Accusations against Grant Shapps from the UK Conservative Party of editing his own and senior politicians’ Wikipedia pages have shown that not everything on the online encyclopaedia can be believed.
Going under the username ‘Contribsx’, either Shapps himself or someone acting on his behalf is alleged to have been behind a campaign to favourably edit Shapps’ Wikipedia page and those of some of the Conservative Party’s leading politicians, including William Hague, David Cameron, Ann Widdecombe and, bizarrely, a list of episodes of the Seth MacFarlane comedy, American Dad.
Establishing a fake account to purposely edit Wikipedia pages either favourably or unfavourably, known as ‘sock puppetry’, is obviously frowned upon by one of the biggest websites on the internet and one of the moderators known as ‘Chase me Ladies, I’m the Cavalry’, or ChaseMe for short, has since banned Contribsx from editing any more Wikipedia pages.
His investigation came following a prompt by a journalist from The Guardian, who made him aware of the possible sock puppetry that was occurring, and he subsequently came to his own conclusions that there was foul play afoot.
“This is a sensible precaution and I understand why it has to be done,” ChaseMe said in a transparency statement explaining why Contribsx had been banned.
Wikimedia UK has since come out with a formal statement that, according to The Guardian, said: “We would welcome any MPs who choose to become editors, and are happy to provide training sessions to anyone who wants to learn.”
“However, the Wikipedia project is founded on trust, and anyone who tries to deceive our volunteers and readers in order to further their own ends should think very carefully about the morality of what they’re doing. Eventually, the public will find out.”
So, with this in mind, here are some memes that Grant Shapps, or the people who allegedly used to act on his behalf, will no doubt find familiar…
Image via Wikimedia Commons
Image via Wikimedia Commons
Sock puppet image via Willem Velthoven/Flickr
