Make That Ten

Ottawa — Defence Department computers in Ottawa have been used to alter information on a Wikipedia page critical of the Conservative government’s decision to spend billions on a new stealth fighter.

Nine attempts have been made to change the online encyclopedia’s entry on the Joint Strike Fighter, including the removal of any information critical of the Harper government’s plan to spend at least $16-billion on the new aircraft.

And from the wiki page:

It is worth noting that the vandalism has continued today since the article was unlocked, but this time the IP address is from Calgary. I think this story may grow over time as the Prentice story did.

The "Prentice Story" is this, if you've forgotten. I think the Calgary IP they're referencing is 70.79.166.251.

Wiki Debates

...Canada's worst kept political secret. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Interesting though if, as the article speculates, the lawyers were called in.

Link here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Canadian
Wikipedians'_notice_board#John_Baird

...only way I could get it to work.

Shaidle On Wiki

Controversial again, the way it should be! A special thank you goes out to Mark Steyn. None of this could have happened if you hadn't fanned the flames (o' controversy)...suckah!!!

Shaidle: The Controversy Grows

According to wiki rules, to introduce "controversial" statements into a figure's main wiki page you can only report on--not attempt to manufacture--a controversy re that person. That is, you must reference a "reliable source" as evidence for the existence of a controversy--like the London Free Press, which has taken up the matter for a 2nd time again in their editor's blog.

Given the effort someone has put in on Ms. Shaidle's behalf in an attempt to white-wash her entry, it is pretty clear she realizes that, in her case, having this material displayed prominently would signal the end of her career as a 2nd string talking head (which is also why I have been pounding so hard on the issue).

Apparently, Mark Steyn's interest in the story has generated much traffic to the newspaper's website and in fact precipitated this 2nd piece of evidence for FiveFoot's controversial nature. So thanks a lot...suckah!!!

Shaidle In London: Are We Controversial Yet?

London Free Press has the latest on the Kathy Shaidle saga here:

Her scheduled appearance in London has started a similar battle in the blogosphere. Many of the blogs state the event is organized by the London Jewish Federation.

The federation's executive director, Esther Marcus, said yesterday she was asked by organizers of the event to book the Jewish Community Centre.

That was the extent of her involvement and, in any case, the organizers are now looking at another location, Marcus said. The federation is not a sponsor of the event, she said.

The piece also notes that, Alan Perlmutter, one of the event's organizers, is having second thoughts.

The most important thing to come from this relates to how a figure gets labelled "controversial" in wikipedia. Details as to how it would work in Shaidle's case can be found here, but the upshot appears to be, if I understand correctly, that a MSM piece (like the one above) quoting her more "outrageous" statements should make it easier for a catalog of such statements to appear as part of her main wiki entry. Thus anyone considering booking Shaidle for a speaking event/tv appearance will find them in the course of doing their due diligence research.

John Theon Deleted

In late January, John S. Theon began his swift ascent into the pantheon of Climate Change Deniers with the claim that he had once been James Hansen's "supervisor" and thought the guy was a crazy loose cannon even way back then.

I am proud to say that I helped put paid to such claims in this and in several other posts.

Well, you know your 15 minutes are over when they take away your Wiki entry, and Mr. Theon has lost his. The discussion can be found here, but in brief Mr. Theon was found to be "Non-notable".

Ah well, better to have had a wiki entry and have lost it, then to never have had a wiki entry at all. Some of us yearn for a wiki entry, but are never granted the honor. I, for example, yearn for a wiki entry, but have no wiki entry to show for my yearning.

h/t Stoat (the grumpy climate scientist)

Whose Cleaning Up Shaidle's Wiki Page?

Somebody is removing all the "controversial" bits on the grounds that they contain "illegal copyright violations". For instance, she refers to Islam as "fucking retarded"; and then she doesn't.

Lets just get clear about this. A big issue yesterday with TVO was the poor vetting of guests. How would they allow anyone like Shaidle on a respectable, government funded station? Well, by playing around with her wiki entry, someone is making it harder for, oh I don't know a tv or radio show producer, to uncover her let us just call it "colourful" past as a blogger.

Someone therefore sees the appearance of such comments as being not career enhancing. And they realized this sometime yesterday afternoon.

PS. Am I not famous enough to have a wiki entry? What does it freakin' take anyway?

PPS. I've made a couple of screenshots, although I think wiki is is pretty good about maintaining a history of entries. Anyone else wants to take a few more, feel free.

PPPS. Shaidle does apparently have an "agent", so the changes aren't necessarily the work of a sock-puppet. But that might be demonstrable one way or another.

h/t ARC.

Martians, AGW Deniers, and The Wiki Wars

An inadvertently interesting piece by the Financial Post's denier in chief Lawrence Solomon, in which he highlights how battles over wiki edits can reflect upon and highlight larger cultural, political, and scientific struggles. At issue are conflicting edits to the biography of one Siegfried Frederick Singer, a once prominent atmospheric physicist who has descended in later years to climate change denial and hacking out contrarion opinion pieces for a number of Conservative journals.

Of particular concern is an edit concerning Singer's views of the Martian Moon Phobos. Presently (but for who knows how long) it reads:

In 1960 Singer supported the suggestion of Russian astrophysicist Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky that the Martian moon Phobos was of artificial origin[10].

In an recent interview, Solomon asked Singer:

“Do you really believe in Martians?”[...] The answer was “No.”"

So is the matter settled? Is wikipedia wrong? Not at all! Because you see Solomon asked the wrong question. The right question is: did you at one time believe that the moon Phobos was an orbiting Martian space base? And to this question, Singer did, back in the early 1960s, answer:

"I would be very disappointed if it turns out to be solid," said the white House advisor[Dr. Singer]. If the figures were correct, he stated, then Phobos undoubtedly is a hollow, artificial satellite. If it is, he said, its purpose would probably be to sweep up radiation in the Mars' atmosphere, so that Martians could safely operate around their planet. Dr. Singer also pointed out that Phobos would make an ideal space base, both for Martians and earthlings.

Wikipedian Fred Bauder makes an interesting argument in the comments in the article, not as to the truth of the above statement, but to its relevance in the greater scheme of Singer's career. To which I would reply that the most important aspect of Singer's career for today's wiki reader is his intellectual decline, and the wiki article accurately reflects the fact that the seeds of this decline may have been planted very early on.

Incidentally, the "nasty" William M. Connolley mentioned in the comments is this fellow, one of my favorite climate bloggers (and ex-climate modeller). William actually occupies the Conservative end of the AGW consensus, so you can often read him on his blog giving James Hansen hell for allegedly going beyond the evidence.

PS Singer eventually changed his mind over Phobos.
PPS. An earlier post about an interesting study of the sociological conditions that produced the first wave of climate change deniers, Singer included.
PPPS. For more interesting observations by Bauder on Singer, see here.