I don’t know why anyone is surprised by this given how easy it is to edit Wikipedia and how politicians (and others) love to shape and reshape their images. The New York Times has picked up on a story that has been floating around during the Labor Day Weekend that Republican VP choice Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia entry was edited at the end of last week leading up to the announcement.
Apparently the individual doing the editing, named YoungTrigg, (her youngest son is named Trigg) started polishing up Palin’s entry. Others did as well. The Times details some of the edits, and it basically looks like a PR polish job from what I’m reading.. It also looks like another user or users did some re-working of the re-working. Apparently another user edited the entry on Thursday night to say Palin was the VP choice.
But given that Wikipedia does make it reasonably easy to edit, and that quick editing has been credited with some breaking (or should I say premature) news of late, it raises some interesting questions that have been raised before about objectivity and Wikipedia’s role in the information game. Some are calling it typical dirty tricks. Heh. I say it is just taking advantage of the opportunities that exist.
