Wikipedia, the consumer-generated online encyclopedia that can be edited by any person who chooses to do so, is, in my humble opinion, way too vulnerable to the self-interests of others to be as
consistently a reliable source of information as, say, the regular encyclopedia. The latest example (and there may be countless others that go unchecked everyday), comes from a series of edits made by
politicians in Washington. It was recently discovered that someone deleted references to a broken term-limits pledge and massive campaign funding for the listing of Rep. Marty Meehan, a Massachusetts
Democrat. The political blunder was sniffed out by Wikipedia's editors, who compiled a list of over 1,000 edits made by IP addresses allocated to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Other
edits coming from Capitol Hill IP addresses listed White House press secretary Scott McClellan under the entry for "douche," and another said Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma "was voted the
most annoying Senator by his peers in Congress. This was due to Senator Coburn being a huge douche-bag." Hmmm. Glad to see our country is run by such noble, upstanding adults.
Read the whole story at Cnet News.com »
