McCain camp dismisses plagiarism rap

Politico ^ | 2008-08-12 | Jonathan Martin

[rabscuttle385]

John McCain's campaign is denying a suggestion made yesterday that the candidate's lengthy response yesterday to the crisis in Georgia was lifted in part from Wikipedia.

"We did not copy Wikipedia in Sen. McCain’s remarks," said spokesman Brian Rogers.

Three portions of the GOP nominee's statement yesterday were seized upon by an editor for the online encyclopedia and sent to blogger Taegan Goddard with the claim that the words seemed to match the Wiki entry for Georgia.

[rabscuttle385]

As the folks at The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va. noted today:

While McCain, himself, had nothing to do with writing the speech, it should be noted that, were he a student at U.Va., he would likely be facing a trial by fellow students and staff rather than some vague criticisms from left-leaning blogs strewn across the Web.

[rabscuttle385]

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[calex59]

This just points out how well his response was received over BHO’s tripe. The left is jealous and will say anything to discredit this statement as it makes obamaosama look very weak comparatively.

[counterpunch]

McCain “plagiarized” Wikipedia by citing some of the same basic facts of Georgian history.
McCain should have gotten his own version of history like Obama!

[pepperhead]

Weak sauce for the Politico. Let’s see some real plagiarism.

Barack Hussein Obama PLAGIARISM Copies Deval Patrick speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqOaVbznE5o

[douginthearmy]

More likely, McCain’s team plagiarized an earlier source. And even more likely, the “editor” of the Wikipedia Georgia page plagiarized that same source. This is one of the weakest attacks I’ve seen yet. I wonder if this means McCain is taking the lead.

[calcowgirl]

Wikipedia = “Experience”.

[SolidWood]

Is that all you Obamalovers have left?

[TigersEye]

McCain's knowledge = encyclopedic.

Obama's knowledge = tricyclopedic.

[al_c]

Oh, that’s good. Thanks for the link.

[Eroteme]

More likely, McCain’s team plagiarized an earlier source. And even more likely, the “editor” of the Wikipedia Georgia page plagiarized that same source.

I agree. it's one reason I won';t use Wikipedia for anything other than a base starting point, if at all....even though some of the entries are, in fact, very well documented and sourced. Just no way of telling until you do the source verification.

Anyway, has it even been established conclusively that the Wikipedia language preceded McCains's? I confess to being clueless about how the entry/edit thing works exactly, but it seems that the constant, ongoing changes could be used for mischief. One could take a couple of phrases from a speech and slip it into the Wikipedia article then have a friend "discover" that the speaker "stole" from Wikipedia. Is that possible? Anyone here know particularly savvy in reading the edit/revision logs?