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Congressional Aides Tampering With Wikipedia
Congressional aides have been tampering with the biographies of elected officials on the encyclopedia Web site Wikipedia to such an extent that three times Wikipedia has blocked the entire House computer network from accessing the site. Wikipedia bills itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” That editing has often taken the form of enhancing some bios and sabotaging others, the Washington, D.C., publication Roll Call reports on its "Heard on the Hill” column. When the site’s operators find posted information that is scurrilous or wrong, they remove it. But Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales calls the more than 1,000 changes made by House staffers "vandalism.” In one example of tampering, aides to Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., removed references to the congressman’s broken term-limits pledge, according to Roll Call.
Story Continues Below A story in a local newspaper prompted Meehan to write an editorial blaming an intern in his office for "updating his biography.” In other cases there has been no way to know for certain who did the tampering, since Wikipedia can trace changes only to the House Internet protocol address, not to any specific House office. So Wikipedia simply lists the vandalism offenses in one section of the site. In the case of Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., someone removed references in his bio "to possible ties to Jack Abramoff and many other ... politically damaging items.” The vandal who tampered with the bio of Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, is accused of "removing unflattering quotes.”
Those quotes were about him wanting to "nuke” Syria, according to Roll Call. Wales said the good thing about this "bipartisan scandal” is that "we get some press attention and they look like idiots.”
© 2006 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note:
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