't have any definitive evidence telling us who was behind the revisions, but we would know that they happened and be able to easily correct them. Which is what really matters.
The only lesson learned here is the oldest lesson of all: don't get caught!
Which is irrelevant. Whether the culprit is caught or not, his attempts to wipe the public record are not likely to get anywhere.
Mudslinging (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the done thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's the done thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
What wiki really needs is a control structure like big open source projects have. All sections owned by somebody that has to verify edits and pass them up the chain to owners of bigger sections, etc until you reach the top and the project maintainer stamps the edit as okay. Anyone in charge along the way should be able to revert the changes but not get rid of the record of the changes they turned down. Also it'd be cool if alternate reversions could be viewed alongside each other and modded up and down by the community. Karma like Slashdot has would be good too so anonymous and new user's changes are automatically trusted less than experienced users. On Slashdot I have high karma so my posts start off at a higher level than someone logged into a dummy account and overall that seems to be a good system for weeding out a lot of the garbage. Maybe even do a sort of eBay thing where people that have filed an offical id with their account get an extra mod point too by default since you can easily track who is making what changes and ban them if they are abussive.
They've been working on some of this stuff but it seems it has a ways to go before it works as well as the Linux kernel project or something like that. In general their code that wiki is based on could use some improvement with more flexibility added.
Re:It's the done thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming that someone has entered the "truth" in the first place. And how do you distinguish the truth in a page of competing entries?
Actually, this flies in the face of the Wikipedia philosophy, which is that there are no privileged viewpoints. Wikipedia operates on the principle that the "truth" is whatever most people agree it is. However, the majority viewpoint is certainly subject to control. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but you seem to believe that a lone voice crying "truth" in the wilderness has a hope of being heard (and recognized as such) on Wikipedia, any moreso than on Geocities.
That is why we should remove all sources of income from our representatives. They should A. Have to come to work for free (they get food and shelter of course), B. Should NOT be allowed to reenter the private markets after serving, etc.
That in no way follows from your second paragraph about clean politics. Indeed, the less money you pay a politician, the more likely he/she will try to line their pockets through corruption. This is true of most public offices -- the most corrupt police tend to be the worst paid. What's more, I have absolutely no problem with paying representatives well, as that is the only way to ensure that the most talented people seek the job.
A modest proposal (Score:4, Funny)
Finally, a testable hypothesis!
Let's charter a plane, fly a dozen Wikipedians up to about 12000 ft sans parachutes, and see if they can all agree that they can float gently to earth once they are prematurely deplaned
Always a risk... (Score:4, Insightful)
In short, this is another example of the old saw: ``Wikipedia is like a public toilet -- when you need it, you're sure glad it's there, but you never know who used it last.''
It's easy to see the edits. (Score:5, Informative)
So rather than suggesting it's a flaw that anyone can change the most recent copy of the information, we need to realize that it's beneficial that we can see past edits, and who performed them.
Indeed, if we see a trend of certain information being edited out of articles about Republicans, it could be quite safe to assume the information that was removed is completely valid, and is being removed because it is the unfortunate truth. The same would go for the Democrats, or basically any other group, for instance. At least, however, we can see what was changed, and what it was changed from. That's just as beneficial as the information itself.
Re:It's easy to see the edits. (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I do use Wikipedia quite a bit... but only because I have the time to waste.
Who said getting reliable information was easy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, that happened to many Americans during the run-up to the ongoing war in Iraq. Most Americans didn't investigate the claims made by politicians and the media, and thus were ignorant to the fact that they were being seriously mislead.
Re:Who said getting reliable information was easy? (Score:3, Interesting)
careful there! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least it'll get the sheep to support the war.
The real justification for that war is far too complex for the average person, never mind a 5-second sound bite.
I don't think the explanation would fit in a few Slashdot posts either, even assuming you are smart enough to follow it. I'll give you a few hints though. It has to do with very long-term world strategy and stability. It has to do with much more than oil or terrorism.
Re:careful there! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because you think the supposed real reason for the war is valid doesn't mean it it, even if you think most other people don't have the capacity to understand. Hell, that attitude is part of the problem.
You know, I assumed the war wasn't about WMD's too. I figured the administration had an ulterior motive. I think that's ascribing far too much talent to the administration. Even if you give them credit for having a shadowy master plan, you still have to admit the possiblity that they're fucking it up.
Re:Who said getting reliable information was easy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately people dont have infinite time to fully research all subjects. The attitude that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia is obviously leading to people being manipulated and mislead. The solution is another system that can be trusted, because it's necessary.
Re:It's easy to see the edits. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seeing that it was used before you doesn't tell you anything useful about who the person was who did the editing (unless their nick or IP is one you recognize as someone you know outside of Wikipedia).
In real life, when we see a bunch of conflicting claims about something, we look at those speaking, and ask questions such as:
In Wikipedia (as in Slashdot -- but no one is claiming Slashdot's comment section is a valuable source of unbiased reference information) this information is not available. Instead, we get a bunch of conflicting quasi-anonymous edits, and no information to help us decide which are more valid.
Re:It's easy to see the edits. (Score:4, Informative)
use "dig -x" my friend:
Re:It's easy to see the edits. (Score:4, Insightful)
As I see it, there is no point in this kind of evaluation of the speaker's personality. Good information should stand in its own two feet, and it should be easily verifiable. If it's not easily verifiable, then we should take it as a matter of taste.
If the information is of the kind that would cause you to significantly alter your opinion based on who was saying it, then you should reject such information in the first place, even, and especially, if it is said by a character that is pleasant to you.
Re:It's easy to see the edits. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think wikipedia would be better understood, and therefore a better tool, if it were presented as multiple concurrent articles, instead of the latest winner of a revision war posing as a proper encyclopedia entry.
Some physics entry might have one branch, whereas a controversial subject like abortion would have multiple branches.
The trick is to present the branches to the user so that they understand immediately that there is contention. Otherwise, there is no reason for them to think that Wikipedia should be questionable, since it does *look* like a traditional encyclopedia.
Yes, I am aware that there are mistakes in traditional encyclopedias. However, you are certainly not going to find flames and 0-day trolls in Brittanica. Wikipedia's current interface does a poor job of helping non-technical users understand this.
Wikipedia enables fact-checking (Score:3, Insightful)
But that's precisely what Wikipedia is, the "discussion" tab is adjacent to the "article" and "history" tabs. The real battle consists of convincing the general public to understand that you can't always believe everything you read on the Internet at face value; you have to dig deeper.
I seco
Re:Stable links would be nice though (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's easy to see the edits. (Score:3, Insightful)
Each page is *only* as accurate as the last person to edit it. The idea of the 'community' deciding what is right is a sham - anyone who is quick on the edits becomes the current 'correct' source.
Politicians are quick to realize this... Expect a *lot* of political edits in the future - they probably have paid staff keeping articles saying their idea of 'truth' 24/7 already.
not just him.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:not just him.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:not just him.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If only that can work for the real senate and government and not just the senate's IP address.
Re:not just him.... (Score:4, Informative)
At least the errors are being caught. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with an ounce of intelligence could use the list you posted a link to to their advantage. Chances are that if Republicans are adding material to an article, such information is likely a lie. Likewise, if they're removing information, it is probably truthful information they wish to hide from the public. Likewise for the Democrats.
unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
With that said: I always try to vote against incumbents.
Re:unfortunately (Score:3, Insightful)
And here I thought the point of democracy was just the opposite.
Re:unfortunately (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, this is news. (Score:5, Funny)
--------- (I apologize if this is too high concept. I sick, and my head is floaty. It feels right, but right now I have terrible judgement.)
That's the power and the weakness of Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That's the power and the weakness of Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
Because THEY weren't supposed to edit it, it was for US to bloviate. Yea right. The typical slashdot/DailyKos types think they own the Internet and
The Internet is changing a lot but don't expect the old power structure to simply vanish overnite. If Wikipedia is going to stick to their claim of being open they have to expect people to remove the more nasty bits from their entries.
Re:That's the power and the weakness of Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Although having people doing this for seems a bit of misuse of resourses.
Could you honsitly say you wouldn't be tempted to change things critisising about you if you could.
With the power to change things to the way one would want them one would.
Very simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
With Members of Congress like this about information on themselves, is it any wonder nobody there disclosed information on the warrantless wiretaps?
Re:Very simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine by me.
"There are much more important ethical issues going on (i.e. Abramoff) to be worried about Congressmen changing their own Wikipedia entries."
It's a lack of enforcement of the Little Rules that allows violations of the Big Rules to happen. Besides, we're not talking about ejecting Members of Congress (which would involve a vote) but firing a personal staffer, soemthing that is generally left to the discretion of the Representative.
"By Wikipedia's design anybody can change entries,"
Then you are unaware of the rule against editing your own biography? I seem to recall a Wikipedia founder getting in trouble for violating that rule recently...
"Besides, it's just an extension of what they do in campaigns to project themselves with a certain image."
That makes it right?
"If you're upset with it, get in an edit war with them and if you lose, that's too bad for you."
I was under the impression that the ethics rules were there to (among aother things) avoid petty bickerings like this by having an agreed-upon list of "Thou shallt not."
Re:Very simple solution (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently you decided to respond to a post you didn't actually read, so let me quote it
We don't care if you think it's unethical or not. It's against both Wikipedia's rules as well as the government's rules. So now it's OK not to follow rules just because you don't agree with them?
Whatever (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Whatever (Score:3, Funny)
There you go again confusing politicians with human beings...
Sensitivities (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize some information is a lot more sensitive than others, but exactly, then, WHO is supposed to edit this information? Isn't this the point of the whole wikipedia excercise? I mean, it is hardly a headline when musicians edit entries about musical intruments, even when a violinist edits an entry adding a comment about the 'harsh tone' of brass instruments. The brass players need to come in and correct their own entries.
By the same model, politicians are probably going to be the ones editing the entries about politics. If a politician doesn't like his own entry, he should get in there and fix it (or tell his staffers to). If entries become too volitile, they will trigger other wikipedia policies.
Frankly, I think the 'meta moderation' of these entries is interesting political infotmation itself. I think the article itself should have some header or hilighting ranking its volatility - I would be more likely to 'trust' stable entries.
Re:Sensitivities (Score:3, Informative)
Wikipedia policy clearly says that you are not supposed to edit articles about yourself, see Wikipedia:Autobiography [wikipedia.org]. While correcting factual stuff like a birth date is ok, adding praise or deleting true but unfortunate facts about yourself (such as this one from the IP from the new article? [wikipedia.org]) is a definite no-go.
FYI, Wikipedia does not have a policy banning musicians from editing articles about musical instruments; musicians are knowledgeable and t
Pure democracy has problems... (Score:3, Insightful)
Up until recently, Wikipedia has relied on the fact that it was relatively unknown outside the geek population, and so the odds were that highly agendized individuals were not drawn to it as a priority. This, unfortunately, has changed with Wikipedia's popularity.
This is what makes
This is a good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Wikipedia accepts that problems will arise, and it has mechanisms in place (like the edit history) to mitigate the effects. When a slashdot story goes up saying "House staffers screw around with articles", that's a victory for the Wikipedia system.
Re:This is a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
The typical Congressman represents about 650,000 voters. Congressional Apportionment. [nationalatlas.gov]
It ix fair to suggest that he has little to fear from a posting to Slashdot.
best line in wikitalk pages for this (House) IP (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at about 1/2 of the Reps' pages (Score:5, Insightful)
The moral of this story (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia's system works (Score:5, Interesting)
I usually check the discusion of a wikipedia article to check if it biased. Usually there is a group of editors dedicated to the subject who pay a lot of attention to the article, along with vandals and stray people who just felt like adding some of their knowledge. Pretty interesting to have people with opposing views edit an article. I am not saying they are all like this, just the good ones. When they disagree enough a flag will go up. When there isn't an opposing view there is a problem, no one would question what goes in.
Something interesting, the wikipedia article on google is way more critical of google than the microsoft article is of microsoft.
"Wikigate" scandal (Score:5, Insightful)
security reasons my arse (Score:3, Insightful)
"For security reasons, Brandt declined to say to whom the address is assigned."
It must be great being the US government in this day and age, any question which they do not want to answer they simply cite "For security reasons
The system seems to be working (Score:5, Insightful)
funny (Score:5, Interesting)
Ban all .gov addresses (Score:3, Insightful)
More Information Wikipedia (Score:5, Informative)
Though I was pleased to see that there were a fair amount of edits updating dates and facts to be current (everyone switching from the 108th to the 109th Congress), I was shocked to see that there was a large propaganda and misinformation campaign as well.
Some were personal attacks saying things like "He is generally not a good person," and childish things like adding Scott Mclellan (Bush's press secretary) to the entry for Douche; other were of a much more serious nature. The entry for Ralph Neas (Director of a the liberal People for the American Way) was edited to say he was a Socialist, and the more subtle but equally effective changing the description of MoveOn (a progressive political organization) to be categorized as "left-wing."
Many Congressional offices were removing any negative inormation or simply replacing the entire article with their official House bio. Emily Lawrimore (Communications Director Congressman Joe Wilson, emily.lawrimore@mail.house.gov) posted, [wikipedia.org] on the discussion page for her boss "I work for Congressman Joe Wilson (listed as Addison Graves Wilson). Could you update his bio with information from the following official bio too?"
Some political officials like Congressman Jim Ramstad (R-MN 3rd) just wanted to remove any references to the word "liberal". The articles for Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ 2nd), and Rick Renzi (R-AZ 1st) were completely erased and replaced with official House biographies.
Getting even worse Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA 11th) and Governor Bob Taft (R-OH) removed references to their ties with Jack Abramoff (who in a recent Washington scandal pled guilty to three felony counts, conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion). Congressman Mark Green (R-WI 8th) removed any mention of his ties with the recently indicted Tom DeLay and generally removed any unflattering or scandal related information. A full list of the effected articles is available [wikipedia.org].
The possible most egregious entry was editing [wikipedia.org] the article "2003 Invasion of Iraq." Erasing legitimate information, adding knowingly false information and generally purporting that there were links between Iraq and al Qaeda.
This appears to be a somewhat serious problem as this is one IP address of who knows how many. See the discussion page [wikipedia.org] for this IP address at Wikipedia to see some of the known staffers who have been editing articles.
Kudos to Emily Lawrimore (Score:4, Insightful)
A few examples (Score:5, Informative)
I've said it once, and I'll say it again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've said it once, and I'll say it again... (Score:4, Informative)
Reckless disregard for truth (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is a project that presumes that all parties care about the truth. Sure, people will disagree about the implications of and inferences from the facts, and that can lead to back-and-forth editing. That's good, because multiple editors are more likely to arrive, via peer-review, at a neutral point of view. But editing out known facts is recklessly disregarding the truth, and that goes against the spirit of Wikipedia. Again, the point of allowing anyone to edit is not to allow revisionist history, but to allow neutral interpretation of facts.
PR should never conflict with the truth. You can spin facts, explain them away, downplay them--that's acceptable PR. But you have to acknowledge them. I'm even willing to say that lying about them is better than pretending they don't exist: at least the liar acknowledges there is an objective truth and has the same understanding of facts as the rest of us, even if he chooses to manipulate the game. Vogel didn't even care to acknowledge the facts and that makes his actions quite dangerous to public discourse.
What did you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
So it's POV or NPOV? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia, meet human nature... (Score:5, Insightful)
The unfortunate truth is that there always has been and always will be a percentage of the worlds population who are assholes. It's just a fact that anything given to the world, no matter how good, will be ruined by these assholes unless measures are taken to protect it.
And on Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll tell you the problem with this... (Score:3, Interesting)
At least things are working as designed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedia need a serious fix! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedia need a serious fix! (Score:5, Insightful)
The software it runs on is free, the content is free, all you have to do it duplicate it and then apply whatever silly editing rules you think will fix the problems with wikipedia.
Hell, someone has even written a tutorial on setting up your own copy of wikipedia. [wikinerds.org]
Do that, and you can edit it however you want, with whatever rules you want. It'll be just like wikipedia, but you can change the rules!
Oh, but you won't have wikipedia's legion of editors! Your copy won't really as good as wikipedia without that, will it?
Oh, wait. Maybe that's why wikipedia is as big as it is... because of the editing rules! Many other rules have been tried. Wikipedia is as big as it is because THESE RULES WORK. But go ahead and set up a copy with your rules. If it's better than wikipedia, people will use it as much as they use wikipedia now.
But I rather doubt you'll be able to convince the wikipedia community to change the very things that make wikipedia wikipedia, but you're welcome to try. Anyone can edit, after all.
For now, at least. We'll see if that's still true after you explain your amazing scheme to fix wikipedia.
Re:Wikipedia need a serious fix! (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia is not a source of truth, it is an index of information, statements, and beliefs, with references to further information. This means it is about as authoritative about truth as searching thro
Re:Wikipedia need a serious fix! (Score:3, Interesting)
See, way back when I first heard of Wiki, I knew better than to look to it for these things. I grew up in South LA; I know all about graffiti. Blocks of useless stupid tagging punctuated by the occasional breathtaking work of art. If y
Re:Wikipedia need a serious fix! (Score:5, Informative)
Why would you want to do that?! Encyclopedias in general are not good academic references becuase they don't represent original work, but rather a collection and summary of information from other sources. If you find yourself citing Encyclopedia Britannica frequently in academic papers, you might want to consider improving your research methods.
It could be done. The current system is just too open for the kind of abuse described in the article.
Sure, it could be made more reliable, but you'd have to make some fundamental changes. First, you could only accept writing by experts who can prove their credentials. Second, you'd have to have a formalized peer review and editing process. This would cause a big delay between writing and publishing the articles. It would also limit the scope of the encyclopedia, and would greatly increase its cost. In other words, it would become a traditional encyclopedia. That niche has already been filled.
The strengths of Wikipedia are that it is more complete, it is up to date, and it represents a wide variety of viewpoints of many subjects. It's a great way to find a review of some subject and find references on that subject. Sure, it's not authoratative, but who really expects it to be? In my opinion, the best thing that could be done for it is to put a disclaimer prominantly displayed at the top of each page saying that it can be edited by anybody, changes are not reviewed before becoming visible, and no garauntee is made on the accuracy of the content. In other words, things you and I already know, but which the average joe might not. I don't think this will happen, because the people who control it seem to be too proud to admit that it might be inferior in any way to other encyclopedias.
Re:Democrats, Republicans: the same thing! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Democrats, Republicans: the same thing! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Democrats, Republicans: the same thing! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure you're aware that Ron Paul was a Libertarian. He jumped to the Republican Party because he felt he could accomplish more change within the party than from an external third party. Which tells you a sad state of affairs in the US when someone simply changes their label to a major party and has magically gets elected.
Can't say I blame him for trying really.
Re:Democrats, Republicans: the same thing! (Score:3, Informative)
And the financial system based on usury we have today is better?
Most Americans, if they had any clue how the federal reserve works, would be absolutely horrified. That the value of their money is not decided by Congress, even though the constitution explicitly grants them that right, is even more outrageous.
Re:Democrats, Republicans: the same thing! (Score:4, Insightful)
Metal standards tie international currency exchange and therefore to the most desirable country's interest rates. So let's say everyone wants to trade with the USA. A dollar equals an X of gold. So if the British pound is nominally worth two dollars then a BP is also equal to X/2 of gold. Now if the US economy is doing well and interest rates are 6%, then interest rates must be 6% in England as well. If the economy is doing poorly in England then to make capital more affordable interest rates CANNOT be lowered by the Bank of England. If they did lower the rates, arbitrage trading would take place on the BP, effectively borrowing up all the pounds, converting them to dollars for short term, higher interest loans, and then converting back and paying off the pound denominated loan. This would steal away all the capital from England. So world interest rates get locked. Fiddling with interest rates is one of the strongest tools available to central banks for ameliorating business cycle swings. Take this away and you can get terrible bouts of depressions and/or stagflation that can take decades to get out of.
Re:Democrats, Republicans: the same thing! (Score:3, Insightful)
You misspelled "causing."
Re:Democrats, Republicans: the same thing! (Score:4, Insightful)
First, you seem to think inflation only happens as a side effect of non-metallic currencies; this is not the case at all. A useful website is Economic History and on this page you can find historic inflation rates. [eh.net] Put in a year during the time after WWII and before the US went off the silver standard. Amazingly, there is inflation in every year. How is that possible when a metal standard magically waves away inflation? Because metal standards DO NOT wave away inflation. The US went off the gold standard because our major trading allies were begging for it; their economies were in desperate need of interest rates differing from the US's (see my prior post).
Second, you seem to think that inflation and/or the money supply is influenced heavily by the printing of paper notes. This is not the case in a modern economy. The money supply is much more influenced by interest rates, government spending and taxation rates, and even foreign trade balances a long time before the actual printed money has an effect.
And on that note, the money supply in terms of cash in circulation is miniscule compared to the amount of money at work in the ecomony. Look up 'the money multiplier' for more info. The amount printed or coined in a modern ecomomy isn't nearly as big a concern as you seem to think except in extreme cases. And since the Federal Reserve is a private bank, not a government agency, it has the luxury of not letting the cash run amok to the point of Bad Things happening. All the Fed notes would have to be recalled or disavowed and a new government-issued money created. Tell me you think that's realistic for any elected office holder to propose.
Money is created by the government printing up treasury bills. They then sell these to the Federal Reserve, who is a captive buyer and must buy them. But the Fed is then free to either hold or sell the things on the market. The Fed holds the staggering sums in TBills in reserve, to the tune of hundreds of billions of $$. The 'poison pill' that keeps the government in line is that if they dump excessive TBills, the Fed will then dump those same TBills on the open market, ruining the value of the dollars the government wants.
Yeah, we're way off topic... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's my point. Where does inflation come from? Why, when we create more money, that's where. You can't dilute the value of gold by printing more of it. You have to work hard to dig it out of the ground and purify it. Unless you've got some magic way to siphon off the micro amounts of it in sea water, the value of gold will stay relatively fixed. Sure, there's periods of high and low demand in any commodity, but paper money isn't a commodity. The value of a dollar is easy to play with. The actual cost to the US Treasury to print a sheet of $100 bills is a tiny fraction of what that sheet is "worth" but only so long as they print very few of them and they are extremely difficult to counterfeit. The government is what creates the inflation, because the government prints the money. I'm not blind. I see a population living beyond its means (massive trade imbalance, a real estate bubble about to burst) and a government that can't pay its bills (8.2 trillion dollar national debt). We are a consumer, debtor nation. We are a net negative on this Earth. That won't last forever. When it comes time to pay the piper, the government is going to crank up the presses and print day and night to do it. Greenbacks will be worthless.
Re:Lowell Sun (Score:3, Insightful)
That may be true, but the Lowell Sun has just called attention how widespread this problem could be. This article has now been posted on both Slashdot and Digg. All the House and Senate pages will lik