The
staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan wiped out references to his broken
term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war
chest in an independent biography of the Lowell Democrat on a Web site
that bills itself as the "world’s largest encyclopedia," The Sun has
learned.

The Meehan alterations on Wikipedia.com represent just two of
more than 1,000 changes made by congressional staffers at the U.S.
House of Representatives in the past six month. Wikipedia is a global
reference that relies on its Internet users to add credible information
to entries on millions of topics.

Matt Vogel, Meehan’s chief of staff, said he authorized an
intern in July to replace existing Wikipedia content with a
staff-written biography of the lawmaker.

The change deleted a reference to Meehan’s campaign promise to
surrender his seat after serving eight years, a pledge Meehan later
eschewed. It also deleted a reference to the size of Meehan’s campaign
account, the largest of any House member at $4.8 million, according to
the latest data available from the Federal Election Commission.

"Meehan first ran for Congress in 1992 on a platform of
reform," the pre-edited entry said. "As part of that platform Meehan
made a pledge to not serve more than four terms, a central part of his
campaign. This breaking of the pledge has been a controversial issue in
the 5th Congressional District of Massachusetts."

The new entry reads in part: "Meehan was elected to Congress
in 1992 on a plan to eliminate the deficit. His fiscally responsible
voting record since then has earned him praise from citizen watchdog
groups. He was re-elected by a large margin in 2004."

Vogel said, "It makes sense to me the biography we submit would be the biography we write."

The change doubled the length of the entry on Meehan, corrected
errors and replaced "sloppy" writing, Vogel said. "Let the outside
world edit it. It seemed right to start with greater depth than a
paragraph with incorrect data from the ’80s."

Wikipedia’s online honor system has made it ripe for abuse by
vandals. Recently, a user wrote in a Wikipedia bio that Virginia
Congressman Eric Cantor "smells of cow dung." Another wrote that Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist is "ineffective." These statements were
traced to the House Internet-protocol (IP) address.

In November and December, The Sun has learned, users of the
House’s IP address were temporarily blocked from changing content
because of violations described by the site as a "deliberate attempt to
compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia."

By Evan Lehmann

More here.