Friday, April 28, 2006

Wiki Woes for U.S. Politicians

Main Page - PittsburghPlatform My Platform Wiki site, now reads, this page has been accessed 75,920 times. On the 16th of the month, it was 69,077 times. The front page of the platform wiki is getting more than 500 hits per day.

Source: http://www.politicsonline.com/
A Georgia gubernatorial candidate accepted the resignation of her campaign manager Wednesday after he was accused of changing the online Wikipedia biography of an opponent in the upcoming Democratic primary.

Secretary of State Cathy Cox's opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, said campaign manager Morton Brilliant altered an online encyclopedia entry to include a reference to Taylor's son being arrested for DUI after an accident that killed his passenger. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales confirmed these accusations. The Taylor for Governor campaign responded by accusing Cox of exploiting a family tragedy for political purposes and calling for her resignation, although Cox denied any knowledge of the addition.

This story is only the most highly publicized of a number of recent campaign scuffles involving Wikipedia. Brilliant has also been accused of editing the Wikipedia profile of current Governor Mark Sanford. Nearly twenty more changes have since been made to Sanford’s profile, presumably by both sides of the aisle.

Wikipedia has attempted to deal with problems concerning politically motivated revisions by tightening its submission guidelines and setting up alerts so that operators know when Capitol Hill staffers edit online profiles.
Go to the source, Politics Online, to get the links to Related Articles: Cox to 'Deal With' Wiki- Attack; Campaign Manager Resigns Amid Wikipedia Flap; South Carolina Politicos Get Tangled in Web Forum.

In other online, local news, Chris L of GrassRootsPA.com, is going to be a guest on with Ron Morris, TAEradio.com, this Saturday (tomorrow).

I'll be at a swim meet this weekend.

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