[WikiEN-l] Journalist admits socking on Wikipedia

[Andrew Lih]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 11:50 AM, Phil Nash <phnash at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I do see admissions of COI, POV edits, and BLP vandalism, all of which
could
> be expected from a newbie editor and have almost certainly been rectified
by
> now.
>
> He doesn't mention any sanctions for these edits, and they are so run of
the
> mill that I can't even identify his username from any of the histories.
>
> Storm in a teacup?

The socking isn't what's the problem.

And this is not a "newbie editor" mistake. He admits malice. His words:

"I continued to edit my own Wikipedia entry and some other people’s too. I
took out nasty passages about people I admire – like Polly Toynbee, George
Monbiot, Deborah Orr and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I factually corrected some
other entries about other people. But in a few instances,* I edited the
entries of people I had clashed with in ways that were juvenile or
malicious: I called one of them anti-Semitic and homophobic, and the other a
drunk. I am mortified to have done this*, because it breaches the most basic
ethical rule: don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. I
apologise to the latter group unreservedly and totally."

-Andrew