Municipalist

Virginia county wiki project aims at wide audience

The Loudoun County, Va. county library system, ranked among the top 10 in its size nationally, just went live with LoudounPedia, a community wiki focusing on a diverse list of local topics and issues. Sporting a clean, contemporary design, it appears to have the potential to become an important destination for any new resident looking to gain an awareness of the county and various institutions public and private, and to learn about local government issues and ideas. It will be interesting to watch how this is managed. Looks like an exciting project.

The McCain plagiarism tale and the Palin faux pregnancy rumors: How anonymous partisans exploit established Web brands for political ends

[See multiple updates at end of this post.]

Synopsis: We were approached recently by someone claiming to be the Wikipedia editor who made the initial anonymous charge to another blogger that the McCain campaign plagiarized material from Wikipedia for use in a speech during the initial days of Russia's invasion of Georgia. This person clearly wanted more attention, and pitched the idea of our publishing a Q & A with him on Municipalist about all of this.

We pushed this person to agree to go on the record with his real name. He declined, in cloak-and-dagger fashion, implying he was fearful for his personal safety, should his identity be revealed.

So we passed. For now.

Why this all matters: Examples out there of this type of tactic -- anonymous posts and pitches aimed at political and partisan ends, with the leaker escaping any scrutiny as to motivation -- are becoming more frequent, and they are effective.

On Sept. 2, Howard Kurtz, media reporter for the Washington Post, laid out the most recent example:

The intensity of media inquiries hit a new level after an anonymous blogger on the liberal Web site Daily Kos last weekend charged that McCain's running mate is actually the grandmother of Trig Palin, the 4-month-old baby born with Down syndrome, and that the real mother is her daughter, 17-year-old Bristol Palin. That led to mainstream media inquiries, which prompted the McCain camp to disclose in a statement Monday that Bristol is five months pregnant and plans to have the baby and marry the teenage father. The site's founder, Markos Moulitsas, said he did not know the contributor's identity but thought that the admittedly "weird" pregnancy questions were a legitimate line of inquiry that he should not suppress.

Of course, Kos did suppress a diarist at his site blogging about the then odd lack of interest by mainstream media in John Edwards's obvious evasions and lies about his affair, before it was admitted to publically. But Kurtz's magic words: "That led to mainstream media inquiries." So: Such behavior from these various cloaked individuals, protected from any criticism, can so easily start news wildfires, as occurred with both the McCain campaign plagiarism charges and the bizarre Sarah Palin pregnancy story.

And while Kos continues to influence much of the clueless and/or partisan mainstream media [as it did in effectively delaying the Edwards story], this presidential campaign has marked the arrival of a new and perhaps larger player in such matters: Wikipedia. From inside or outside. One example: The Washington Post reports on how monitoring Wikipedia edits turned out to be a useful method of predicting John McCain's VP choice.

If individual [or group] blogs can play large roles in breaking such partisan-driven stories, what is the potential for Wikipedia, with its vast collection of impressive content and large, obsessive community? What if any of that content and/or community could be harnessed for partisan ends?

Municipalist has followed the McCain plagiarism story, and even played a very minor role in advancing it. Our personal experience with that story illustrates our case. So, moment by moment, here is our tale, in excruciating detail: