more on Congressional staffers make more than 1,000 changes to Wikipedia

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Art Wolinsky <awolinsky () oii org>
Date: January 29, 2006 11:42:46 AM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Congressional staffers make more than 1,000 changes  
to Wikipedia

You have to love the way the Internet works...

I passed the message on to my son-in-law and he wrote back that he  
just checked Meehan's entry and found that it had been changed back  
to this:

Meehan was elected to the United States House in 1992 on a plan to  
eliminate the budget deficit and instate term limits, calling for  
members of Congress to serve no more than four terms. Meehan took a  
pledge that he would abide by the limit himself but reneged with his  
campaign for a fifth term in 2000, to which he was elected. This can  
be compared to senator Paul Wellstone, who, before his death, started  
a campaign for a third term, breaking a similar pledge. In 2004,  
Meehan was re-elected for his seventh term, again by a wide margin.  
He is currently a member of the house armed services committee and  
the house judiciary committee.

and even better, there was an entry under Wikipedia vandalism that read:

In January 2006, Matt Vogel, Meehan's chief of staff, admitted to  
authorizing a replacement article on Meehan published on Wikipedia,  
an online encyclopedia, with an approved and sanitized staff-written  
biography [1] [2]. This ran afoul of internal Wikipedia guidelines  
[3], and government ethics' rules on the use of employee time.

The changes endorsed by Meehan's Chief of Staff included removing  
mentions of the campaign money controversy involving Meehan, and  
Meehan's broken term-limit promise.
----------------------------------------------

I can't help but think about the Arlo Guthrie joke of two rabbits  
that get chased into a hollow log by a pack of dogs.  One rabbit says  
to the other, "Well it looks like this is the end of the line for us."

The other one just smiles and says, "Nah.  We'll just stay here till  
we out number them."

I think Wikipedians can change entries back a lot faster than  
staffers can change them!

Art



******************************************************************
 Art Wolinsky
 OII Technology Director      http://oii.org
 awolinsky () oii org             (609) 597-9481 ext 337
******************************************************************
I am perfectly capable of learning from my mistakes.
I will surely learn a great deal today.
******************************************************************




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