IF YOU CAN’T BEAT EM

Ars Technica reports on congressional staffers who were given orders to go into Wikipedia and tamper with the representatives’ entries.

From Ars Technica:Congressional staffers edit boss’s bio on Wikipedia

This alone makes for a pretty interesting story, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Further investigation by the newspaper and by Wikipedia staff found that more than 1,000 edits had been made to Wikipedia entries by House staffers over the last six months alone. Because all changes emanating from the House come from a single IP address (a proxy), it’s hard to trace specific edits back to individuals, who can plausibly deny making them. Not all of these were malicious (though someone from the House did write that Rep. Eric Cantor “smells of cow dung”), nor were they all white-washes. But enough of them were problematic that Wikipedia launched a full investigation and found that Senate staffers were tempted in equal measure.

People seem quick to reassert the ‘Wikipedia is unreliable’ line in response to these cases, but they almost always have a happy ending. In this case, the representative who first got caught received a nasty little note on his entry:

Wikipedia: Marty Meehan

On 18 July 2005, U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan’s staff made controversial changes to his Wikipedia article. These edits consisted of, among other things, removing verified facts that portrayed him in a bad light. On January 27, 2006, Matt Vogel, Meehan’s chief of staff, admitted to authorizing a replacement article on Meehan published on Wikipedia, with a staff-written biography. This ran afoul of internal Wikipedia guidelines.

I think these cases, rather than undermining the goals of projects like Wikipedia, actually reinforce a healthy skepticism and a loyalty to the truth.