Wiki-Partisanship

They Pull Me Back In (0.00 / 0)

Thanks for posting this Jim, hopefully enough people will listen to me about this someday. I'm not worried that it says or doesn't say that about Browner, or for that matter anybody, i'm worried that alot of people take it seriously.

The content you talked about was removed, apparently per Section 3.2 of WP:BLP, but it can be put back permanently if done right.

If someone organized people and/or screennames/IP Addresses, found credible sources and kept their cool, they could basically make that article say that Browner is a Jehovah's Witness from Mars made of Ice Cream.

I'm surprised no group really has organized politically to mold public opinion on Wikipedia yet, or at least has been caught doing it yet. Like I said a week or two ago: Wikipedia's the Berlin Wall: it's just as much a thing to be manipulated for propaganda now as it is for actual information.

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by: Andrew Sylvia @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 05:49:24 AM UTC

I think online manipulation is common (0.00 / 0)

Freeping polls of course, but also manipulation of "Most E-Mailed" lists on news websites. It goes beyond Wiki, but it's interesting that Wiki was targeted. The vandal had to know it wouldn't last.

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by: JimC @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 11:44:41 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Would love some techie insight here (0.00 / 0)

It seems odd that Google would single out the incendiary language. To me it suggests tampering. It would be one thing if it was the first paragraph, but it was the second.

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by: JimC @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 11:42:55 AM UTC

Jim, (4.00 / 1)

This is a story with some legs, imo.

But the audience for it is national.  Maybe you should crosspost this guy on dKos or somewhere with a more specific title?

Just a suggestion.  In general, this state blogger is usually totally wrong about what catches fire in the nat'l blogscape.

birch paper; on Twitter @deanbarker

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by: Dean Barker @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 13:09:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Thanks Dean (0.00 / 0)

I'm not sure, I'm still sussing it out.

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by: JimC @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 14:41:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Actually, she was. (4.00 / 1)

The reality is, as the Wonk Room previously reported, that Browner was a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society (CSWS), a climate change policy working group established in 2007 by Socialist International (SI), a global coalition of left-leaning political parties. The commission involves top officials and political leaders from democratic allies of the United States, including Great Britain, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Mexico, India, and Brazil.

More is available here - http://wonkroom.thinkprogress....


Can someone explain to me why, if they love the Constitution so much, the right-wingers keep introducing amendments to change it?

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by: NHFlatlander @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 14:03:40 PM UTC

Good find (0.00 / 0)

Other commission members (names are bolded in original):
http://www.socialistinternatio...

Ricardo Lagos, former President of the Republic of Chile and a Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General on Climate Change, and Göran Persson, former Prime Minister of Sweden, have been appointed Co-Chairs of the Commission, and other members are: Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, United Kingdom; Carol M. Browner, Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton; Elio di Rupo, leader of the Socialist Party of Belgium; Mohamed El Yazghi, leader of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, USFP, and Minister of the Government of Morocco; Sigmar Gabriel, Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Germany; Aleksandr Kwasniewski, former President of the Republic of Poland; Sergei Mironov, President of the Federal Council of Russia; Cristina Narbona, Minister of the Environment of Spain; Beatriz Paredes, President of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Mexico; Anand Sharma, Minister of State for External Affairs of India; Marina Silva, Minister of the Environment of the Federative Republic of Brazil; Martin Torrijos, President of the Republic of Panama and leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD); and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of South Africa.

it's definitely a leftist organization, but it seems to be pretty respectable one. Check out these dangerous radicals who are vice presidents of the Presidium:

Ehud Barak (Israel)

(snip)

Gordon Brown (Great Britain)

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by: JimC @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 14:40:45 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The story was being pushed (0.00 / 0)

by the climate change denial people mid-January.  Fox News ran with it, etc.  They must have added it to Wikipedia then.

As you found out, it's not a big deal - the mistake was SCWS  took her name off their web site and someone found a screen shot. It looked like she was hiding the connection.

Oh well, if that's the worst they can come up with.

Can someone explain to me why, if they love the Constitution so much, the right-wingers keep introducing amendments to change it?

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by: NHFlatlander @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 16:55:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

That's The Thing About Facts (0.00 / 0)

You can communicate the same thing in different ways depending how you want it to be construed.

If I say the sky is blue or the sky is a color, neither is false, but they construe different ideas.  

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by: Andrew Sylvia @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 19:15:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Missing something (0.00 / 0)

Maybe you're getting too existential here for me, but I'm not sure I get your point.

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by: JimC @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 19:30:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Clarifying (4.00 / 1)

If you say she works on global warming initiatives, that brings an entirely different connotation to most Americans than if you say she worked for Socialist International on global warming initiatives.

Both are true (I assume), but the level of scope changes the perception, just as if you ratcheted up the magnification on a microscope or ratcheted down the magnification on a telescope.  

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by: Andrew Sylvia @ Wed Jan 28, 2009 at 21:34:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Most countries (4.00 / 1)

have a major party that's a socialist party. Lots of them have become fairly bourgeois, like Britain's Labour Party. There are a lot of these international umbrella organizations for ideologically similar parties. Even the Republican and Democratic parties in this country maintain some affiliation with these different international political groups.

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by: Alex Gallichon @ Thu Jan 29, 2009 at 04:24:24 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Update: It Changed (0.00 / 0)

The cached Google version:

Carol Browner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carol Browner was listed as one of the leaders of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society until her appointment as President Barack Obama's Climate ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Browner - 130k - Cached - Similar pages

Yet that sentence does not make it to the main Wiki entry.

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by: JimC @ Thu Jan 29, 2009 at 16:59:16 PM UTC