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02-03-2006, 11:36 AM
Wikipedia Now Blocking US Congress From Making Edits
Censoring information online has been a touchy subject and now the US government is banned from Wikipedia for altering facts.
Recently, the Wikipedia community has been shaken up. Because of its nature, anyone can contribute to its content or edit existing material. The Goal of Wikipedia has been to provide free flowing information on just about everything in the world. In fact, one can look up information ranging from different US Presidents down to individual Congressmen that have run in and are running still, in office.
Over the past several weeks however, Wikipedia administrators began noticing changes been made on one Congressman's biography page in similar fashion to suspicious activities on other Wikipedia pages. Congressman Marty Meehan, currently running in the US government as a Democratic member since the early 90's has had his staff alter certain text to boost his support and public image. Certain factual truths about Mr. Meehan and his party members that were deemed "negative" and told "too much", were thoroughly edited to remove certain parts of history, events, and things said.
The biographical article for Mr. Meehan was carefully edited, removing negative comments while expanding with content from the congressman's political flyer. The IP address which made these edits has an extensive editing history on Wikipedia, and has been repeatedly blocked in past months for article vandalism and violation of Wikipedia policies.
More on this Story (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=536)
Censoring information online has been a touchy subject and now the US government is banned from Wikipedia for altering facts.
Recently, the Wikipedia community has been shaken up. Because of its nature, anyone can contribute to its content or edit existing material. The Goal of Wikipedia has been to provide free flowing information on just about everything in the world. In fact, one can look up information ranging from different US Presidents down to individual Congressmen that have run in and are running still, in office.
Over the past several weeks however, Wikipedia administrators began noticing changes been made on one Congressman's biography page in similar fashion to suspicious activities on other Wikipedia pages. Congressman Marty Meehan, currently running in the US government as a Democratic member since the early 90's has had his staff alter certain text to boost his support and public image. Certain factual truths about Mr. Meehan and his party members that were deemed "negative" and told "too much", were thoroughly edited to remove certain parts of history, events, and things said.
The biographical article for Mr. Meehan was carefully edited, removing negative comments while expanding with content from the congressman's political flyer. The IP address which made these edits has an extensive editing history on Wikipedia, and has been repeatedly blocked in past months for article vandalism and violation of Wikipedia policies.
More on this Story (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=536)