The New Political Battleground: Wikipedia?

[Pangloss]

It is perhaps not exactly surprising that they weren't early adopters, but apparently our politicians have discovered the Wikipedia, which is now the 19th busiest site on the Internet according to Alexa.com. There were more than 1,000 changes to entries in the Wikipedia for US House and Senate members in the second half of last year.

 

What's amusing about this is that apparently they're not only putting in good stuff about themselves, they're also putting in bad stuff about each other. One congressman got the note "smells like cow dung" added to his bio, and the IP address of the changer turned out to belong to the House of Representatives!

 

At one point in November/December it got so bad that the House was actually banned from editing the Wikipedia!

 

Story (with more amusing details) here:

http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_3444567

[-Demosthenes-]

Us ordinary citizens like the fight on Wikipedia too. Many of the current event articles have the label "The neutrality of this article is disputed" on the top. Some pages are even locked (from being edited) until Wikipedia can reach a resolution. Many articles are tied up in this, and the we're forced to look to other resources.

[Sisyphus]

That's hilarious. I just wish I knew who wrote the cow dung comment.

[SorceressPol]

This is so stupid. Why is it that having a database of free information without getting the drama that comes along with it is so hard to accomplish? Why can't people have the right to learn what they want to in peace without interference from people who don't really care about it?