The New Statesman’s Will Lloyd has written a profile this week on Rory Stewart which contains an entertaining revelation. It turns out when Stewart isn’t busy agreeing with everything Alastair Campbell says on their centrist dad podcast, he’s also something of a Wikipedia scholar. Lloyd did some digging and discovered an account named “Chezza88” had made a series of edits to Rory’s own profile in recent years, including a useful new section on The Rest is Politics….
When confronted, Stewart claimed:
“That account has sometimes been used by me – I wrote my father’s entry – and inserted recent stuff about Rest Is Politics – it was however also heavily used by parliamentary office, leadership and London Campaign teams (and also at one point by mother!).”
Impressive to have those teams still edit his page when he lost the Tory whip a year before, and no longer had an MP’s staff…
According to Lloyd, later on over the phone, Rory apparently seemed “rattled” by the revelation, adding “I hope there’s nothing really weird or horrible there.” Don’t worry Rory, Chezza88 has been on the case…
Wales was no match for Isabel…
Stella Creasy has been the victim of online trolls once again, this time from pranksters targeting her Wikipedia entry. Poor old Stella’s online biography was amended to read that she is partial to trips to Morocco, where she enjoys “belly dancing and hashish”.
Guido has never seen her on his previous belly dancing and hashish jaunts to North Africa.
They also amended her religious status to “Islam“:
Stella is quick to point out that she couldn’t possibly have belly danced in Morocco because she’s afraid of flying. She also confirmed she was not a Muslim, which would apparently make Christmas with her mum awkward. So who was responsible?
A cursory IP lookup revealed Stella’s trolls to be boffins at Cambridge University:
This isn’t the first time the Walthamstow MP has suffered from Wikipedia trolls, with her bio also changed in December following the vote on Syria to state: “Stella Judith Creasy is a British Labour Co-operative politician and warmonger… who voted to start a murderous war on Syrian children”. Perhaps Momentum’s Cambridge division have been getting over-excited…
The ominous sounding ArbCom, Wikipedia’s arbitration committee – a sort of geek court – has stripped the Wikipedia administrator who alleged to the Guardian that Grant Shapps had a sockpuppet account, of all his Wikipedia editor privileges. A geek death sentence…
ArbCom ruled that Richard Symonds, the administrator in question, had abused his CheckUser privileges, an app which allows Wikipedia administrators to check the IP address and thus physical location associated with a specific Wikipedia account. By not sharing his findings with the Wikipedia community and running straight to the press, Symonds created the “appearance” that he was using his the CheckUser tool to “exert political or social control“.
The committee also found that “no evidence” turned up by Symonds or by them definitively connected the supposed ‘Grant Shapps sockpuppet account’ with Grant Shapps himself or anyone else. Shapps may feel justice has come too late..
Last year, Labour candidate Louise Baldock said she would no longer enlist the support of a schoolteacher banned for life after having sexual relations with a 14 year old boy. Andrew Duffell was found guilty of “unacceptable professional conduct” and bringing his profession “into disrepute” after engaging in a sex act with the child in a Teesside field. But Baldock washing her hands of Duffell hasn’t stopped him from whitewashing negative stories from her Wikipedia page.
Wikipedia’s records show that an account based in Baldock’s constituency named ‘Andrewww2015’ has been removing unflattering information about her. ‘Andrewww2015’ was until recently called ‘Andrew Duffell’. And the ‘Andrewww2015’ username is the same as that used by Duffell on other social media accounts.
He has used the account in the last few weeks to remove unflattering information about Baldock, including that she had received money from Tony Blair:
And edited references to Baldock winning her selection after being on an all-women shortlist.
Baldock insists “the most he ever did was deliver a few leaflets” and he “has no association with me or my campaign”. At least ContribSX wasn’t a paedo…
UPDATE 21 January, 2016: Andrew Duffell has put in a copyright claim for a selfie picture (now removed) showing him without a top. His weedy skinny frame is the least thing of which he should be ashamed…
Ouch…
