Anatomy of a Wikipedia Hijacking

Christopher Beam — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:56:00 GMT

This morning, Joe Andrew was Wikitaged. On a conference call, the former DNC chair and superdelegate announced his switch from Clinton to Obama but said he was worried about a smear campaign against him after some people fiddled with his Wikipedia page.

Naturally, we wondered what exactly these Wikiteurs were saying about him. Here’s a quick timeline from the page’s history:

At 5:57 this morning, someone added the information that

During the 2008 Democratic Presidential Nomination battle [Andrew] was on [sic] of the first to endorse Senator Hillary Clinton, on May 1, 2008, however, he decided to switch his allegiance to Senator Barack Obama. He becomes one of a growing number of former Clinton officials or appointees to switch to Barack Obama.

Later, at 11:20, the entire entry disappeared, to be replaced with

Joe Andrew (born March 1, 1960) is a stupid faggot, and an Obama zombie.

It took less than a minute for another user, "NawlinWiki," to revert the page to its old version. But two hours later, some added this bit:

He will be remembered when the party is unable to retake the White House. He will be remembered as a traitor to his friends and the party.

Six minutes later, it was gone. But soon the pro-Obama forces (or, really, one user going by the creative handle “209.250.12.106”) started to rally, posting at the bottom of the page:

HILLARY IS A LIAR, BEWARE THE CLINTON'S [sic] WILL DO AND SAY ANYTHING!

A minute later, the same user copied and pasted this phrase a few hundred times.

Just after noon, the page was locked: "Editing of this article by new or unregistered users is currently disabled."

Hardly the craziest online political battle, but, still—don't Phil Singer and Bill Burton have anything better to do with their time?

Trailhead : Joe Andrew

Anatomy of a Wikipedia Hijacking