Politics. Serious business.

[koopa]

Wikipedia has lately been facing vandalism on pages about U.S. senators and congressmen. The vandals were - senators!

Among other things


One edit listed White House press secretary Scott McClellan under the entry for "douche." Another said of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma) that: "Coburn was voted the most annoying Senator by his peers in Congress. This was due to Senator Coburn being a huge douche-bag."

Other edits aimed at removing criticism. Thus

he has since gone back on his word and now is adamently [sic] against the idea of term limits for Congressmen.
became

His fiscally responsible voting record since then has earned him praise from citizen watchdog groups.
(How's that for an unbiased view of yourself?)

At one point this got so bad that wikipedia decided to IP-ban U.S. house and senate addresses.

I couldn't stop laughing when I read that.
Seriously, this behaviour you might expect from an immature n00b, not a congressman.

But after all,

Internet politics. serious business.

lol


source
http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6033082.html
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_actions_prompt_Wikipedia_inves tigation

[J.J. Maxx]

Yeah, I was just talking to Warlord the other day and telling him we should ban those addresses. You'd be surprised how many of AGN's members are senators.

[ShadowTiger]

... ... That's ... bloody ridiculous. I doubt Senators even know about Wikipedia; they're too busy screwing the country into the ground.

I doubt this is a problem they can easily fix. They have no idea who's targetting Wiki. It could be anyone. All they can do is to make the page uneditable for a bit, I guess. That would be against the point of Wiki though.



On a side note: JJ, I logged in again for the sole purpose of sigging that. ;-p Heheheh.

[koopa]

I dunno ... the wikipedia page said that the house administration confirmed it was their ip. Not that that means too much. I'd guess the campaign advisers behind the senators might have read about wikipedia and got the idea that editing out negative information might help in an election. Whether the senators personally were involved is another question.

EDIT: confession:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/01/29/meehan_staff_are_said_to_admit_rewriting_data/

Members of US Representative Martin Meehan's staff have acknowledged that they deleted unflattering information about a broken campaign promise from an online encyclopedia, according to a published report.

[Rainman]

... ... That's ... bloody ridiculous. I doubt Senators even know about Wikipedia; they're too busy screwing the country into the ground.

I doubt this is a problem they can easily fix. They have no idea who's targetting Wiki. It could be anyone. All they can do is to make the page uneditable for a bit, I guess. That would be against the point of Wiki though.
Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the internet at this point. I think most people know of it.

[ZTC]

Internet antics at it's best strangest

still quite funny, though.