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For the internal account, see Wikipedia:Congressional Staffer Edits

The Congressional staffer edits to Wikipedia refers to a number of edits by Congressional staffers of the United States Congress to the Wikipedia biographies of their candidates or opponents, and the controversies surrounding them, mostly in early to mid-2006. In several instances, the edits became controversial and received media attention, such as for Marty Meehan, Norm Coleman, Conrad Burns, and Joe Biden, among others.

Contents 1 Background 2 Marty Meehan 3 Norm Coleman 4 Mid-2006: end of the trend 5 Gil Gutknecht 6 References 7 External links

On January 27, 2006, The Sun of Lowell, Massachusetts, published an article [1] entitled "Rewriting history under the dome". This story unveiled the editing by Congressional staff members of Congressman Marty Meehan's Wikipedia entry.

"Matt Vogel, Meehan's chief of staff, said that he had authorized an intern in July to replace existing Wikipedia content with a staff-written biography of the lawmaker."

Further investigation by Wikipedia members discovered well over a thousand edits by IP addresses allocated to the US House of Representatives and Senate. Although most of the edits were considered to show good faith by Wikipedia editors, a minority were considered improper. At least one of the addresses involved was blocked from further editing.^[1]

Congressman Meehan responded to the the Lowell Sun article:[2]

Yesterday's story, "Rewriting history under the dome," accurately reported that in July of 2005 an intern in my office responsible for updating my biography also updated my online Wikipedia entry. I did not know that this change was being made at the time and was only made aware of it yesterday when informed that The Sun had inquired about it. Though the actual time spent on this issue amounted to 11 minutes, according to server logs, I do not consider it time well spent or approve of it in any way. ... It was a waste of energy and an error in judgment on the part of my staff to have allowed any time to be spent on updating my Wikipedia entry. I thank The Sun for bringing it to my attention.

Later in January 2006, Senator Norm Coleman's chief of staff, Erich Mische, "confirmed that the senator's staff had done so...the editing was done to correct inaccuracies and delete information".^[2]

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said "It appears to be a major rewrite of the article to make it more favorable."^[2]

Mische stated: "What's to stop someone from writing in that Norm Coleman was 7 feet 10 inches, with green hair and one eye smack dab in the middle of his head? That's about as silly as this gets ... When you put 'edia' in there, it makes it sound as if this is a benign, objective piece of information."^[2]

As of mid-2006, there have been no additional reports of improper editing from congressional sites. After a congressional staffer emailed Mr. Wales to ask about the appropriate way to request an update to Wikipedia, he suggested that she post information to the article's "talk" or discussion page. [3]

On August 16, 2006, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reported that the office of Representative Gil Gutknecht tried twice — on July 24 and August 14, 2006 — to remove a 128-word section in the Wikipedia article on him, replacing it with a more flattering 315-word entry taken from his official congressional biography. Most of the removed text was about the 12-year term-limit Gutknecht imposed on himself in 1995 (Gutknecht ran for re-election in 2006, breaking his promise). A spokesman for Gutknecht did not dispute that his office tried to change his Wikipedia entry, but questioned the reliability of the encyclopedia.^{[3][not in citation given]}

Gutknecht's office used the account "Gutknecht01" for the first edits on July 24;[4] that account was then notified (via its talk page) of Wikipedia policies against self-editing. For the second set of edits on August 16, his office used an anonymous Congressional IP address.[5] Gutknecht lost the 2006 election.

1. ^ Wikipedia editors made a fairly extensive survey of edits from Congressional IP ranges: Wikipedia:Congressional Staffer Edits. Wikipedia. Retrieved on June 22, 2006.
2. ^ ^{a b c} "Web site's entry on Coleman revised Aide confirms his staff edited biography, questions Wikipedia's accuracy". St. Paul Pioneer Press(Associated Press). 
3. ^ "Gutknecht joins Wikipedia tweakers", Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, August 16, 2006, accessed August 17, 2006

• "Montana; Wiki-When Will They Ever Learn?". The Hotline. 

• "Wikipedia's Help From the Hill". TechNews. 

• "On The Hill; Five Senators' Aides Reportedly Alter Online Bios". Technology Daily. 

• "Quirks in the News: Wikipedia suffers political edits". UPI. 

• "An 'Adequate' Euphemism". The Washington Post. 

• "President Bush Delivers Message in Nashville; Cindy Sheehan Arrested over T-Shirt; Nagin Testifies At Senate Hearing; Alito Sworn In; Rating White House Strategy; McCain Endorses Shadegg; Bush Takes State Of The Union Outside". CNN. 

• "Wikipedia entries altered for several senators, representatives". Great Falls Tribune. 

• "A Collection of Bizarre Stories from the World of Politics Including Senatorial Slips of the Tongue, Doctored Political Photos and Bios and Drastic Measures to Balance the Budget in New Jersey.". Fox News Network. 

• "Coleman; Guess What Online Encyclopedia Is Close To Being "Wiki-Served"?". The Hotline. 

• "Congress caught making false entries in Wikipedia". CNET.com. 

• "A new era of Wiki attacks belittle political process". The Macon Telegraph. 

• "Britannica 'still rules' over web rival". The Times (London). 

• "Revered reference beyond compare". The Australian. 

• "Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia facing scrutiny". Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee). 

• "Bias, sabotage haunt Wikipedia's free world". Boston Globe. 

• "On the stump". The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN). 

• "Out of America: Those oversized egos on Capitol Hill, and why I was rooting for George Galloway; What Washington really needs is a racy, gossipy tabloid or a local". Independent (London). 

• "Public sector, private lives". The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York). 

• "Define Wikipedia: Wicked media or work in progress?; Reports of Senate staffers altering their bosses' bios raise debate over the user-edited online encyclopedia.". Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN). 

• "Political Skeletons, Cut and Pasted". The New York Times. 

• "Column five: Doctoring the past - Wiki style: Doctoring the past - Wiki style Web firm accused of helping to convict dissident; Yahoo! again criticised as political blogger is jailed". The Guardian (London). 

• "Web firm accused of helping to convict dissident; Yahoo! again criticised as political blogger is jailed". The Herald (Glasgow). 

• "Biden staffers take Web bio entry into own hands; Several Senate computers caught changing Wikipedia". The News Journal (Wilmington, Delaware). -->

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