
Link by Link - Don’t Like Palin’s Wikipedia Story? Change It - dnene
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/technology/01link.html?em
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hugh
As it happens I was looking at the edit history for the Sarah Palin article a
few days ago. A more complete (dare I say less biased) article would have
mentioned that no sooner had this particular individual started making
flattering edits to the article, other people also started making unflattering
edits to the article. Current edit wars include whether to mention the fact
that she smoked weed, or to link to the dailykos theory that her youngest son
is actually her grandson.

Are they linked to the Obama campaign? Who knows? Realistically it's no
surprise that people are going to attempt to use wikipedia as a campaign tool,
and the kind of people with enough political motivation and free time to edit
wikipedia for their candidate's benefit are exactly the same people with
enough political motivation and free time to be campaign volunteers.

Another recent controversy I noticed was on the William Ayers article. I went
there the other day to try and get some facts on the Obama-Ayers connection,
only to find that there was no mention of Obama in the Ayers article at all,
and of course a huge debate in the comments about whether it's worth
mentioning. Going back there again today I find that the Obama-Ayers
connection is not only mentioned but has been spun off into its own article.

~~~
jdogg
Democracy sure is messy.

------
mixmax
Political power has always revolved around shaping the flow of information.

The only thing that has changed is the medium.

~~~
mynameishere
It's the encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

The more telling phenom is that the nytimes, an ancient media outlet, put a
reporter on the big "Palin's wiki article" scoop rather than, say, Obama's
wiki article.

I wonder if any of Obama's campaign volunteers edited his article... I wonder
if the nytimes would try to turn that into a scandal. If they haven't turned
his black theology/domestic terrorist associations/Chicago corruption scandals
into scandals, I'm guessing...no.

...

Here is what "shaping the flow of information" looks like:

 _Sen. Barack Obama is warning TV stations and asking the Justice Department
to intervene in an attempt to block the airing of an ad by a non-profit group
that links him to an unrepentant domestic terrorist._

[http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73448](http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73448)

...okay? BHO is trying to muscle a private group from publishing information
about him that the nytimes (etc, etc) is all too happy to suppress.

~~~
pius
You know, it's entirely possible to discuss this story here without getting
into partisan politics. Can't we just stick to the relevant stuff?

~~~
mynameishere
I didn't start it.

