Congress Made Wikipedia Changes

Dr Occult writes "BBC news is reporting misuse of Wikipedia by politicians for 'polishing' their images. The article on President Bush has been altered so many times - not just from within Congress - that Wikipedia's volunteer monitors have had to block further 'editing'." From the article: "Wikipedia says the controversy raises questions about whether it is ethical for those with a vested interest in the subject to edit entries about it. It said the Congressional computer network has been blocked from editing for brief periods on a number of occasions in the last six months due to the inappropriate contributions."

Additional resource

[dlc3007]

The Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] also has an article on this

Some day, I'll remember to put the break tags in my first posting of the day. /yawn

Bush article isn't completely blocked

[brian0918]

The Bush article isn't blocked from all editing, just that by anonymous and new users, due to the rampant anonymous vandalism and people with too much time on their hands who create dozens of accounts just to vandalize that article. For anonymous newbies, the Bush article is equivalent to Wikipedia's "Sandbox" for test editing.

Re:Bush article isn't completely blocked

[wongn]

Yes, I thought that the article took the Bush article's Protection out of context here. It was protected because it gets vandalised lots, not necessarily because of POV attacks by congressional staffers.

Re:Block 'em all.

[AndroidCat]

Perhaps with exceptions for certain scientific sites (e.g. nasa.gov, any "national laboratories", etc.)

Keep in mind that Wiki has a policy against original research [wikipedia.org] that hasn't been published elsewhere. Which is not to say that they couldn't contribute, but just that it would have to be done carefully:

The role of expert editors

"No original research" does not mean that experts on a specific topic cannot contribute to Wikipedia. On the contrary, Wikipedia welcomes experts. We assume, however, that someone is an expert not only because of their personal and direct knowledge of a topic, but because of their knowledge of published sources on a topic. This policy prohibits expert editors from drawing on their personal and direct knowledge if such knowledge is unverifiable. If an expert editor has published the results of his or her research elsewhere, in a reputable publication, the editor can cite that source while writing in the third person and complying with our NPOV policy. They must cite publications, and may not use their unpublished knowledge as a source of information (which would be impossible to verify).

Otherwise, we hope expert editors will draw on their knowledge of other published sources to enrich our articles. However, such experts do not occupy a privileged position within Wikipedia.

Re:Objective information?

[millennial]

5 entries found for vested interest.
(n)
      1. Law. A right or title, as to present or future possession of an estate, that can be conveyed to another.
      2. A fixed right granted to an employee under a pension plan.
      3. A special interest in protecting or promoting that which is to one's own personal advantage.
      4. vested interests: Those groups that seek to maintain or control an existing system or activity from which they derive private benefit.

Anyways, regardless of whether or not information is as objective as humanly possible, we all have our own biases and prejudices that we will unconsciously apply to the message, thus subverting its objectivity. The best we can hope for is to maintain the illusion of objectivity.

Read WikiNews for the rest of the story

[TimTheFoolMan]

It amazes me that the Islamic extremists aren't the only ones who don't bother to check the rest of the story before they start inflaming the masses. From WikiNews:

The investigation showed the vast majority of edits from Senate IPs were beneficial and helpful to Wikipedia. Examples include the creation of the articles on Click Back America, which organizes students to promote microfinance in the developing world, and Washington's Tomb, which was designed to hold the body of first U.S. President George Washington within the White House Capitol building; and significantly expanding the article on closed sessions of the United States Senate in November. Dozens of small corrections have been made to grammar, spelling, or small facts -- many of them related to the Senate.

Senators' staff members have sometimes had to fight to correct inaccuracies. An edit to Jay Rockefeller's article by his staff removed information which may have been biased or untrue. The staff member who edited said, "Apologies, I was new to using Wikipedia, and I didn't fully realize the workings of the website," after other users continuously reinserted the information. The staffer removed the suspect paragraphs 12 times until another Wikipedia user finally removed the information. Four days later, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales got involved.

In other words, the edits were SOMETIMES bad, but were generally helpful. The entire tone of this story suggests that they were all trying to line the pockets of their senators (no doubt a popular sentiment), but WikiNews itself suggests that this is true only in a small number of cases.

Tim

Re:implement a mod system

[frgough]

As a German, you should study your history better. Hitler SEIZED power in a coup. He and his party were a small minority in the German government.

A more accurate analogy would be if Hillary Clinton, the junior senator from New York, were to cite the terrorist attacks and the Republican's failure to deal with them as justification for her seizing the presidency, whereupon she would immediately send the army out that night to kill and imprison all her political opponents.

That is essentially what Hitler did.

Re:The Venn Diagram of Statements

[David Gerard]

We have a guideline [wikipedia.org] on living people's articles. Basically, (1) every statement has to be utterly verifiable (2) every statement has to be relevant to why they have an article. This is followed very imperfectly, but when followed it saves greatly on crap.

Re:Imagine....

[David Gerard]

Hence the Biographies of living persons [wikipedia.org] guideline.

Re:Those with a vested interest

[slavemowgli]

There's nothing wrong with having a vested interest in the subject of an article. There *is* something wrong with letting that interest influence you - you are expected to abide by the NPOV principle etc., but as long as you do that, things are fine. Granted, you might sometimes accidentally write things in a way that's not entirely NPOV (and I really do mean accidentally, not "accidentally"), but that's something that will just be corrected later on by someone else (or even by yourself, if you notice it).

The real problem is those with an agenda who knowingly and deliberately push that agenda.