Thursday 22 April 2010

Battle of the Bush: Bailey campaign accused of Wiki Info War

A supporter of the Shaun Bailey campaign appears to have been altering Wikipedia entries for both Shaun Bailey himself and Andy Slaughter his Labour opponent according to the excellent Dave Hill Guardian Blog.

Changes to Bailey's entry appear to remove any references to a very pleasant sounding suburban street on which he grew up but that didn't chime with a "boy from the estates" description he himself uses, and changes to Andy Slaughter's page refer to "controversies" which apparently arose during his interview with me here.

The Bailey campaign have issued what seem to be very carefully worded denials but the question for me is .... who is the mysterious info-warrior Ryan Wells?!?

5 comments:

  1. No idea, but more importantly who are YOU Mr Underwood? You don't give us much idea about your own political leanings.

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  2. Well, Mr Anonymous (you're clearly a brave person) if you can't work them out then I must be doing something right!

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  3. Mrs Ruth Gittings23 April 2010 at 08:54

    As far as I can see, it is perfectly permissible to post as "Anonymous" here, so it is not very polite of you Mr Underwood to criticise someone for using that option. Not very polite to someone who might have looked into your blog for the first time (as I have).

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  4. Dear Mrs Gittings

    Mr/Ms Anonymous wasn't being particularly polite himself. So I wasn't very pleasant back. I do apologise for trampling carelessly on your sensitivities.

    Chris

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  5. Exactly. For a long time, I've been very anti the use and option of Anonymous commenting online for just this reason. More often than not, you see it used to attack or post snarky comments - it makes the web quite an unpleasant place (and not in an interesting or insightful way, either).

    Unless anonymity is being used by a whistleblower to reveal something in the public interest which might endanger the person's job or safety, then I don't see a place for it. Certainly not to provide cover for someone espousing an opinion in a blog comment - particularly a political opinion.

    Shouldn't you have to ask yourself if believe something strongly enough to say it, whether you'd say it to someone's face. At the very least, this makes people avoid falling into the angry commenter cliché (as above) and think about being a little more polite.

    But sorry, I shouldn't really feed the troll ;)

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