Friday’s edition of the NPR program All Things Considered included a piece by Yuki Noguchi on some suspicious whitewashing that went down in Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia entry just before she was revealed as the GOP’s candidate for vice-president. Snip:
Someone – and apparently it was just one person – felt like the existing biography wasn’t appropriate for a vice-presidential candidate. On Friday, 15 minutes before the rumor that John McCain had picked Palin as his running mate, a Wikipedia editor discovered 30 mostly favorable changes had been made to the Alaska governor’s profile.
She was called “a politician of eye-popping integrity” and sections on her participation in a beauty pageant and her alleged use of influence to get her former brother-in-law fired were diminished.
That user is one “Young Trigg.” He or she was thanked and lauded by other Wikipedia editors for thoroughness, before questions of a possible conflict of interest emerged.
Brian Krebs at the Washington Post writes:
Perhaps more tellingly, some of the same users editing her page were almost simultaneously updating McCain’s Wiki entry, adding information dealing with accuracy, sources and footnotes to each.
Palin’s Wikipedia Entry Gets Overhaul (NPR)
Tug of war over Wiki entry on Palin (SJ Merc)
Wikipedia Edits Forecast Vice Presidential Picks (Washington Post)