Obama Citizenship

Obama?s Wikipedia Page on Lock Down!

By Phil

Based on their recent article, WorldNetDaily is now reporting on an “edit war” concerning the President’s Wikipedia page:

Following WND’s report on Obama’s Wikipedia page, the news outlet monitored the page as scores of users attempted to add entries about eligibility concerns, and the president’s past associations with Ayers and Wright. All attempts to post on Ayers or Obama’s birth certificate were removed within minutes by the site’s volunteer administrators.

One mention of Wright was finally allowed. Obama’s page currently states, “Obama resigned from Trinity [United Church of Christ] during the Presidential campaign after controversial statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright became public.”

The Wikipedia entry does not currently outline some of Wright’s remarks, such as exclaiming “God damn America,” claiming the 9-11 attacks signified “America’s chickens” were “coming home to roost” or telling congregants the U.S. government invented the HIV virus as a means of “genocide” against black people.

Following a large volume of attempted postings on controversial issues, administrators yesterday placed a “protection” lock on Obama’s page, informing non-administrators that new postings would not be allowed until “disputes have been resolved.”

Meanwhile, WND was inundated with e-mails from Wikipedia users yesterday stating their recent attempts to edit Obama’s page were blocked. Some said they believed the site to be “biased” in favor of Obama. A sampling of e-mails included:

• “As soon as Wikipedia found out I was conservative leaning and on the national lists of the righties, they banned me,” wrote author Mark Paul Seber 
• “Thought you might be interested to know that Wikipedia’s ‘Family of Barack Obama’ page contains inaccuracies about his paternal family relations and that when I tried to add the correct info it, too, was removed/changed,” wrote an anonymous WND reader. 
• “Before the election I was banned from Wikipedia multiple times for trying to post a picture of Obama and Odinga in Kenya on Odinga’s Wikipedia site,” commented WND reader “Don.” 
• “Back in January, I posted to Obama’s ‘talk page’ ? not the main entry, just the talk page. My post pointed out that FactCheck is lying about the 10/31 statement from the Hawaii Dep’t of Health. I didn’t go into speculation. As a result, my username was permanently blocked, what I posted was deleted, and a “conflict of interest” notice was placed on my old user page,” wrote another anonymous reader. 
• “What you are looking at regarding the Barrack (sic) Obama article on Wikipedia is a ‘liberalization’ of not just that, but the entire website,” wrote Brian Macdonald of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. “The people who control and edit in Wikipedia will present what they think should be the article on Obama; they will not post anything about his socialism, his Bill Ayers connections, former Marxist “New Party” which he was involved in, or anything else that would portray him in a negative light, despite the official Wikipedia policy that everything is to be neutral.”

While Wright finally made it onto Obama’s Wikipedia page ? if only in one sentence ? multiple times the past month, Wikipedia users who wrote about the eligibility issues had their entries deleted almost immediately and were banned from re-posting any material on the website for three days.

Of course, there are other so-called “encyclopedias” on the Internet that contain not so glowing information about the President; for example, http://www.conservapedia.com/Barack_Hussein_Obama.

-Phil

Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on March 09, 2009 (boomark / email).