http://dailychronicle.com/articles/2006/02/09/news/wikipedia.txt
Thursday, February 09, 2006
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Burns' office may have tampered with Wikipedia entry
By WALT WILLIAMS Chronicle Staff Writer
Someone from Sen. Conrad Burns' office apparently edited the senator's
entry on the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia in January to remove
a controversial remark he had made about Arabs, the Web site reported
Tuesday.
A recent investigation by Wikinews -- Wikipedia's fact-checking service
-- found that an unknown editor using an Internet protocol address
assigned to the Republican senator's office removed references to a
comment Burns made in 1999 calling Arabs "ragheads" and his voting
record on Native American issues.
The same person then inserted a glowing paragraph describing the senator
as a "voice for the farmer."
Wikipedia is an open-source encyclopedia that allows anyone with a Web
connection to edit its articles, a feature that has led critics to
question the accuracy of its content.
Regardless, Wikipedia remains one of the most popular sites on the Web
and is the place where many Internet users turn when looking up
information.
Search for "Conrad Burns" with Google and the Wikipedia article is the
second link to show up among 432,000 hits, right after the senator's
official Web site.
Burns' spokesman James Pendleton dismissed Wikinews' findings when asked
about it Wednesday, pointing to the site's open-source nature.
"They have exactly zero credibility," he said. "Because there is no
fact-checking, anybody can go in and put in whatever they want."
Wikipedia has long been a battleground for image-conscious political
activists of all stripes. Any articles even hinting at politics are
routinely edited by Internet users to remove bias, both real and
perceived.
Wikinews recently investigated edits coming from the IP addresses of
U.S. Senate offices. It found that the vast majority of edits were
actually helpful, Wikinews correspondent Wayne Saewyc said.
"A very small number of them were not," he said.
Among the questionable edits were the ones coming from an IP address
linked to Burns' office. Wikinews attempted to contact the senator's
staff about the changes, but phone calls were not returned.
Burns' office was not the only one that Wikinews attempted to contact
about head-scratching edits. The others were the offices of Sens. Joe
Biden of Delaware, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Dianne Feinstein of
California and Tom Harkin of Iowa.
The Burns article has since been returned to its original format.
/end
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
.
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