Donald Trump is hard to ignore, but could he perhaps be erased?
On Wednesday, Trump’s Wikipedia page was vandalized twice by editors who tried to delete the entry about the billionaire business mogul, reality TV star, and US presidential candidate.
Trump is a magnet for media attention, and has a tendency to court controversy and criticism with brash statements that, well, aren’t too classy.
Since announcing his campaign, Trump has referred to Mexican immigrants as “killers” and “rapists,” and said Senator John McCain – a decorated veteran and a prisoner of war for five years in Vietnam – is “not a war hero.”
We don’t know whether the edits on Wednesday were a form of protest or a practical joke, but Trump’s Wikipedia page was quickly restored – within minutes both times.
According to the page’s revision history, the first vandal blanked the entire page by deleting all the content.
People say a lot of things about Trump, but it’s hard to argue that “nobody cares about him” – on Wikipedia, his page has been viewed over 900,000 times in the last 30 days.
Wikipedia is of course a great example of crowdsourcing knowledge, and anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry – editing by many people can create a more well-rounded story or correct errors, a kind of built-in accountability.
But its open nature makes Wikipedia ripe for abuse such as sock puppetry and vandalism.
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