Congressional staffers poor on netiquette

30th January 2006

posted in politics, web 2.0 |

School teachers and campus principles may cringe with fearful anticipation at the prospect of their own students having free access to wiki resources like the Wikipedia, but it is doubtful the behavior of their students could be worse than that of some US Congressional staffers recently.

Check out this “Wikipedia:Requests for comment/United States Congress” page. The summary of the situation is:

This RFC is being opened in order to centralise discussion concerning actions to be taken against US Congressional staffers who repeatedly engage in revert wars, blank content, engage in libelous behaviour or violate WP:NPOV, WP:CIV. The editors from these IP ranges are rude and abrasive, immature, and show no understanding of Wikipedia policy. The editors also frequently try to whitewash the actions of certain politicians. They treat Wikipedia articles about politicians as though they own the articles, replacing community articles with their own sanctioned biographies and engaging in revert wars when other users dispute this sudden change. They also violate Wikipedia:Verifiability, by deleting verified reports, while adding flattering things about members of Congress that are unverified.

How petty and ridiculous. At least the WikiPedia editors can release a RFC like this one and attempt to shine the light on the shameful behavior of these alleged mature adults. Come on people– our elected representatives and those who serve on their staffs should hold themselves to higher standard of ethical behavior.

Is this really the sort of example you want to be setting for schoolchildren around our nation?
Thanks to my cousin Devin Henley for the link to this RFC.

On this day..

Opening minds about cell phones for learning - 2008
Vista is out, but do educators care? - 2007
Oklahoma videoconferencing in USA Today - 2007
iWeb blog interface - 2006
Learnerblogs exceeds bandwidth - 2006
Prince Caspian expected - 2006
Durham Middle School Podcasts - 2006
Classroom Podcasting Tips - 2006
Predisposed for risk taking? - 2006
Tony Evans preaches - 2006

This entry was posted on Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 10:03 pm and is filed under politics, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.