Doctoring the past - Wiki style

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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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 () newcastle ac uk>
To: dave () farber net

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 () ncl ac uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/

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