The Man Who Guards Clinton's Wikipedia Entry 395
Timothy found a profile in The New Republic of Jonathan Schilling, a 53-year-old software developer from New Jersey who works to keep Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia entry clean and fair throughout the election season. "After he started editing her page in June 2005, Schilling became consumed with trying to capture her uncomfortable place in American culture, researching and writing a whole section on how she polarizes the public... [T]he attacks on Hillary's page mainly take the form of crude vandalism... It's different on Obama's page, where the fans — no surprise — are more enthusiastic, the haters are more intelligent, and the arguments reflect the fact that Obama himself is still a work under construction... The bitterness of the fights on Obama's page could be taken as a bad sign for the candidate. But it may actually be Hillary's page that contains the more troubling omens. Few, if any, Hillary defenders are standing watch besides Schilling. In recent days, the vaguely deserted air of a de-gentrifying neighborhood has settled over her page..."
Losing my faith in politics (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just a property of wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
Just for a laugh, check how often pages on completely neutral and uncontroversial subjects are vandalized.
The Carrot (vegetable)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carrot&action=history [wikipedia.org]
Just in the past week:
- Replacing the entire page with "carrots cause wicked diarrhea"
- Replacing paragraph headers with "==Uses== (I LOVE NICK JONAS)
Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is that bitter mudslinging is good for the process in some ways -- the First Amendment allows us to talk trash about the political candidates and some might be true, some not, but in the end, the real truth usually surfaces.
Re:Original research? (Score:5, Interesting)
"At the same time, he also believes Hillary the woman is widely misunderstood. "One of the things I've tried to get across in the article was how much people were impressed by her before she got married to Bill," he says."
Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:5, Interesting)
So yeah considering Wikipedia as some kind of "omen" of general consensus among voters just makes me think of the jokes (from SNL i think?) around when WP was created like: "Wikipedia this July will celebrate America's 600th anniversary of independence thanks to General Hello Kitty's heroic strategies in the war with China."
Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:3, Interesting)
Bashing one's opponent with truths, exaggerations and falsehoods has been the stuff of democracries, republics and political processes since the beginning....
"The Man" who guards clinton's wiki (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:2, Interesting)
OT comment on her body language (Score:5, Interesting)
I finally decided to watch one of her speeches the other night and discovered that she has an amazingly obvious tell. If you pay attention to her head motion you sill see that every time she make an affirmative statement she nods her head (as if to agree with herself). Contrary, every time she make a negative statement she shakes her head from side to side. There is also a diagonal gesture to accompany the ambiguous statements as well. She does this for every fact that she speaks, however if you watch her head during her declaratory statements, she does the same thing, but these are the promises she is supposed to be making and she will actually show which ones she really believes in. For instance at one point she made a statement to the effect that
When I watched her speech and payed attention to her body language, almost all the "good" parts (IMNSHO) are qualified as negative or ambiguous and all the self serving political promises are affirmative. If anyone else cares to post some specific examples that lay out what her real intentions are I would gladly like to see them.
Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Self-appointed dictator? (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance looking at John McCain, there is some small mention of the Keating Five but it's limited to simply saying "He survived it", Which is interesting considering it is probably the biggest blight on his career. It doesn't even acknowledge the lessons he learned from that, which one can either see as smart politics, or cynicism. That being, when caught with your hand in the cookie jar, attack the makers of cookies. aka his "Maverick" quest for political reform.
Or if you want to get into games of political gotcha. There is no mention at all of his quotes on not knowing anything about the economy, or wanting us to stay in Iraq for 100 years.
Whether criticism is fair or not is entirely dependent upon your biases.
Re:Typical /. troll (Score:1, Interesting)
Truth = Faith. Faith = Divine Trust. Divine Trust *requires* NO proof, therefore Truth = No proof.
Scientists and those who tend to follow the scientific method believe Truth = Proof (replicatable processes.)
All I'm saying is that to tell a religious person to prove their philosophy is like telling a scientists to believe his experiment works just because it does. I don't believe the two communities will ever truly see eye-to-eye, but then again variety is the spice of life!
--beckerist
Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:5, Interesting)
As you say above, he's sold out to get the nomination.
Now that he has the nomination, I'd expect him to return to his 2000 persona - by far the most sensible Republican that I can remember (though Bush Senior wasn't too bad - he just upset the pro-Israel lobby by threatening to cut subsidies if they didn't stop illegal settlements).
All I can say from a British standpoint is that we certainly would prefer it if you didn't elect Hilary ;P
Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:2, Interesting)
Obama is intelligent and very slick. After listening to G.W. speak for nearly 8 years now, it's no wonder Americans like what he says.
But I can't vote for him because he is just so far away from me on the issues. He supports universal health care (though his stance is still better than Hillary's), he's anti-gun, supports giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses, he's pro-choice and voted against banning partial-birth abortion, wants to raise income and capital gains taxes... I could go on, but you get the idea.
I don't know why McCain's camp never mentions this.
Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't commit one and you'll never have that problem.
Re:Losing my faith in politics (Score:3, Interesting)
May I give you an observation?
You say South Koreans prefer having Americans there, rather than being invaded, and that Germans are happy to have you even if you're not needed "as much as it used to" (which I read as still needed, just not as much). And then you go on about your "job" in Iraq, whatever that is. I didn't really get that part, I blame that on my poor English.
I won't argue the merits of those statements --- I mildly disagree with you, more strongly on the notion that you have any "job" in Iraq whatsoever, but that's not the point I want to make. I want you to note the underlying assumption in these statements, because I'm not sure you are aware you're making it. It is that other countries can't defend themselves, or manage their own affairs, without your "help". It's making you sound like a really annoying and arrogant prick.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't mean to sound ungrateful or anything, I think we all know how worthy and helpful America has been, and still is. I'm sure South Koreans and Germans like you there. I mean, who doesn't like a friend who comes through when needed? When you ask for help to fix something at your place, and this friend comes over and bears the grunt with you... man, that's the kind of guy we all like to share a beer with afterwards, and help back whenever we can.
When that friend stays in your house for days, and weeks, and months, in case you need their help again... well, it's not that great, to be honest with you. But c'mon, he's a good friend, you have a spare room, he chips in for the rent. But when the guy starts crowing about how you need him there to fix your problems, with the underlying assumption of how great he is and how useless you are... ah crap, we're friends and everything, but that shit is annoying. And I mean: Really. Annoying.
And when the guy starts picking fights with everyone, owes money all over the town, and even has a booze and drugs problem that's starting to make it really embarrasing to hang around with him... that's probably when you start having second thoughts about this friendship, no mather how helpful he's been in the past. But let's not get carried away with the metaphor.
All I'm saying is, you may wan't to think about this if you're noticing some friends seem less than thrilled with you recently. This can probably be phrased as, "buddy, take a hint, please".
That is all. Carry on.
Dismissed might be a bit of overstatement (Score:2, Interesting)
This doesn't really hold with the indisputable fact that the Democrats have controlled the House since the 2006 election. It's impossible to claim they have been dismissed while being in control of one of the most powerful institutions in the world, unless you're trying to destroy your own credibility.
And your entire post is one large Tu quoque argument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque [wikipedia.org]
If you're going to get upset about the "debacles of the last seven years" you need to lay blame where it belongs, and you haven't.