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Gutknecht joins Wikipedia tweakers
Minnesota Star-Tribune ^
| August 16th, 2006
| Kevin Diaz
Posted on 08/18/2006 12:57:10 PM PDT by RippyO
Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., is the latest politician to be found editing his Wikipedia entry, extending a year-long trend that has snagged the likes of Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.....
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bias; fakebutaccurate; infotainment; newbie; politicians; wikipedia
1
posted on
08/18/2006 12:57:11 PM PDT
by
RippyO
To: RippyO
Wow - I better go look to see what it says about me.
Or maybe I could just get on with my life.
2
posted on
08/18/2006 12:59:11 PM PDT
by
linear
(Nuance treats reality as a mere Rorschach test.)
To: RippyO
"Now Gutknecht, in effect, tried to expunge a reminder of a 12-year term-limit he imposed on himself in 1995.
Page histories available on Wikipedia show that Gutknecht's office tried twice -- July 24 and Aug. 14 -- to remove a 128-word entry on him and replace it with a more flattering 315-word entry taken from his official congressional biography.
In both cases, the original entry -- including his term-limit promise -- was restored within hours."
Pretty lame on his part.
3
posted on
08/18/2006 1:03:39 PM PDT
by
ansel12
(Life is exquisite... of great beauty, keenly felt.)
To: RippyO
i dont see the big deal in this. wikipedia is not reliable for anything and should not be seriously considered an encyclopedia. if a politician wants to change their profile, who cares. people post anything and everything up there. wikipedia is an entertainment site if anything.
To: philsfan24
Clearly, the DBM has pretensions of elevating its status. I guess they figure it should be a reference tool, given it agrees with their points of view so often. That would certainly make it reliable so far as they see things, yes?
5
posted on
08/18/2006 1:14:29 PM PDT
by
BelegStrongbow
(www.stjosephssanford.org)
To: philsfan24
i dont see the big deal in this. wikipedia is not reliable for anything and should not be seriously considered an encyclopedia. if a politician wants to change their profile, who cares. people post anything and everything up there. wikipedia is an entertainment site if anything. I disagree with you because of your assumption that other encyclopedia's are not biased. At least with wikipedia you can look up the page histories to see how an article has changed--just like in this case.
6
posted on
08/18/2006 1:15:09 PM PDT
by
burzum
(Despair not! I shall inspire you by charging blindly on!--Minsc, BG2)
To: RippyO
Why can't wikipedia accept both versions of the biography? It would go against their liberal bias, I suppose.
7
posted on
08/18/2006 1:18:12 PM PDT
by
Tamar1973
(Don't argue with an idiot; people watching may not be able to tell the difference.)
To: Tamar1973
The entire point of Wikipedia is that ANYONE can edit it, there is nothing wrong with someone editing their own bio, if others don't like it, they can revert the changes.
The left gets all up in arms about when our side edits their bios, yet their little left wing neo-hippie hacks are all over Wikipedia editing their garbage into everything. Hell, just look at the revision history on President Bush's bio...
8
posted on
08/18/2006 1:21:48 PM PDT
by
mnehring
(http://mlearningworld.blogspot.com/)
To: RippyO
9
posted on
08/18/2006 1:23:22 PM PDT
by
Dumb_Ox
(http://kevinjjones.blogspot.com)
To: burzum
I disagree with you because of your assumption that other encyclopedia's are not biased. At least with wikipedia you can look up the page histories to see how an article has changed--just like in this case.
And if you find biased information, then you can change it.
Nobody's contesting that his entry contains false information - it just seems to contain a little more true information than he'd like.
10
posted on
08/18/2006 1:39:21 PM PDT
by
highball
(Proud to announce the birth of little Highball, Junior - Feb. 7, 2006!)
To: Tamar1973
Wikipedia is not an entity - it is an aggregation of the people who choose to edit their entries. You may say that more of these people are liberal than conservative, but it is not a closed room like the NY Times. Saying Wikipedia is biased is kind of like saying Internet users are biased.
Besides, both Dems and Pubs have changed their bios on Wikipedia. This incident is more like "Wow, that was lame of Gutknecht's office to do" rather than "Wow, all Republicans are liars."
11
posted on
08/18/2006 2:06:22 PM PDT
by
RippyO
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