There has been a recent expose that members of Staff at the US congress have been editing the Wikipedia on-line encyclopaedia to sanitise the biographies of senators and members of congress.
For those of you who haven’t used it - Wikipedia is a creative commons project that can be edited by the readers, so that hopefully a consensus is reached.
This works well with neutral subjects, but checking the debate over entries for Stalin or Hitler for example, shows that there can be no consensus over political subjects.
According to the BBC: "Using the public history of edits on Wikipedia, researchers collected the internet protocol numbers of computers linked to the US Senate and tracked the changes made to online pages. The site lists half a dozen prominent biographies that had been changed by Senate computers, including those of Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, California Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. "
This is of course a warning for those who rely uncritically on the web for factual information. The creative commons concept can be subverted by those who shout loudest, or edit most persistently.
Wikipedia tightens the Rules:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4502846.stm
Congress 'made Wikipedia changes:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4695376.stm
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