Senator Huppenthal responds to my Wikipedia-editing report.

Some interesting fallout following my post last week on Arizona State Senator John Huppenthal's editing Wikipedia articles to cast himself in a glowing light, delete embarrassing facts about himself and friends and skew articles on policy issues on which he has been working:

1. A number of other Arizona blogs linked to the post, as we bloggers are wont to do.

2. Fellow blogger Zelph presented the story on Air America's Saturday segment of "Truth To Power". They were very complimentary to the blog (thanks, folks). I also called in and we spoke briefly about the post. The segment was aired nationwide.

3. Bloggers in other states in the country have now linked to the post. The story is now getting hits from a rather broad region across the US and into Canada. One link today came from Washington D.C., which raised an eyebrow. :)

4. Word of the story has reached back to Wikipedia, which has now inserted an "Autobiography" tag into Senator Huppenthal's entry. Huppenthal's entry now has the following text featured prominently at the beginning:

This article is an autobiography, and may not conform to Wikipedia's NPOV policy.
Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.

The talk page in question has a reference and link to my specific blog entry. It would appear that the Precinct 134 Blog's story is now a permanent part of Huppenthal's autobiography on Wikipedia.

5. Senator Huppenthal has responded to me by email.

I am assuming that an email from a State Senator in response to a publicly posted story is not off the record if it doesn't explicitly say so, so I'm sharing the Senator's short response here:

Hey George, the campaign is over. I am doing policy work.

I am well aware that I leave my IPO address on all of my wikipedia postings. Wikipedia has an option for posting anonymously. I chose not to do that. That's the honest man's trademark. He leaves his signature.

Which of my postings is false? I am willing to change them.

John Huppenthal

I'm not going to go too far with the anonymity thing, because it's patently ridiculous that someone's IP address is anything like leaving their signature on an article. Indeed, if Senator Huppenthal wanted to leave his signature on the article and make it clear that he wrote it, he could have easily referenced himself as a source for much of the purple prose in his own entry, for example.

What's more, the only way to have your IP number suppressed from a Wikipedia edit is to actually register an account with Wikipedia. Some might argue that would be even less anonymous, as it would tie your account name to any edits you made REGARDLESS of which computer (or IP) you were editing from.

Nevertheless, as for editing one's own Wikipedia entry so it reads "like an advertisement" glowingly extolling your praises, well, that's just tacky and in bad taste, as well as being fundamentally against the stated protocols for Wikipedia's neutral point of view (NPOV).

Far more importantly, though, Senator Huppenthal's response blatantly ignores the unethical nature of deleting from a publicly maintained database such information that is true but embarrassing to him or his political allies.

Deleting true information so as to suppress it from public knowledge is a kind of falsehood, Senator. Particularly when done by someone such as yourself, charged with maintaining the public trust. That's why it's unethical. Please tell me that fundamental ethical distinction is not actually lost on you.

[Update: The saga continues as a Huppenthal partisan using a newly created account repeatedly vandalizes Wikipedia and is permanently blocked as a result.]