its a shame but im frankly surprised this did not happen sooner...  wikis are like kibbutzeem.  on a small scale they work great but on a large scale they break down and become oppressive...

Well, somebody had to start to teach manners to kids at some time. I wish it had been earlier.

The Meehan alterations on Wikipedia.com represent just two of more than 1,000 changes made by congressional staffers at the U.S. House of Representatives in the past six month.

...

Recently, a user wrote in a Wikipedia bio that Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor "smells of cow dung." Another wrote that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is "ineffective." These statements were traced to the House Internet-protocol (IP) address.

In November and December, The Sun has learned, users of the House's IP address were temporarily blocked from changing content because of violations described by the site as a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia."

"I'm not denying it," Jon Brandt, a spokesman for the Committee on House Administration, which oversees the House computer network, said when asked to confirm House ownership of the address.

...

But the sheer breadth of changes emanating from the House reflects an abuse of public time and equipment, said Potter, now chairman of the Ethics Resource Center.

More:

http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_3444567

From digg.com :

'After seeing the article running in The Lowell Sun, I combed through the entire history of wikipedia contributions . I was surprised to see that there were hundreds (pretty close to 1000 entries).

Though I was pleased to see that there were a fair amount of edits updating dates and facts to be current (everyone switching from the 108th to the 109th Congress), I was shocked to see that there was a large propaganda and misinformation campaign as well.

Some were personal attacks saying things like "He is generally not a good person," and childish things like adding Scott Mclellan (Bush's press secretary) to the entry for Douche; other were of a much more serious nature. The entry for Ralph Neas (Director of a the liberal People for the American Way) was edited to say he was a Socialist, and the more subtle but equally effective changing the description of MoveOn (a progressive political organization) to be categorized as "left-wing."

Many Congressional offices were removing any negative information or simply replacing the entire article with their official House bio. Emily Lawrimore (Communications Director Congressman Joe Wilson, emily.lawrimore@mail.house.gov) posted, on the discussion page for her boss "I work for Congressman Joe Wilson (listed as Addison Graves Wilson). Could you update his bio with information from the following official bio too?"

Some political officials like Congressman Jim Ramstad (R-MN 3rd) just wanted to remove any references to the word "liberal". The articles for Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ 2nd), and Rick Renzi (R-AZ 1st) were completely erased and replaced with official House biographies.

Getting even worse Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA 11th) and Governor Bob Taft (R-OH) removed references to their ties with Jack Abramoff (who in a recent Washington scandal pled guilty to three felony counts, conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion). Congressman Mark Green (R-WI 8th) removed any mention of his ties with the recently indicted Tom DeLay and generally removed any unflattering or scandal related information. A full list of the effected articles is available.

The possible most egregious entry was editing the article "2003 Invasion of Iraq." Erasing legitimate information, adding knowingly false information and generally purporting that there were links between Iraq and al Qaeda.

This appears to be a somewhat serious problem as this is one IP address of who knows how many. See the discussion page for this IP address at Wikipedia to see some of the known staffers who have been editing articles.'

Source:

http://digg.com/technology/More_than_1000_wikipedia_alterations_by_US_Representative_Staffers

The staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war chest. It also deleted a reference to the size of Meehan's campaign account, the largest of any House member at $4.8 million

Source:

http://digg.com/technology/More_than_1000_wikipedia_alterations_by_US_Representative_Staffers

Some were personal attacks saying things like "He is generally not a good person," and childish things like adding Scott Mclellan (Bush's press secretary) to the entry for Douche; other were of a much more serious nature.

... as a douche can actually be a healthy and useful thing.

When I read forward this Meehan involment was just a tiny part of story. But it has been touted on the most visited blogs of internet.

I see a centralized, fast and reactive propaganda machinery alive here:

• It noticed the wikipedia story;
  
• cherry picked the parts which suited its republican agenda
  
• and touted them in the most read blogs of internet.

The touting was even doublicated by several writers in the same blog. The later writer didn't bother to read what the earlier writers had written.

I wonder what that machinery costs.

This is what I predicted awhile back, that Wikipedia would fall prey to dishonest people attempting to twist Wiki entries to suit their nefarious ends.

In an environment of unknown or dubious public integrity you cannot maintain and expand a knowledge repository while permitting public access to editing.  A sad fact, but thoroughly proven by recent events.  As long as Wikipedia was relatively small and few people went there, it was flying below the radar.  But now that lots of people are citing its entries as ammo for argument, Wikipedia has become a target for attack.

Consider what would happen to the Encyclopedia Brittanica's knowledge base if they allowed evangelical Christians to delete anything that they objected to, such as any topics discussing or acknowledging the existence of "geological time."  I have witnessed such behavior personally, and it threw a wrench in the works of what was already a challenging project.  That sort of thing is now happening to Wikipedia.

I do not envy the managers of Wikipedia their predicament.  They have some hard decisions to make about how to manage access going forward.  The good old days of free access to editing Wikipedia have got to end, or the whole project will implode from a glaring lack of credibility.

It would be foolish to assume that all contributors to Wikipedia are honest, or even sane.  How does a Wiki reader know which articles to believe?  Without a comprehensive, explicit set of publishing standards and a competent peer review filter, Wikipedia will wither and die.

Actually I very seldom read about a person from Wikipedia. That kind of information is often very useless, true or not.

But the science sections of Wikipedia rock. When I read a scientific paper, I can quickly check from Wikipedia what the mysterious references to earlier formulas and methods mean. Scientists are usually very poor writers in describing what they think they are doing.

Wikipedia is only getting better, and this RFC is proof of that. For a lowly online encyclopedia edited by any disgruntled asshole with a keyboard, it's coming pretty close to the big guys. Wikipedia is new, and it will have growing pains, but I can't see how people can discount such a massively peer reviewed body of knowledge so easily.

Internet encyclopaedias go head to head

"Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds."

Consider what would happen to the Encyclopedia Brittanica's knowledge base if they allowed evangelical Christians to delete anything that they objected to

... that our current encyclopedias actually are something other than exactly that: the product of a thousand years of consensual religious cultural narrative blind to its own deeply ingrained bias.

I need to give my children at least the chance of being less bigoted than the culture I inherited - and share responsibility for.

thanks. needed that.

Don't get me wrong about the intent of Wikipedia--I agree wholeheartedly that it's a wonderful idea.  And I grant that the established repositories of knowledge are shot through with all the ingrained biases we humans are heir to.  

But if Wikipedia is to become what many of us wish it was--a common, free repository of accurate, well-written articles on a vast array of topics, then something has to be done about the INTENTIONAL subversion of its content.

Otherwise, Wikipedia will become an intellectual minefield of dubious value.  Which topics can I assume are "clean" of some agenda?  Chemistry?  Industry flacks can edit out hazardous effects of their company's products.  Certainly biographical articles are now fodder for heated disagreements.  Did you know that Charles Manson is an expert juggler?  Give me five minutes, and we'll see about that.  Look what happened to John Kerry.

It warms my heart that others are more sanguine than I, and I acknowledge that all is not lost, yet.  But I eagerly await news of how the problems of honesty and accuracy will be handled by the owners of Wikipedia.  The Brittanica company pays people to review every article in their publication.  What does Wikipedia propose for this worthy challenge of quality assurance?