Wikipedia Abused by Politicians
Posted by Jeff Chenkus on April 28, 2006
Filed Under Misc. Gadgets | Stumble This
Wikipedia is an impressive online encylcopedia, with the content being submitted by internet users around the world. And for the most part it has accurate information on a multitude of subjects. It is monitored by volunteers who try to check for accuracy, partisanship or profanity. While there is no way for everything to be checked, the community resepcts the process enough to do what is right, for the most part.
Leave it to the politicians to be some of the most egregious abusers of the site. There have been numerous instances of politicians changing their own entries to include information they want, while removing information they feel is not beneficial to them. They have laso been caught changing other’s entries in order to include embarassing information or just outright lies. It seems like just another pathetic attempt by the various parties to mess with something they have no right to.
Revisions made by Capitol Hill staffers became so frequent and disruptive earlier this year that Wikipedia temporarily blocked access to the site from some congressional Internet addresses. The pranks included bumping up the age of the Senate’s oldest member, West Virginia’s Robert Byrd, from 88 to 180, and giving crude names to other lawmakers.
Sometimes politicians are worse than children. Wikipedia gets thte traffic it gets because of the usefulness of it’s information. To have people play politics with it just because they mistakenly feel they have a right to is just plain ludicrous. We can hope to see more people like Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox who fired her campaign manager for adding information to her opponent’s website about the son’s drunken driving arrest, which she rightly said was clearly out of bounds.
Posted by Jeff
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