Fergie's Tech Blog

Staffers Groom Wikipedia Entry for Congressman

Margaret Kane writes on the C|Net Blogma Blog:

Congressional staffers have made more than 1,000 changes to entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia in the past six months, an investigation by the Lowell Sun has found. The Massachusetts newspaper highlighted changes made by staffers for U.S. Rep Marty Meehan, D-Mass., including the removal of a mention of his broken term-limits pledge and information about the size of his campaign war chest.

Wikipedia's open nature invites editing by the public. But modifications made by interested parties have drawn criticism.

While many of the changes discovered by the Lowell Sun were done to enhance political entries, not all were positive. Statements traced to a House IP address included entries that U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., "smells of cow dung" and that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is "ineffective."

posted by Fergie @ 1/30/2006 07:48:00 AM