Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Constantine Takes Cue from Kottkamp

Senator Lee Constantine has learned the art of wiki vandalism from Lt. Governor Jeff Kottkamp:


If you hadn't heard, there is a new tool called Wiki Scanner that shows the IP addresses of changes to Wikipedia entries. You can trace the IP address back to the location where the edit was made.

Anyhow, I was just playing around with it and did a search on "Florida Legislature" to see what edits were made. There wasn't anything of note really, except one thing: someone at a Florida Legislature computer removed an external link about Lee Constantine's DUI in 2004 from his Wikipedia page.

207.126.1.7 [wp] Lee Constantine [cur] 122345275 deleted negative press 2007-04-12 22:41:42


There is a common misunderstanding of Wikis that permeates on the right. They constantly talk about how "anyone can edit a Wiki," which actually isn't the way they work. The way Wikis work is that anyone can contribute valid information to a Wiki. Deleting unfavorable, but accurate, info about yourself is not a valid use of a Wiki.