Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/United States Congress

message: Can we centralise all discussion here? It would be far better I think, as WP:AN is way too bloated, and it concerns entire IP ranges. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 09:16, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. It would be better to move everything here. Mushroom 09:19, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  centralisation of discussion 

message: *143.231.249.141 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.5.19 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.23.46 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.24.195 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.27.18 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.30.25 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.30.37 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.43.214 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.43.22 (talk • contribs)	
*156.33.46.154 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.52.40 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.56.17 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.56.67 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.59.155 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.74.18 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.76.34 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.91.136 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.96.28 (talk • contribs)	
*156.33.129.73 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.130.84 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.140.21 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.141.169 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.148.107 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.165.75 (talk • contribs)
*156.33.168.72 (talk • contribs)
:Great job!, here's a compiled list of the most significant edits to Senator Pages (from Senate IP's):
:* Conrad Burns: (Major Edit)
:* Norm Coleman: (Major Edit)
:* Robert Byrd (Vandalising)
:* Tom Harkin (removed criticism section), (removed section on Israel & Military), (vandalism)
:* Joe Biden removal of criticism, major edit
:* Tom Coburn (vandalism), (vandalism, again) —This user has left wikipedia  21:12 2006-01-29
::Nice work. Thankfully there seem to be a number of edits from both sides of the aisle, so at least we should be able to keep this from becoming a partisan issue if anyone on the outside starts to notice. --Aaron 21:42, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits coming from the senate 

message: Eelow is my review of the edit histories of all United States Senate IP addresses uncovered by Rick Block's research above. I've labeled each as legit user, bad faith editor or vandal. The first number is the number of total edits by that IP, followed by the number of edits specific to Senate- (USS) or House-related articles (USH), if any (or other political articles). --Aaron 02:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Not as of yet. The ones I've labeled "Vandal" thus far were incredibly blatant: page blanking, insertion of profanities, etc. I'll use some other term for 'testers'. --Aaron 23:36, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't think we necessarily have to block any of them. Warn the vandals and POV pushers, thank and welcome the good faith contributors. — TheKMantalk 05:06, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What about 143.231.249.141?  -- Pakaran 05:11, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was mainly referring to the Senate IP range, that one from the House is something else, and a temporary block was in order. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure of how static these IPs are within the Senate, since there are similar edits on two different IPs (though, it is possible they were from two different computers).  — TheKMantalk 05:53, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Those are the same /26, could also plausibly be two employees sitting near each other and on the same subnet.  -- Pakaran 06:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: From the evidence compiled in the earlier section, it's clear that this House IP has been assigned at various times to different people who work for different Representatives. Some of these people are clearly acting in good faith and trying to respect our policies - Jimbo even personally noted that one of them took an "excellent" approach in requesting changes to an article on the talk page. I've gone ahead and unblocked that one again too. Really, I think we should stay away from blocks here and just monitor contributions as necessary. Congressional staffers are busy people, it's not like they can afford to spend all day vandalizing Wikipedia. --Michael Snow 06:43, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think it the IP addresses are static. There might be some public computers for use by anybody in the Senatorial House, ie. perhaps in a lobby or lounge, or Wireless LAN or something, and some directly route to politicians' offices. Except some of the static IP's of course, get used by everybody. This would explain why some IP's seem to have more contributions than others. The infamous Meehan IP might be the one in a lounge or something. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 09:47, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reviewing the US Senate edits 

message: I think a 1 week ban previously put should be reinstated. Since the beginning I actively requested (ON IRC) to have the Congressional IP banned just to create positive media attention. And it worked!  Stories on slashdot, digg, metafilter, and even published stories, also here are reporting that congress has been blocked. The message brought out was is that vandalism on Wikipedia will get you banned. Currently, those reports are not true since the block has been lifted. I am not advocating a punitive block, we block as a preventative measure and it should be taken note by the media. This block is important to prevent headlines such as Wikipedia: It's free, but it's also fallible. The positive name of Wikipedia in the media is more important than congressional staffers edits. I urge an admin to block IP so they complete their one week term. —This user has left wikipedia  02:41 2006-01-31
*Many editors are now watching this IP, so there is no need to block it from editing. It will be interesting to see if there is a reply to the RfC. --JWSchmidt 03:40, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  moved from ani 

message: I think this malicious propagandist vandal shouldn't ever be allowed to edit again.  An attempt to identify him or her by name, and figure out under what auspice he or she is working under would be rather instructive.
This is actually quite frightening and insidious.  When employees of the government are inserting propaganda into the Wikipedia, during working hours (and presumably getting paid for this activity), we have to wonder what their goals are.  Spoiling the Wikipedia?
Such malicious propaganda is apparently more widespread than many of use realize.  Perhaps a block from all .gov domains for a month or two should be made, to allow people to clean up the mess these propagandist shills have made of the Wikipedia!\
Sukiari 02:26, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I doubt such action would have any effect, except to push Wikipedia policy to more aggressive measures. And for what?  To "teach" people ethics? They know what they are doing. All we can do is pass the word and tell the story straight.  Widespread banning is crude and ineffective.  We can't make the world perfect, even a virtual world.  All we can do is educate. It's always been an uphill battle, but at least on Wikipedia we can all pitch in. --Vector4F 02:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would make a statement, though, no? That Wikipedia is not a place of deceit, lies, and misinformation. I am all for permanent banning of this IP. -- KneeLess 03:36, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The problem with your plan is that as far as I know, permablocking shared IPs is frowned upon as it also affects legitimate editors working from that IP. This has been a problem when dealing with vandalism from shared IPs for a long time (Several Telstra IPs shared by New South Wales Public Schools and AOL are some particularly notorious examples). Unless you're advocating a change in policy where we'd permablock shared and dynamic IPs due to vandalism from some if its users I really don't see the point in permablocking this particular one. Sure, vandalism is annoying to deal with, moreso when its from people who really should know better, but if they really want people to know how they're no better then some bored juvenile AOL kiddie then I say, let 'em. -Loren 05:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is my belief that our politicians start behaving themselves once they realize someone has an eye on them (in this case, Wikipedia, and more importantly, - the reporters). Let the 1-week block sink in, but a permanent block on this shared IP would be a mistake. — TheKMantalk 06:05, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: In the end, there may simply be an irreconciliable conflict between abusers and legitimate users using a shared IP.  If there is enough concern at that IP over lack of access to Wikipedia and other resources that use IP addresses to establish trusted reputations, presumably there will be some effort made there to reduce abuse or to  provide different externally-visible IP addresses for different users.--69.142.116.122 06:28, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that, perhaps, a long term block of an IP range that has shown consistently to be used by vandals and not utilized by legitimate contributors would be beneficial.  If there are users in that block who wish to make good faith edits, then perhaps the block will encourage them to stop the vandals in their organization.  Maybe a peer review system should be implemented, where edits by users from known vandal IP blocks have to pass some sort of consensus before they are put into the Wikipedia proper.  I can see this sort of Orwellian activity forcing Wikipedia to change its policies more than all the goatsex and tubgirl vandalism combined.  Sukiari 09:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think that all the IP's are static, just that some are available for use by any representative, ie. a computer sitting out in a lobby, or a Wireless LAN kind of thing in the houses, as I have suggested above. We can thus trace stuff back to the individual computers. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 09:56, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text:  And permablocking shared IPs just because some vandals also happen to use it isn't Orwellian?  -Loren 16:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text:  Well I meant that static IP's would be easier to trace (or get a subpoena for?) hence we could trace them to individual offices. I just didn't want to rule that out. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 02:13, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think in this case a judgement of the quality of edits coming from that IP address or range needs to be made.  How many good edits, that are factual and not POV, have come from Congress?  Any?  People will certainly be free to go to the library or any other place which has an internet connection and edit all they like, but the mere fact that all the edits by this IP appear to be outright propaganda and childish vandalism leads me to believe that we won't be cutting off any legitimate voices.  If there is no ban instated, and the congresscritters see that they can edit the Wikipedia as much as they like, I can see each one having a dozen or two College Republicrat volunteers work full time inserting their propaganda, blackening their opponents articles, and generally turning this place into a war zone.  Can we compete with that sort of manpower only to have an article remain neutral for 15 minutes a day?  Should we have to?  What the heck does the Congressional internal network need to edit the Wikipedia for anyway?  Sukiari 00:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The fact of the matter is that we block individual users, not groups. As such we may keep an eye on contributions from suspect IPs such as those from schools or certain ISPs, but we do not perminantly block them en masse, even if most of their contributions are vandalism. By you reasoning anyone using AOL to edit Wikipedia is (if you'll pardon my language), shit out of luck considering how much junk we get from there daily. Short term blocks on the order of an hour I can accept to stop vandalism in progress. However punitive permanent blocks on a shared IP where we know there are legitimate users, like what is being proposed just smack of being vindicitive retribution. The mentality displayed is like that one would expect at a witch hunt in the Middle Ages, or a lynching, or if I may, "kill them all since they all look like terrorists anyhow". Nor will blocking a shared IP stop organized POV pushing as you state. Neglecting the fact that the vandalism has been pretty bipartisan, if they can't edit from the House, your "College Republicrat volunteers" will just walk down to the nearest Starbucks and edit from there. Sure, a complete block of Congressional IPs might make you feel better for all of 5 minutes, but in the end it will do nothing to stop organized vandalism, and will hurt Wikipedia more then any vandals. No one is advocating giving vandals free reign, however our response must be based upon reason, rather then just lashing out unproductively. -Loren 07:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nice propaganda from the Politburo! 

message: See  and . Johnleemk | Talk 11:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mailing list notified 

message: I am currently compiling a complete examination of all edits from the 156.33.0.0./16 range, which is controlled by the United States Senate Sergeant at Arms. From what I have seen so far, many of the edits appear to be by Senate pages and interns that are still in college or transferred to the page program from high school. There are other suspicious edits that seem to focus on removing unflattering information, adding libel, and POV pushing articles related to US policy. There are plenty of good faith, test, vanity, POV pushing, and bad faith edits that originate from this range. Results will be posted when complete. — TheKMantalk 13:01, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm confused. How is this different from the review I did above? --Aaron 19:18, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This will include all IPs in this range, and some additional statistics. The above list is missing IP addresses. — TheKMantalk 19:30, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Note, material has been moved here. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 09:40, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:TheKMan/USGov|Full list of Congressional IP editors on Wikipedia]] 

message: Eloquence recently gave very powerful arguments against permenent user ban on wikinews, based mostly upon the very negative experences of the German wikipedia .  His reasoning is more correct when the "person" involved is a well financed political campaign.  A better suggestion is to watch all edits from any government or advertising agency IP ranges.  This could efficiently be accomplished by enhancing the watchlists functionality of MediaWiki:
# Allow users to watch edits by other users and IP ranges, as opposed to just pages.
# Allow users to create, edit, & share lists of pages, users, & IP ranges which could be included in anyone's watchlist.
# Create a featured list functionality where users vote to feature some such lists, and all anonymous edits from featured lists are identified by list membership.
We'd almost immediately have accurate & maintained lists of government, millitary, advertising, corporate, etc. IP address ranges.  Anyone who wanted could watch the edits by such lists whenever they felt like it.
We might need to restrict some such functionality to admins (or check users), but it should mostly be avialble for all.  Logs should be kept of all non-list based IP watches, especially below 256 addresses.  Such logs should be available to admins & check users, allowing them to prevent users from narrowing down registered users IP addresses.
For example, if "U.S. congress" is deemed accurate & interesting enough to become a featured list, then anyone sees "U.S. Congress" appear next to any anonymous edit from the ranges & users in that list.  Check users might also see this for registered users not in the list, but using such an IP.
It'd be a bit of code, but it'd solve the problem, wiki-style.  JeffBurdges 14:02, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, it'd be best if the lists of IP ranges could be hosted on commons or meta, and didn't need to be updated on all wikis seperately, although this is problematic WRT watching lists of registered users.  One could also imagine some very complex functionality where you only watch edits of some page lists by some users, but this is unnecissarily complex at present.  JeffBurdges 14:13, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I immediately thought this upon seeing that the IP is blocked.  95% of Congressmen don't know the first thing about Internet technology, but they'll catch on that we can block certain locations when their aides find themselves blocked, and just tell them to edit from home.  What we need is a "high-risk" category of some kind, whose IPs are assigned to agencies that would have ulterior motives for editing substantial parts of Wikipedia—basically, any IP block used by businesses or similar entities rather than average people.  The biggest ranges would be government IPs, of course, probably with a few corporations large enough to get their own range from an RIR.  This list will then be composed solely of people editing from work, who would be much more likely to make intentionally POV edits.It's important, however, that this stay quiet.  Adding labels to IPs would be a no-no, because then people would catch on.  For an ideal automation level, the "edit patrol" feature could be turned on for these address blocks alone, with any registered user (whose IP isn't itself on the list) able to patrol an edit.  This shouldn't be too time-consuming to add to the software, it will just require a smallish tweak to the edit-patrol code.As for maintaining the list, it might be most sensible to maintain it at Meta as admin-editable,(like the anti-spam list, no?). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:54, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, okay, you might be right, that it shouldn't be advertised.  But I think "high risk" is too subjective.  Let average users maintain lists for all sorts of things.  JeffBurdges 09:58, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Permanent bans aren't a good idea 

message: This is another good example of where the proposal needs to be implemented in code. Some IP's really should be able to be blocked for a while but still allow logged in edits. Patches have been submitted, but nothing is happening. - Taxman Talk 16:00, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you used the "featured watchlist" procedure I describe above, you'd just see AOL next to all anonymous users posting from AOL accounts.  Any editor would be free to access the probability of vandalism themselves.   JeffBurdges 16:16, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: See resolution for bug 550. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 06:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal]] 

message: Wikipedia servers are amazingly slow at the moment for me, so all I can try to do is alert you to the posts made by this particular IP on my talk page. I was going to take a proper look at his/her contributions but afraid I can't with WP servers the way they are at the moment (takes like 10 min to load a page). Petros471 19:14, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  156.33.96.28 

message: I did a little googling, and ran across this, which tells me that parliament.uk web access often comes through . This does indeed resolve to in.parliament.uk, and whilst the edits there seem mostly okay (one adulatory nn-bio about a SU president, which probably is worth deleting, and a minor bit of test vandalism, but otherwise good)... it might be worth keeping an eye on this one, and looking at other IP addresses in the range mentioned. Shimgray | talk | 19:45, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Tsk... What are those MPs doing? Vandalising Wikipedia instead of serving the people!? :P -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 05:53, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  parliament.uk IPs 

message: Just a few quick thoughts for everyone advocating a complete block on U.S. Congressional IPs.
# Contributions from Congressional shared IPs include both good faith edits and vandalism. We're dealing with many editors from this one IP, both good ones and malicious ones.
# This isn't the first time we've faced vandalism from shared IPs. Anyone who's worked on the RC Patrol has encountered vandals coming from behind proxies and shared IPs such as AOL and Telstra just to name a few. Probably more often then vandals from Congressional IPs.
# The general policy when dealing with vandals behind shared IPs is to monitor them and revert any malicious edits they may make. Blocks are limited to short ones of 2 hours or less for only the worst offenders (I'm talking about the ones who vandalise pages every minute or so), in order to minimize collateral damage on good faith editors also using that IP.
# Why should this case be any different? If the WHOIS on this IP returned AOL, Telstra, or some other ISP instead of U.S. House of Representitives, would you be clamoring for a permablock, knowing full well that under the current system you would end up taking out good faith editors as well? As a matter of fact, would we even be having this RfC if this wasn't a high profile IP? There are probably at least two dozen other shared IPs that vandalise just as much, if not more. Why the double standard?
Doing a permablock on a shared IP because of a few bad apples is akin to carpet bombing a city block because you think there are a few criminals hiding amongst the general populance there. It's complete overkill and in the end, won't do a thing. I'm certainly not advocating that we ignore vandalism, on the contrary I'd support careful monitoring of edits from this IP, however I think a permanent range block will hurts us more then any vandals. I'd urge everyone to read the official policy on vandalism at Wikipedia:Vandalism and blocking policy at Wikipedia:Blocking policy before votingendorsing. Is the goal of creating a free and open encyclopedia really served by permablocking these IPs? And are you basing your decision on logic or emotion?  -Loren 23:59, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Just a thought on double standards

message: Another example of this kind of activity can be found at the Alan Dershowitz article (see Talk:Alan Dershowitz) which Mr Dershowitz and his assistants have used Harvard computers to blank and vandalize his biography and make uber-flattering edits. Dershowitz, the most famous lawyer in the US, vandalizing his own article - pretty incredible. Example edits - "an international treasure" and blanking. Unlike Congress, he seems to have got away with it. What other institutions need looking at? All government institutions for a start, followed by major corporations, and lobbying organisations. - Xed 22:34, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other institutions 

message: Has anyone considered applying a credibility rating to a page that is based on the number, frequency, and size of overwrites?  The greater the amount of contention over content then the lower the credibility.  Over time, the content should settle out to something that's acceptable by a larger audience.  Such a rating system might even be objective and possible to automate given existing metrics.
:It's been suggested and the current verion of the wikimedia softwear has a rateing system in it. Currently trying to come up with a version that wont kill the servers.Geni 03:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Anonymous -- credibility ratings 

message: Further to this, should a 'user rating', similar to the way it is done in eBay, be implemented? Users whose edits are subsequently approved or left unchanged by other users get their rating hiked up. Only users that have achieved a certain rating should be allowed to edit content that is in further stages of development. For new users - they can either be given a high rating to start with (allowing them to edit content), and then this rating can be lowered if bad content is submitted, or alternatively - users that are just starting up can get their ratings increased by adding content to stubs, and newer articles.
:belive me every form of rateing system know to man has been suggested at some point.Geni 03:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: a rating system fundamentally assumes that the average opinion of wikipedians over a user or IP ranges reliability actually measures something.  Take a look at my proposal above: expand watchlist to include IP ranges & users, or shared lists of such.  Anyone would be able to watch the whole U.S. congress if they liked, and no one would know who was watching who.  JeffBurdges 14:32, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

text: This system makes Wikipedia look like a popularity contest. No. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 16:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  User Ratings? 

message: Here's a quick question: Does DrWitty's expressed view on this qualify more as a Response or as an Outside View? (Keep in mind that we may want to keep the "Response" section open for someone from Congress to use.) — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 00:48, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quick procedural poll 

message: ====Response====
#Voting for your own view is rather poor form.  I doubt that anyone but the two of us are going to contribute to this pointless exercise.  DrWitty 01:14, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quick, informal, not-necessarily-binding poll 

message: #Voting for your own view is rather poor form.  I doubt that anyone but the two of us are going to contribute to this pointless exercise.  DrWitty 01:14, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Response

message: #— Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 01:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Outside View

message: # Ashibaka tock 04:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Unwilling to contribute to this pointless exercise

message: *Back during the December 2005 mayorial election, Bloomberg's staffers did the same thing, no one seemed to care, nor did anyone even suggest that it was inappropriate for them to do so--205.188.117.68 02:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment

message: # Oppose This statement is in direct opposition to Wikipedia's mission  -- 68.50.103.212 05:38, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Except +sprotect is temporary. That's the issue. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 06:11, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bmgoau's proposal

message: Yet another example, here, and a public one, of how Wikipedia flaps its gums about blocking troublemakers but in the end does nothing about it. - User:Hephaestos
: Before you start making accusations about hypocrisy, perhaps you should examine what we do when it comes to shared IPs (WP:AOL). Blocking legitimate editors because they happen to share their IP with vandals is frowned upon and avoided whenever possible. If we are directly contacted by a legitimate editor behind a blocked shared IP, standard procedure is to assume good faith. If anyone is being hypocritical here, it is the people clamoring to permanently ban this particular shared IP simply because of who owns it. -Loren 16:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Blind hypocrisy

message: Any PR firm could include it in their list of services, I suppose; in which case the whole thing would be legal,I think, and this issue would be moot,perhaps. Neutralizer 23:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The hundreds of grunt work Wikipedians and their power to block IP and IP ranges. --Oldak Quill 01:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A refined version of my proposal above has been posted here.  It would simplify the grunt work enormously.  JeffBurdges 16:12, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  We already fight off people like seos and such. Kim Bruning 17:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What's to prevent "Wikipedia Sanitation Services" from being a product for sale? 

message: Both the Senate and the House have established ethics bodies which, so far as I can see, have not yet been used in an attempt to resolve this matter. Those bodies can also link IPs to offices and perhaps individuals as part of their investigations. Since we have not yet used the usual ethics process, I suggest that no long-lasting action is taken until the matter has been referred to the House ethics committee and Senate ethics committee so they can remind members and their staff about proper conduct. Jamesday 01:24, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The established conduct methods have not been used 

message: Has anyone actually taken the step of contacting the network admin very politely and see if there is anything they can do to help out? Perhaps the proxy could be bypassed for Wikipedia so we could block the vandals, not the whole proxy. - Taxman Talk 19:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contact the network admin? 

message: Now that the Meehan story is out, it's open season on Wikipedia. Witness, for example, the rewriting of Phil Bredesen's article. Sounds like a promotional brochure for someone trying to get re-elected to me. And of course the editor is an anonymous IP with no previous history. What can we do about this before it gets worse? Kaldari 18:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The best we can do is identify and revert as necessary. If abusive anonomous IPs point back to a government organization, it may be a good idea to post them on the Administrators' noticeboard for further examination, comment, and action. — TheKMantalk 18:52, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not limited to Federal politicians 

message: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-02-07-wild-web_x.htm ...  posted online on 7 Feb, the editorial deals with the congressional staffer editing we are talking about here. It also appears in the 8 Feb paper edition.  ++Lar: t/c 16:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  World Wild Web editorial in USA Today  

message: This situation may be self-correcting if journalists and opposing campaigns expose the biased edits.  I suspect a few public scandals will temper this behavior.  When these attempts backfire they highlight the politicians' mistakes rather than conceal them.  They give the voting public fresh information about ethics and honesty.
While this issue is obviously more serious than vandalism from anonymous high school or university IP addresses, the free press addresses that difference much better than Wikipedia can.  I suggest Wikipedia treat this type of user abuse exactly the same as it treats any other: without regard for the parties and politics involved.
The brilliant thing about Wikipedia's transparancy is that while anyone can edit, those edits leave an electronic trail that anyone else can follow. Durova 19:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Investigative reporting 

message: Wikipedia's Help From the Hill: Edits Lead Site to Block Some Lawmakers' Offices --Aaron 21:08, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Washington Post article on the debacle 

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gregg_Harper&diff=prev&oldid=326799547  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.248.113.11 (talk) 07:26, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  They're still at it.