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U.S. Government vandalizes Wikipedia

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thysin
 
Reply Tue 12 May, 2009 10:07 am
I was on Wikimedia(wikipedia news) earlier and saw an article posted on May 6th about controversial edits made to certain articles attributed to IP addresses linked to government computers associated with the House of Representatives and the Senate. The question is...what do you think of this? Should it be stopped? Is there any crime being committed here? I'd like to add that one of the edits consisted of the addition to a Republican Congressman's page saying he was part of the Nazi Party (slander?).


Here's the article:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Congressiona...
 
Theaetetus
 
Reply Tue 12 May, 2009 10:10 am
@thysin,
That is the downfall of a public encyclopedia. Anyone can edit and contribute, but you hope there are more people that are trying to present information as accurately as possible, than people trying to misinform and disinform.
 
thysin
 
Reply Tue 12 May, 2009 10:26 am
@thysin,
Yeah. I commend Wikimedia for developing this story so people understand the shortcomings of Wikipedia and in turn won't use it as an unquestionable source. That being said I think that wikipedia 99% of the time is a very reliable source of information and the volunteers that work on it are really good at keeping it that way, as this article shows. Just unfortunate this hasn't been picked up by mainstream media yet.
 
Theaetetus
 
Reply Tue 12 May, 2009 10:41 am
@thysin,
Part of the problem is that the mainstream media is concerned with profit for shareholders. A story about the Wikipedia is not going to get the attention of a story such as the swine flu. Swine flu will cause people to panic, and stay glued to the television or buy a paper. Wikipedia vandalism just is not something that is going to draw people to the story. Thus, the story will be buried on the ticker bars of the news networks, or a section of the paper hardly glanced at by anyone.
 
manored
 
Reply Wed 13 May, 2009 03:13 pm
@Theaetetus,
thysin wrote:
I was on Wikimedia(wikipedia news) earlier and saw an article posted on May 6th about controversial edits made to certain articles attributed to IP addresses linked to government computers associated with the House of Representatives and the Senate. The question is...what do you think of this? Should it be stopped? Is there any crime being committed here? I'd like to add that one of the edits consisted of the addition to a Republican Congressman's page saying he was part of the Nazi Party (slander?).
As far as I know difamation is quite common in politics so this is probally true. In Brazil we even had a serious rebelion once because of this. (The goverment decided to make a certain vacine mandatory and the opposition spread the lie of that the vacine had to be given in the private parts)

Theaetetus wrote:
That is the downfall of a public encyclopedia. Anyone can edit and contribute, but you hope there are more people that are trying to present information as accurately as possible, than people trying to misinform and disinform.
Well, not ever part of the wikipedia contains information someone might be interessed in adultering.

Lets hope these parts dont end up being all that is actually reliable though...
 
 

 
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