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US Senate staff mucking with Wikipedia entries | Betterhumans > News: "US Senate staff mucking with Wikipedia entries
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Print 02.08.2006 @01:37 PM
Contributed by Simon
Edited by Simon

US Senate staff members have edited Wikipedia entries, including removing facts, according to a Wikinews-led investigation examining IP addresses.

Wikinews reports:

Using the public history of edits on Wikipedia, Wikinews reporters collected every Senate IP which had ever edited on Wikipedia as of February 3 and examined where the IPs came from, what they edited, and of what those edits consisted. IP, or Internet Protocol, addresses are unique numbers electronic devices use to communicate with each other on an individual basis.

The Wikinews report examines several instances where Senate staff appeared to have painted Senators in a more favorable light. It notes:

Wikinews reporters also discovered that a handful of miscellaneous vandalism edits had been made to some Senators' articles. Vandalized articles included those of Tom Coburn and Harry Reid. The edits to Reid's were made three times, while the Coburn vandalism was made two times, after it had been restored to a prior version. An edit to an article about a controversy over Senator Rick Santorum's statements about Constitutional rights to privacy with regards to sexual acts, seemingly coming from Rick Santorum's staff members, removed a reference to an effort to redefine Santorum's last name as a neologism meaning "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.""