[IP] Doctoring the past - Wiki style
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- -------- Original Message --------
Subject: Doctoring the past - Wiki style
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 10:36:56 +0000
From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Dave:
The front page of today's (UK) Guardian has an article on Wikipedia
that is to my mind not only well-balanced and accurate, but also
funny - this last quality not usually being found in their front page
articles.
cheers
Brian
===
>Doctoring the past - Wiki style
>
>Patrick Barkham
>Friday February 10, 2006
>The Guardian
>
>We are all Alastair Campbells now. Spin doctors' antennae whirred
>around this week when the volunteers who run Wikipedia discovered
>that staff of US senators and congressmen had been busy burnishing
>their bosses' entries in the internet encyclopedia.
>
>Millions of people turn to the reference site to look up facts - and
>change them. The non-profit making project to build an internet
>encyclopedia is the 19th most-visited site in the world. Three per
>cent of all webpages visited are Wikipedia pages. Its guiding, and
>democratic, principle: anyone can anonymously edit it. Increasingly,
>it seems, politicians and their staff are among the most dedicated
>editors.
>
>Patrolling the 962,652 entries in the English Wiki - more than
>double the number a year ago - its idealistic volunteers found other
>examples of "politically motivated editing" emanating from
>Washington. In one case, an intern for Democratic representative
>Marty Meehan deleted a reference to his broken promise to only serve
>four terms. In another, the office of Senator Norm Coleman deleted
>an unflattering reference to voting with President George Bush 98%
>of the time in 2003, despite running as a moderate the year before.
>Wikipedia took draconian action: all computers connected to servers
>at the House of Representatives were temporarily denied access to
>the site.
>
>Computers linked to Canada's House of Commons and the German
>Bundestag also fiddled with entries, according to Wikipedia. But
>Jimmy Wales, the Florida-based founder who was embarrassingly
>exposed for tweaking his own entry, said no suspicious activity had
>yet been recorded on the computers of Westminster and Whitehall.
>
>Why do our slow-witted special advisers twiddle their thumbs while
>websavvy idealists write their bosses' biographies? The Guardian
>could help. I bring up Tony Blair's entry. It appears a perfect
>example of a Wiki entry: accurate, informative, well-sourced and
>neutral in tone. But every choice of fact is a subjective act. And
>there's one our Tone wouldn't like: "Euan Blair received widespread
>publicity after police found him 'drunk and incapable'." C'mon guys,
>the kids are off limits. Snip. I cut it out.
>
>"While the Blairs have stated that they wish to shield their
>children from the media, they have not always been able, or willing
>... " Hang on, "willing"? What does that imply? Cut. Save. Refresh
>page. Tony's Wiki entry is now a lot shinier.
>
>Time to buff up the Guardian. The stereotypical Guardian reader is,
>Wikipedia explains, a lentil-munching, sandal-wearing lefty. "Like
>most stereotypes, to some extent this one is both inaccurate and
>outdated." Let's get rid of "to some extent", eh?
>
>I add some positive spin about our rising circulation. Hang on,
>there is someone missing from the list of "notable regular
>contributors (past and present)". Ian Aitken, Julian Borger, Emma
>Brockes: excellent, excellent. But no "Patrick Barkham". I slip the
>name in. It looks nice, if suspiciously anomalous.
>
>Ah, the sweet power of the spin doctor (tempered by the growing
>anxiety that a volunteer will hunt me down and attack me with worms
>or bots or turn my Mac into a zombie computer). Wikipedia records
>the internet protocol address of the computer on which every edit
>occurs. They could easily trace my edits to the Guardian. Its
>volunteers cleverly trapped the US spinners by sending emails to
>their offices. When they received replies, they found the IP
>addresses contained in the emails matched those of the dodgy editors.
>
>Time to phone Wikipedia. Does the furore over the politicians
>gilding their own lilies undermine its credibility? "It's more
>damaging to the persons involved," says Mr Wales. "We were able to
>catch these bad edits very quickly and good edits were incorporated
>very quickly."
>
>The site is still smarting from bad publicity about the biography of
>the US journalist John Seigenthaler, which incorrectly linked him to
>the Kennedy assassinations. The libellous allegations were not
>spotted for months before they were removed, leading to criticism
>about its reliability.
>
>Mr Wales says the "whitewashing" editors from Washington are treated
>"just like editors from a grammar school. If they behave themselves,
>that's fine. If not, they get blocked."
>
>What does Wikipedia rule on people adding gloss to their own
>entries? "It's not absolutely forbidden to edit an article you're
>involved in but it's not considered good practice," says a UK
>spokesman, David Gerard.
>
>Marty Meehan recanted. "It was a waste of energy and an error in
>judgment on the part of my staff to have allowed any time to be
>spent on updating my Wikipedia entry," he said.
>
>And so must I. Shamed by my crass attempts to subvert the democratic
>goal of a free encyclopedia on the internet, I return and remove my
>"bad edits" to leave the pages just as they were. Will the world's
>spin doctors suffer similar pangs of conscience?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1706597,00.html
- --
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxx PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/
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