Some of the LaRouche insertions are transparent rubbish, Tony, but some not. I only cited the Star Wars example because it was an obvious one. Less obvious examples of propaganda are: The LaRouche movement claims the only reason LaRouche has a bad name is that a series of meetings took place in the 80s between intelligence officers and journalists in order to plan a "Get LaRouche" black operation, which resulted in a barrage of negative media reports about him. There's no evidence other than LaRouche claims that this campaign existed. The LaRouche editors tried to edit this information into the LaRouche articles. Of course, they are allowed to do that because the pages are about LaRouche and his beliefs, but they expanded on it and inserted details that were absurd and links which seemed to verify it. A group of editors opposed them, so the LaRouche editors created a new page about these meetings and inserted the information there instead, and linked to it from the LaRouche page.
Another tactic that LaRouche has is to sign up respectable people to be officers or members of his organization. Why these people agree to become involved is beyond me, but some do. The LaRouche editors then create Wikipedia pages about these people, who would otherwise not be written about, extol their virtues, and link to them from the LaRouche pages, thereby creating the impression to the casual, non-LaRouche expert that "Hey, this LaRouche guy can't be all bad. Look at how nice some of his officers are."
The only reason this stuff hasn't spread like wildfire throughout Wikipedia is because a number of editors have opposed them since they first started last May (not always the same group of editors, because editors get worn out and give up) and so the material is reasonably contained. But it's an exhausting job. If you want to join in, you are more than welcome, because one or two of us could do with a break.
Slim
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:59:47 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
So what? It's transparent rubbish. <snip> Let them quote their own sources forever. The minute they pretend an external source endorses this nonsense, politely correct the edit. You could manage this group of pages with one eye shut.