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Leave it to the Republicans to try to hide the facts or to change them.
Sarah Palin scrubs her own Wikipedia entry?
by CarrieNYC Fri Aug 29, 2008
This is a breaking story from NPR: Sarah Palin may have scrubbed her own Wikipedia entry shortly before her nomination leaked this morning.
I will be updating this diary as things develop. Will also update with any more info we can get from the Wikipedia page.
Here's a transcript of some of the highlights from NPR for anyone who can't get the audio.
Just 15 minutes after rumor of her selection broke, a Wikipedia editor discovered something interesting. Yesterday, thirty mostly favorable changes were made to Palin's Wikipedia biography.
The user making the changes was "Young Trigg." Trig happens to be the name of Sarah Palin's son.
The changes, all from a single source, included the addition of a quotation calling Palin "a politician of eye-popping integrity." The edits diminished a reference to Palin's participation in a beauty pageant and minimized a section about a controversy over whether Palin used her influence to get her ex-brother-in-law fired.
If true... wow. Do these people know ANYTHING about the internets? This woman would have to be incredibly naive not to know that tampering with your own wikipedia entry is a no-go and will always get you found out. Um... especially with "Young Trigg" as your username. :)
Now... can someone with some Wiki savvy do some detective work to see what other mischief "Young Trigg" has been up to with his/her account? What did the diary say before "Young Trigg" got his/her hands on it? Team? Let's get on this!
Update: Thanks to Terre, here's a cached version from August 21.
Update 2: Thanks to dmsilev. Here's a list of all Young Trigg's contributions
"Young Trigg apparently just registered yesterday and is a "single-purpose user." In other words, its only contributions are on one topic: Sarah Palin.
Update 3: Thanks to teachingmathnow we have one of the edits. "Young Trigg" wants to make sure everyone knows:
Track now serves in an infantry brigade, and will be deployed to Iraq in September.
This information was added to a generic statement about Palin's son's joining the military.
Update 4: Thanks to alliedoc, another change noted. The "but has gay friends" part was removed:
She opposes same-sex marriage, but has said she has gay friends. Palin complied with an Alaskan state Supreme Court order and signed an implementation of same-sex benefits into law under protest, stating that legal options to avoid doing so had run out.
Damn... I guess she can't have anyone thinking she's, you know, TOLERANT if she wants to be on the GOP ticket! Note: there was apparently an edit skirmish with another user who pointed out quite correctly that the information was correct and properly sourced, so it was put back in. But interesting that someone tried to take it out!
Update 5: Teachingmathnow points out that many of "Young Trigg"'s edits cite to this Weekly Standard article, entitled "The Most Popular Governor" while removing citations to this WSJ article, "Alaska's Palin Faces Probe" that was much harsher in tone.Update 6: teachingmathnow again gets a gold star for wikipedia hunting, as she (he?) points out that "Young Trigg" felt it important that we know that:
Sarah returned to office three days after giving birth.
Well, damn. I guess all of us women who take maternity leave are just a bunch of "whiners" like Hillary Clinton. We should just suck it up! Men don't take maternity leave, so why should we? /sarcasm
Update 7: Someone at Wikipedia has put up a pretty good "before and after" shot of the edits made over the ~5-hour period in which "Young Trigg" was messing with the entry. NOTE: Other users were also making changes during this time, so not every change can be attributed to "Young Trigg." In order to find out which specifically were Trigg, you have to dig a little deeper. But this gives you a general sense of where to start.
Update 8: There's some discussion in the comments about whether or not self-editing is permissible under Wikipedia policy. I have no idea or even opinion about that. What I do know is that registering a username of a close family member and then using that name to "improve" a Wikipedia article less than a day before a big announcement betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the internet and how it works. "Young Trigg" may or may not be in violation of Wikipedia standards. That issue notwithstanding, he or she is most certainly a complete moron.
Maybe Ms. Palin should go back to Internet school and learn that you cannot hide it if it was online. Somebody will always find the info.
2 Comments:
Score one for the Republicans! Everyone must jump on the McCain and Palin Ticket! What could be more exciting than these two running together?
http://www.johnmccainsarahpalin.us
Come on honestly now. I don't believe for a second that a woman who gives birth to a child would return to office three days after giving birth! What about bonding with the baby. I think Trigg is the son of her 16 yr old daughter and not hers. I wouldn't be surprised at all.
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