Police Chief Demands His Staff Monitor His Wikipedia Entry

from the abuse-of-power? dept

Mon, Mar 3rd 2008 2:16pm — Mike Masnick

Just as Slashdot is reporting about the mayor of Florence suing Wikipedia comes the news that a police chief in West Yorkshire, in the UK, is so upset with the edits to his own Wikipedia entry that he's required his staff to monitor the page and make changes or revisions to it in response to critical comments left on the page. Now, obviously, having critical information about you on Wikipedia may not be pleasant, but aren't there more important things for folks in a police department to be working on?

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Filed Under: police chief, wikipedia

24 Comments

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Hellsvilla, 3 Mar 2008 @ 2:30pm

no.
You got someone better in mind for the job? As long as the staff is maintaining truth, I see nothing wrong with this.
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- yes, 3 Mar 2008 @ 2:54pm
  
  Re: no.
  Perhaps the vain moron should have his staff working on other more pressing duties and serving the citizens rather than having them replace edits to his self-serving web page with approved text he wants others to see. This is a wikipedia entry, anyone can edit it so be prepared to have it happen. If you want a restricted edit page then you should host your own on a website you own and can 'police' accordingly.
  
  As long as the staff is maintaining the truth - you forgot to add - he wants everyone to see then there is nothing wrong with this.
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- Seth Brundle, 4 Mar 2008 @ 11:36am
  
  Re: no.
  The problem with this is that he started to fight it publicly.
  
  What he should have done is ignored it.
  
  Now the whole world knows.
  
  Since his staff playing whack-a-mole around the internet doing damage control is neither in their job description nor does it scale, it would have been better never to go down this road.
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TheDock22, 3 Mar 2008 @ 2:57pm

Umm...
You do realize by staff...they probably mean the secretaries and interns. Not the officers. I see no problem with this.
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- Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2008 @ 11:32pm
  
  Re: Umm...
  TheDock22 wrote:
  I see no problem with this.
  
  But then, you have no problem with being a notorious liar either.
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  - TheDock22, 4 Mar 2008 @ 7:50am
    
    Re: Re: Umm...
    But then, you have no problem with being a notorious liar either.
    
    Awful strong words coming from a notorious coward.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 4 Mar 2008 @ 9:38am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Umm...
      Awful strong words coming from a notorious coward.
      
      Ha, ha, ha! And just exactly who are you? Pot, meet kettle.
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Yorkie, 3 Mar 2008 @ 2:58pm

Ridiculous
What happens if he finds a disparaging YouTube clip? Would the staffers need to monitor YouTube as well? Forums, websites, blogs, all of these will of course have to be monitored to preserve this man's image of competency. In fact I propose that he enlists the aid of the entire constabulary for this endeavor, since the internets are a big place after all. Cost should be no issue when the abiding public is footing the bil. In fact I recommend we raise taxes, because after all, can we truly put a price on a man's self-image?

Woe be to the naysayers, the West Yorkies are watching you.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2008 @ 3:00pm

Seeing as the police's job nowadays seems to feature heavily the task of covering up their incompetence... nope, nothing out of the ordinary happening here.
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Hellsvilla, 3 Mar 2008 @ 3:06pm

Why the hate?
Really, he represents the office of a public official. If that wikipedia page is pertaining information about his post, then someone ahs to make sure that information is correct. Guess who that duty falls on? That's right. His office.

Get over it. This is a part of this new life we face.
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another mike, 3 Mar 2008 @ 3:14pm

streisand effect in 3...2...1...
How much overtime will they be billing when we all start going to his page to make disparaging edits? Knowing farkers and /.'ers, no editorial power in the world will be able to keep his page how he wants it.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2008 @ 3:21pm

He wouldn't be worried about what people say in his wiki entry, if he didn't have something to hide.

Perhaps the root of this issue needs to be sorted out?
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- StarFleet Command, 3 Mar 2008 @ 3:40pm
  
  Re:
  ---He wouldn't be worried about what people say in his wiki entry, if he didn't have something to hide. Perhaps the root of this issue needs to be sorted out?--- "Hey Pot", says Kettle, "looking a bit black today aren't you?" Your comment is ridiculous considering you are posting as AC.
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  - George Bush, 3 Mar 2008 @ 11:30pm
    
    Re: Re:
    "Hey Pot", says Kettle, "looking a bit black today aren't you?" Your comment is ridiculous considering you are posting as AC.
    
    That's funny. Talk about Kettle calling Pot black, here we have someone posting as "StarFleet Command" criticizing someone else for posting anonymously!
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2008 @ 3:24pm

Why should our tax dollars be used to protect his ego, though?
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2008 @ 3:27pm

They shouldn't.....because you live in America, and he lives in the UK (which is not a state of the USA [yet]).
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FUD Buster, 3 Mar 2008 @ 3:59pm

WikiPedia full of bad info
There are dome great articles. Until you get to public figures and policitcs. Then there are people who have pet agends articles, that actually will change revisions back if you try to even have more neutral language.
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Hard to Judge, 3 Mar 2008 @ 4:55pm

I work in the IT field and at times work on things that a non-IT person may consider a waste of resources and time for the IT department. But to me it's all related and you just wouldn't understand.

Now, having said that to think that police would be taken off the street to secure some edits on a Wiki is ridiculous. I would make a more reasonable assumption that they would monitor this post on their downtime.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2008 @ 6:04pm

His page - Heh
that's funny
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Rob, 3 Mar 2008 @ 6:09pm

Perhaps we should all edit it.
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Anonymous Wombat, 3 Mar 2008 @ 9:56pm

Missing the point folks?
You're all missing the point when saying "Good For Him"

It's a conflict of interest. It goes against policy in Wikipedia to have someone self-edit or a party of that person to edit for them as it decreases the neutrality of the article.

He's focussing on presenting a padded biography instead of a factual one. While this may be acceptable on a personal website, it is not acceptable on wikipedia. It is alright to remove libel, slander and opinion from the article, however to replace that with opinion is just as bad as the vandalism that initially took place.

On top of that, the fact that he's directed staff to maintain his version of the story, and not necessarily a true representation (as saved by the Wikipedia editors) is a gross misuse of resources on his part as well as a violation of wikipedias rules against conflict of interest.

He's nothing but in the wrong in this case.
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JustMe, 4 Mar 2008 @ 5:53am

Public funds used for personal business?
I can only assume that everyone posting in support of this daft position is a sock puppet for the police chief. For those of you who don't see a problem would you be OK with a city employee baby sitting his children, cleaning his house, taking his relatives to the doctor? Hello, lab partner, it is THE SAME THING! You cannot use public funds for personal business. People go to jail for that kind of thing.
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Overcast, 4 Mar 2008 @ 7:10am

Is he too lazy to monitor it himself?

Or too egotistical?
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JustMe, 4 Mar 2008 @ 9:06am

Ha ha funny
http://coppersblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/sir-norman-bettison-is-not-greedy-vain.html
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