Adam Carr's editing challenged by Australian MPs
Wikipedia biographies of politicians have made the news again, this time in Australia with a story in the Sunday Herald Sun. In a change from previous incidents, most of which focused on edits by unregistered users that were traced back to political staff, the editor involved has been known for some time.
The article focused on the work of Adam Carr, a long-time editor who is also a staffer for Australian Labor MP Michael Danby. In his Wikipedia editing, Carr has been open about his identity, and his employer has been known to a number of people and was previously reported in the Signpost. His user page does not address it directly, but does identify him as a member of the Australian Labor Party.
The Herald Sun story, by Lincoln Wright, was accompanied by the headline, "Liberals hit back at Wikipedia 'dirt' file", suggesting apparently that Carr had been targeting Labor's primary rivals, the Liberal Party of Australia. In reality, the article focused almost entirely on fellow Labor Party members, indicating that this was more of an internal party dispute. Julia Irwin, a Labor MP whose article notes some controversial comments of hers that brought criticism from Danby, was the person quoted as saying that Carr was "getting dirt on people". Wright also reported that Jennie George, another Labor MP, had complained to party Whip Roger Price as well.
In contrast and despite the headline, nobody from the Liberal Party was quoted on the record with any complaints about Carr's work. Two Wikipedia articles about Liberal politicians, Peter Costello and Alexander Downer, were cited as having been edited by Carr, but nothing was said to indicate that his edits were improper.
As a result of these complaints, Price reportedly warned Danby that he should, as the reporter put it, "rein in" Carr. It was not immediately clear when the complaints were made or any warning given. According to Robert Merkel, another long-time Wikipedia editor from Australia, Carr curtailed his editing of articles about Australian politicians after the publicity surrounding US congressional staffer edits in January. Carr is a prolific editor who edits a wide range of topics, but for Australian politicians his substantive work seems to have been directed more to talk pages recently; he has, however, reverted some edits or made changes to things like categories directly on articles, including Michael Danby, since then.
Carr's response to the story was to dismiss it as "a plain and simple smear-job". He said the Herald Sun showed no interest in reporting the real facts involved and added, "I have of course not compiled "dirt files" on anyone." A number of other editors on the Australian Wikipedians' notice board also commented that the claims had no relationship to the work Carr has done on Wikipedia.
Discuss this story
Background discussion from Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions:
Allegations Wikipedia was used in a dirt file for Australian Polticians - news.com.au, The Australian.
Liberals hit back at Wikipedia 'dirt' file Will most likely be in the Australian on Monday morning, since news.com.au is the newslimited papers' page. Iorek85 00:25, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To take another example, Carr wrote the initial version of Alexander Downer here. Carr was a relatively new contributor at that stage, and Wikipedia's standards for neutrality and sourcing have been raised since that time. However, while the article makes some judgement calls (for instance stating that he was no match for Keating - which is hardly unfair, because he was slaughtered politically by the bloke), it was in no way a hatchet job. It praises Downer as an "effective" Foriegn Minister. His most recent edit was a grammatical one. He's also corrected factual errors that have been introduced, removed an amusing but non-neutral judgement on his time, added a photo. The only edit that could possibly be construed as anti-Downer is this one, where along with removing this bit:
he also replaced
with:
Personally, I think that was a perfectly reasonable way of putting things - it was completely factually accurate. However, the current version has been edited a bit through the normal Wikipedia editing process to read:
You might also see the comments on the relevant discussion page. Editor Michael states that, while he believes there's a bit of a left-wing bias in articles on Australian politicians, Carr is "not at fault (as far as I can tell)". --Robert Merkel 04:38, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, Adam has made all his edits under his own name. If he wanted engage in partisan editing, it would be trivial for him to edit from his home machine under a pseudonym. He has not done so. --Robert Merkel 04:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One further point, the article appeared in the Sunday Herald Sun. --Robert Merkel 04:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The newspaper article has been noted by the inquirer, which gives the positive coverage we've come to know and love... Andjam 08:51, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestion for article revision
Michael Snow, regarding the reference to Adam Carr's revert on Michael Danby, I suggest that you mention in the article that the edit served to revert vandalism to the article by the now indefinitely blocked LaRouche editor Cognition (talk · contribs) [1]. By adding that context, it'll be more clear that Adam Carr was rolling back vandalism to help Wikipedia, not to push a political line. 172 | Talk 09:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]