Some edits to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia by staff of the United States Congress have created controversy, notably in early to mid-2006. Several such instances, such as those involving Marty Meehan, Norm Coleman, Conrad Burns,[1] and Joe Biden, received significant media attention.[2] Others, such as those involving Gil Gutknecht, were reported but received less widespread coverage. Biographical information on various politicians was edited by their own staff to remove undesirable information (including pejorative statements quoted, or broken campaign promises), add favorable information or "glowing" tributes, add negative information to opponents' biographies, or replace the article in part or whole by staff-authored biographies.[2]
Background
On January 27, 2006, The Sun of Lowell, Massachusetts, published an article entitled "Rewriting History Under the Dome", which revealed the editing by Congressional staff members of Representative Marty Meehan's Wikipedia entry.[2][3] Meehan's chief of staff Matt Vogel stated that he had "authorized an intern in July to replace existing Wikipedia content with a staff-written biography of the lawmaker".[3] Further investigation by Wikipedia editors discovered over a thousand edits by IP addresses allocated to either the US House of Representatives or the US Senate. Wikipedia editors found that most of the edits were considered to be in good faith, but a minority of edits were considered improper. At least one of the addresses involved was prohibited from further editing.[4]
Incidents
Norm Coleman
Later in January 2006, Senator Norm Coleman's chief of staff, Erich Mische, denied that Coleman's staffers had edited his page "to correct inaccuracies and delete information".[5] 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."[5] Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said, "It appears to be a major rewrite of the article to make it more favorable."[5]
Joe Biden
The Wikipedia investigation found that Biden staffers had removed and modified descriptions of incidents of alleged plagiarism and had recast discussion of a possible
Congressional edits
The Wikimedia system has responded in at least three ways to questionable edits. The most obvious response is case-by-case, based on the "watch" button at the top of each article: A user who sets that switch can get emails when that article is changed. Another is an occasional (usually temporary) block. At least some of these are documented in Wikipedia. For edits from IP addresses associated with the US Congress, Ed Summers also created a Twitter feed to notify the world of any changes made from those addresses. @congressedits was an automated Twitter account from 2014 to 2018 that tweeted anonymous changes to Wikipedia articles that originated from IP addresses belonging to the United States Congress. Prior to the Twitter feed, the best information about what congressional staffers were editing was found in the present article on US Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia and in the Wikipedia project page for congressional staffer edits, both of which are manually updated. The changes were presumed to have been made by the staffs of US elected representatives and senators.[24]
Proponents
In August 2014, the Cato Institute suggested that Congressional staffers should spend spare time editing Wikipedia. A panel hosted by the institute endorsed the idea so that congressional staffers could use their time to write neutral and informative articles about proposed legislation to better educate the public. Experts on the panel considered the two main obstacles to doing this as being skepticism towards Wikipedia and the history of biased editing from Congressional staffers. The Cato Institute suggested one way to overcome these issues would be for the staffers to create user accounts and user profile pages disclosing their connections with Congress.[25]
See also
- Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia
- List of political editing incidents on Wikipedia
- Wikipedia coverage of American politics
External links
- David Mehegan Bias, sabotage haunt Wikipedia's free world The Boston Globe, February 12, 2006
References
- Williams, Walt. Burns' office may have tampered with Wikipedia entry Bozeman Daily Chronicle, January 1, 2007, retrieved February 13, 2007^
- The activities documented included: Nate Anderson. Congressional staffers edit boss's bio on Wikipedia Ars Technica, January 30, 2006, retrieved April 5, 2026^
- Evan Lehmann. Rewriting History Under the Dome