POLITICAL parties in Scotland are routinely altering the biological details of their MPs and MSPs on Wikipedia to remove any entries that may damage their reputations, a new survey has revealed.Hopefully, a proof-reading error...altering details about what your MLA has said or the random dodgy envelope he's received in his back pocket is slightly more acceptable than changing his blood-group or swapping his kidney without telling him.
Among items removed or changed were references to last year's expenses scandal, involvement in bitter party spats, and even accusations that they failed to pull their weight in parliament
Wiki's value lies (or it should) with the included references at the bottom of each entry pointing you towards verifiable primary sources, I'm sure no one would take too seriously an unsubstantiated allegation which appears on there. The bigger query with this story is who is paying the various researchers and assistants to spend their days trawling through and editing the various profiles? The good old reliable UK taxpayer again?
2 comments:
Westminster does the same. I spent a day looking through Wiki changes made for Houses of Parliament IP address and I was staggered at the variety. Bored interns on their lunchbreak or tax-payer funded politicians and civil servants?
"Bored interns on their lunchbreak or tax-payer funded politicians and civil servants?"
Let's hope the former.
I've got to be a little bit careful though with my accusations here as about half a dozen of my readers have HOC/Holyrood/Stormont addresses but even there I'm not sure that reading my polemic outbursts is necessarly the best way they could be spending their working day!
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