Justice Department vandalizes Wikipedia

This is where our tax dollars are going?

Bush's Department of Justice has been caught making politically charged edits to Wikipedia - edits that were quickly reverted as vandalism. Many edits were in regard to a right-wing media watchdog group's efforts to collude with Wikipedia editors to promote its views. Other edits were to articles about famous people such as movie critic Roger Ebert.

So the government hires people to sit there and play with Wikipedia all day and turn it into a retelling of the World According To Wingnuts?

I know there's an organized right-wing effort to rewrite history by editing Wikipedia, because I've had to correct some of these lies. I've had my own legitimate edits reverted, like when I posted an edit correctly pointing out that the Bill of Rights applies in the District of Columbia (not just the 50 states). I also had my edits reverted when I removed demonstrably false information that was posted about a certain statesman that came from a discredited right-wing book rather than from a reliable source. I wonder if the Justice Department was behind reverting my edits. With the department's participation in other revisionist efforts, anything is possible, I guess.

Now Wikipedia has blocked edits from the Justice Department's server because of all this abuse.

Possibly some other Washington agency is also involved in this propaganda effort. Before the Department of Justice edits, similar edits were made from an IP number that was also traced to the nation's capital.

I guess we have to be extra vigilant to make sure Wikipedia doesn't become a right-wing organ. If we see incorrect or biased information on Wikipedia, we shouldn't hesitate to fix the problem at once. I know that was made difficult for a while, when some right-wing clod was made a volunteer admin by Wikipedia and blocked an entire block of IP numbers that happened to include my ISP (because someone else using one of these IP numbers made edits they didn't like), but it should be easier now.

Isn't it nice to know our tax dollars are funding bogus edits to the Wikipedia article on Roger Ebert? That the Justice Department erased legitimate and accurate information from Wikipedia articles is actually high-handed government censorship.

(Source: http://www.mister-info.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_id=10545&format=html)