Guardian article:

Grant Shapps altered school performance entry on Wikipedia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012 ... ?fb=optOut

Could someone point us to a few of the "diffs" that are attributed to Mr. Shapps?

I should have mentioned this one this morning. Got a high profile in yesterday evening's 'what the press say' on TV.

Having read the coverage, it looks like a classic case of 'problem with conflict of interest', not 'problem with Wikipedia'. I.e. blame people who are trying to fix articles, rather than the Wikipedia system. There are really two COIs. One, of the people who like to add negative information to articles. Two, the subjects, who like to add positive information. There is nothing in between. People unconnected with the subject do not add positive information. People connected with the subject do not add negative information.

In a proper reference work, you would pay people to look after pages like this. There would be precise rules about notability - currently the only rule is whether someone is interested in adding information. And because people were paid, there would be no conflict.

The Guardian does not say so, but these edits that the article refers to were made a long time ago. (I'll return to the question why the Guardian only reports on them now below.) Here is one of the edits, from 30 May 2008, with the edit summary, "politically slanted comments removed. repeat posting may be taken as abuse of system":

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =216000425

One paragraph he took out in that edit read:



References 6 and 7 are:

http://order-order.com/2007/07/10/shapp ... o-turfing/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 100341.ece

That paragraph and sourcing can be critiqued from the viewpoint of Wikipedia's own policies:

The first source, no. 6, is "Guido Fawkes' blog of plots, rumours and conspiracy". Not a top-drawer encyclopedic source, perhaps? Furthermore, Guido Fawkes included a (perhaps unconvincing) statement from Shapps saying his account was hacked. Good, neutral journalistic practice is to present rebuttals, and let readers draw their conclusions. Wikipedia did not do that.

I can't see source 7 (behind a paywall) but the sentence "that statement was apparently not ironic" appears to violate Wikipedia policy (WP:SYN) as it combines two sources (6+7) to arrive at a novel, unpublished conclusion: that Shapps has a nerve saying that with a straight face; note that that part of the sentence was unsourced.

The sentence preceding that paragraph, "Grant Shapps has also received media attention for a number of unfortunate gaffes during his time on the Conservative frontbench", was likewise unsourced. It's just what the Wikipedian wanted the article to say. In short, the writer's bias was obvious.

That doesn't make what Shapps did and how he did it right, far from it. But people generally are less likely to act morally if they have been attacked.

The other obvious question is, why is this four-year-old edit being dredged up now? The Guardian article gives a clue: "Shapps replaced Baroness (Sayeeda) Warsi as Tory party chairman last week in the governmental reshuffle."

The focus in the press is on GS as he is a senior politician but there is still the story about Wikipedia of this being yet another article where pro- and anti-editors warred to present the perspective they favoured. The antis also seem to have given GS the wrong number of O' levels where five would have been the equivalent to today's expected standard that pupils should leave school with five GCSEs grades A to C.

What the press fail to report again and again in these types of situations is that the article's status before the COI edit was generally far from perfect. It's the bias that causes the subject to go in, and as they do so, they replace one bias with another.

Another paragraph Shapps removed in that edit was also problematic. It read:


Now, compare this to the cited Guardian source:


Look at all the information that the Wikipedian omitted or skewed when summarising the Guardian source: that the donations do not break parliamentary rules, that Shapps disclosed the donations himself, while the anonymous Wikipedian "Bangers" described them as "revelations", and that Tory policy predated the donations and was in part opposed to that of the donors. It's the difference between professional journalism and anonymous editing.

But in failing again and again to report that the article's status before the COI edit was anything but perfect, the press become equally guilty of bias. In most cases it is a grossly unfair article that violates Wikipedia's own policies which causes a biography subject to take action -- action that Wikipedia then calls inappropriate, without acknowledging that its own actions causing the subject to act in this manner were equally inappropriate.

In short, Wikipedia fails to uphold its own standards, while castigating anyone else failing to abide by them. It is a profound moral failing. And hence also the need for something like the as yet unimplemented flagged revisions feature, which would ensure that every anonymous edit would be scrutinised for policy compliance before being shown to the public.

It would be nice if we could become the first port of call both for journalists and people who are caught up in this kind of mess.

Thats being overly picky. They are not mutually exclusive. Just because something is self-disclosed, doesnt mean its not a revelation. Look at the Currie/Major affair!

I'm not clear. Is there any ruddy proof that Shapps himself made these edits, or ordered someone else to make them? Given the visceral hatred of the Guardian for people like Shapps, are they NPOV in this case?

I would assume that at least half of people who edit Wikipedia articles about politicians are there to make the bastard look bad/the saint look good. The less prominent the pol, the higher this proportion will be. For instance the Cameron article will probably have more people trying to do the right thing than the article on some back bencher. It's why the whole "conflict of interest" rule is so idiotic. Should people be fluffing their own articles? No. Should paid PR people be sneakily fluffing their articles? No. Should political opponents be attacking the article? No. Should some random person who hates politician x be attacking his article? No.

The conflict of interest rule puts the actual subject of an article at a major disadvantage compared to some of these other categories of "bad" editor.

Exactly. The paragraphs that Shapps removed were originally added in this edit, by an editor calling themself Modernway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =212945848

The editor's user page says, "Modernway is a British liberal. He lives in London and Brussels." The Guido Fawkes blog used as a source in his additions included a "hat-tip" to LibDem Voice.

As far as I am concerned, Modernway's edits are no better (and possibly worse, in initiating a round of POV edit-warring), than Shapps'. But because Shapps' name is on the line (literally -- the page carries his name and is the top Google hit for it), he is a target, and his actions are scrutinised. Nobody writes about the anonymous editor, Modernway, who started all of this.

BLP subjects are at an inherent disadvantage in these situations, because they lack the cover of anonymity.

Why does this smell like a dirty political trick, facilitated by the now-loved-by-the-Guardian Jimbo?
I seriously wonder if some Labourite talked to Wales, and mentioned they wanted to "get rid" of Shapps, and he checked into it,
and found Shapps had edited his own BLP? Since a LOT of politicians edit their own BLPs, there is always a good chance
this trick will work. And Jimbo knows it.

Article in Daily Mail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... y%2BWalker

’

You linked to the daily mail, dont you feel a bit dirty inside?

Although I am bemused by 'Craft, Design & Technology'...when did that happen? I did D&T but there was no 'craft' prefixing it....

Hah! Good for him. That's the response that most politicians, celebrities, and business leaders should make. "Just leave them to it", the insane rabble of Wikipedia faithful.

The edits he's referring to were made by this IP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Co ... .155.38.72

Finally, here is a reporter who has seen the light. It is, again, someone at The Telegraph.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology ... e-iceberg/

Also from the Telegraph story:


So, Jimbo, if you could go back to August 2006, when I was offering paid editing in the disinfecting sunlight of full disclosure, would you still have come up with your stupid compromise (driving the paid content off-Wikipedia) and the subsequent reversal and banning of the editor who was willing to put his paid work to the test of public scrutiny? Now, you have this "sordid underworld", that you helped create, pal. Congrats.

£400 a day? I'd go "bent" for that. (I do not believe that for a minute -- though I guess a PR firm will quote that to clients as part of a comprehensive package).

That is a bit steep, but seriously, it is possible to make good money from editing WP articles freelance. You have to be extremely sneaky and have hundreds of sock
accounts pre-established, but there are uncounted hundreds of people doing it, and very few of them have been "caught". Only the honest ones, like Greg, become
"examples to scare off the others", a "scheme" which obviously does not work.

I just had a client send me $1,000, just for continuing consulting time on how best to engage with the problems they're encountering on Wikipedia. I didn't ask for this amount... they just sent it.

A well-run network of paid Wikipedia editors could easily clear $100K per year. Thing is, you'd then be dividing those spoils with maybe 4 or 5 other editors.

I think you're letting your imagination run away here. I'm sure that political hacks now know to check a politician's BLP for signs of massaging whenever they want to dig the dirt and Shapps promotion to the cabinet plus his being the subject of another internet news story was the time to look.

In any case there was only a suggestion that Shapps had edited the article, an IP in his constituency being used to complain about some bias and to puff certain other things. There might have been secondary evidence of Shapps having used the relevant ISP but it could have been someone from the constituency office or the local party. They then needed to ring Shapps and listen to what he said to prove anything concrete.

There is now a follow-up article in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012 ... sfeed=true



On the other hand, Shapps did tell the Daily Mail he had made edits himself and gave examples, which matched edits in the contributions history of 217.155.38.72 (T-C-L).

There have been a couple of times this article went to BLPN:

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive47#Grant_Shapps (May-June 2008) and

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive84#Grant_Shapps (April-May 2010 i.e. at the time of the last general election in the UK).

Thanks, I missed those. Note that this week's blog post is a news round-up focused mainly on this story:

http://wikipediocracy.com/2012/09/12/this-weeks-news-the-grant-shapps-biography-and-other-stories/

Seeing his name in the Grauniad seems to have gone to Earle's head. See this SPI.

Apparently he doesn't understand CU very well. The edits are way too old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grant_Shapps&action=history&offset=20080531000000&limit=20

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grant_Shapps&diff=215492512&oldid=214676515

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grant_Shapps&diff=216008108&oldid=216000425 (from an IP addresses that was acknowledged as being one of Shapps')

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&page=User%3A78.129.175.187

At least one of the IP addresses used was blocked for being an open proxy. Was that proxy being used by Snapps or his staff, or did Snapps or his staff simply noticed the edit war caused by the proxy and decided to join in?

Article in Grant's local paper:

Grant Shapps: Guardian’s Wikipedia investigation is ‘silly season story’

http://www.whtimes.co.uk/news/grant_sha ... _1_1513180

Smells even more like a political dirty trick.....