I know that a lot of people have conflicting opinions on Wikipedia. It's a phenomenal resource on a wide range of subjects and is easily accessible and regularly updated. That said, it's also vulnerable to abuse. Heated political campaigns, especially, tend to reveal that issue.

Tim Walberg's Wikipedia entry, it seems, has had its own small-scale problem, and today has been a busy day for editing the page. For instance, a user named Kurlansky briefly changed the link to Walberg's campaign site to that of the Club for Growth-- a change which was reverted fairly quickly. But the most significant changes came from an interesting source.

At 14:39 and 14:41 GMT, a user made changes that can be seen here. (The previous version of the article appears on the left, this user's changes are on the right.) What were the changes?

The following passages were removed from the article:

Walberg is known as both a social and economic conservative and was a congressional candidate in [[Michigan's 7th congressional district]] in 2004 in which he placed third. http://www.cqpolitics.com/2006/03/mi_7_schwarz_pressured_from_th.html

and

In October 2006, the Walberg campaign faced scandal when one of the campaign's employees pleaded guilty to child abuse charges. The allegations first appeared in the ''Jackson Citizen Patriot''. http://www.mlive.com/news/jacitpat/index.ssf?/base/news-19/1161878713322500.xml&coll=3 The allegations included severe injuries to a young childs face and body. The staffer was sentenced to probation. Walberg later said he would not discuss hiring decisions with the media.

In other words, the user wanted to remove the mention of Walberg's third-place finish in 2004 and of a major scandal that changed the nature of the 2006 race.

The user that made these changes signed them as "Rickibaxter." For those that have forgotten, Rick Baxter is Tim Walberg's district director and is a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives.

Now, I'm not going to jump to any conclusions, because I know it's easy to fake things on the internet and on Wikipedia. But it's a little suspicious, isn't it?

Anyway, that's what caught my eye tonight.

Labels: Tim Walberg, Walberg Staff, Wikipedia