Wikipedia scrubs Obama eligibility

Wikipedia scrubs Obama eligibility

www.wnd.com

Wikipedia, the online "free encyclopedia" mega-site written and edited entirely by its users, has been deleting within minutes any mention of eligibility issues surrounding Barack Obama's presidency, with administrators kicking off anyone who writes about the subject, WND has learned.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Move along folks, no political influence to see here.
No massive scale good cop bad cop routine being played here.
There are no dots to connect.

The tele-prompter has spoken.

What other than fear of the truth would prompt such censorship? Every leader has faults and, barring excesses, most people know and accept this.

I'm cynical to begin with so this only goes to undermine what little trust I had in Wikipedia.

www.wnd.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

It's a sad day when user-driven infromation exchange is fundamentally repressed.

Whether there is any validity to the questions arising from the metoric ascension of President Obama is being rendered a forbidden question.

I don't have any personal connection to the issue, which is to say, other than defending the right to ask the question and demand redress of the issue, I have no inclination to deny that he is our duly innaugurated President.

But this is really a blow to what was on it's way to becoming a meaningful collection of information, available to all netizens.

or how when john mccains elegibility issues were deleted within minutes of being posted.

Can this be independently verified? ifo so then the question we have to ask is who is deleting the words and why?

Wikipedia is supposed to function like an encyclopedia, meaning it's content must be as neutral & verifiable as possible.

I'm guessing this is why it's deleted...

Maybe there is some concerted effort to continually cause disruption just to make a point. Sound familiar?

You are right about the news being repressed but it was the same when Mr I.Q. was running the country before. It seems you can't get any real news in this country without it being OKed by the president or his staff. The free speak is just another right that is now gone!

reply to post by franspeakfree


Please describe your perception of independent.
I find this report to be independent for the fact that it monitored wikipedia and saved deleted entries as they happened.

reply to post by MrVertigo


Addressing the "neutral" aspect of an encylopedia.
Under the critics section of the previous presidents wikipage are allegations of political favoritism and alcohol abuse.
Wikipedia is far from neutral within its own rules and that is what gives it the appeal of a "truthful" journal of history.

Gosh, there's a huge entry on it right here:

Wikipedia Barack Obama Citizenship Conspiracy Theory

Did anyone check it out for themselves???

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


The article is referring to anything that is posted on the Barack Obama page.

The conspiracy angle has an entry all its own.

Big fuss over nothing by WND.

OK, thanks for the Wiki link. Of course, anything tagged "conspiracy theory" has been marginalized these days. It is an automatic discredit.
To see factual information being censored is the issue here.

Originally posted by skeptic1
The article is referring to anything that is posted on the Barack Obama page.

Oh, for Christ's sake! I didn't even read the article. Thanks for explaining that. It makes total sense that a conspiracy theory about our president wouldn't be listed on his official page.

Bush is the same way. He has his page, then other wiki pages for the conspiracies surrounding him.

People need to get a life, I think.

Still, for an encyclopedia that prides itself on being user generated, to declare certain issues to be "conspiracy" shows questionable judgment, and to declare something Conspiracy Theory is a judgment in itself. If we wanted only the official story, we could read old fashioned encyclopedias.

Do entries for other presidents or political figures (because I seem to remember this went on during the campaign too) get scrubbed of questions, issues?

It's going to be really difficult for anyone to ever write a biography of this man if one is not allowed to mention his more questionable friends and mentors over the years since most of his associates have been questionable. (ok, that's a judgment). I wonder who decides which people and issues get to be mentioned and which are scrubbed. Now I'm curious. I'd better go to wikipedia and see what IS there.

Originally posted by earlywatcher
Still, for an encyclopedia that prides itself on being user generated, to declare certain issues to be "conspiracy" shows questionable judgment, and to declare something Conspiracy Theory is a judgment in itself.

Because it's user generated, everyone can edit it, there has to be some guidelines and rules on what goes where.

As Benevolent Heretic pointed out, there's a whole wikipedia page dedicated just to Barack Obama citizenship conspiracies.

If we wanted only the official story, we could read old fashioned encyclopedias.

Wikipedia is free, no one is forcing you to read it.

Yes, go read old fashioned encyclopedias and then let us know how many Barack Obama citizenship conspiracies are on them.

I wonder who decides which people and issues get to be mentioned and which are scrubbed. Now I'm curious. I'd better go to wikipedia and see what IS there.

Yes, perhaps you should go there, actually find out how things work and why, instead of talking about stuff you know nothing about and already making up a conspiracy out of it.

reply to post by Vitres DeLaver


OH you can't trust anything, the News, the history books, the internet, the vast amount if information coming at us at breakneck speed, yet what do you trust?

I think after Obama has served his use to his puppet-masters and starts to become unpopular to the public, this issue will be brought forward to end his career. From what I remember the main issue was not even his birth certificate (although that's a big deal), it was the fact that his mother had not been in the country long enough when he was born for him to be considered a natural born citizen under the laws present when he was born.
Now there has been military personal refusing to follow his orders for this same reason. This issue has clearly not been settled, just pushed to the back for the time being.

P.s. I just thought I'd add that I am non-partisan, in fact there is strong evidence that John McCain was not even eligible to be president for the same reasons as Obama.

reply to post by converge


the wikipedia entry does make the concession of referring to the Hawaiin birth certificate but nothing about the questions surrounding its legitimacy or whether obama was an Indonesian citizen who traveled as Barry Soetoro when a college student to Pakistan on that Indonesian passport (since Americans could not travel there), whether he attended Occidental College as a foreign student (on funds for foreign students). These questions have been raised in numerous lawsuits but aren't even mentioned.

John McCain's entry contains all sorts of legitimate criticism, and here's what they say about the facts surrounding his birth in Panama.

McCain, having been born in the (Panama) Canal Zone, if elected would have become the first president who was born outside the current 50 states. This raised a potential legal issue, since the United States Constitution requires the president to be a natural-born citizen of the United States. A bipartisan legal review[213] and a unanimous but non-binding Senate resolution[214] both concluded that he is a natural-born citizen, but the matter is still a subject of some legal controversy.[215]

wikepedia entry for John McCain

The scrubbing of the obama wikipedia entry was a story I followed regularly during the presidential campaign but not since then, until now. It surprises me a bit that it's still going on. Nothing is going to dislodge him from the presidency at this point. Why bother to distance himself from people like Rev Wright even now.

He was baptized at the Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988 and was an active member there for two decades.[198][199] Obama resigned from Trinity during the Presidential campaign after controversial statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright became public.[200]

Wikipedia entry for Barack Obama
That sounds like he barely knew the fellow rather than the close relationship we know about, even naming one of his books after one of Wright's sermons.

My reference to traditionally published encyclopedias had to do with the fact that the publisher chooses what goes in and what is left out. I was a book publisher for a number of years so I know this very well. It has to do with targeting a specific market, whether it be libraries or schools or science fiction fans or scientists or mystery readers or whatever. My point about wikipedia was that the same constraints don't apply. Of course there must be rules but ideally those should apply to all entries equally. If the entries are touted as user generated then they should reflect input from all users, including those who questioned the legitimacy of this candidate.

reply to post by Trauma


i think the evidence against mccain is unfounded, he was not born inside the united states but on a military base in the panama canal zone, both parent serving the armed forces of the United States, i think this is unfair to claim a person of this circumstance not a natural born citizen.

These are not the same reasons or circumstances as b.o.

[edit on 9-3-2009 by XD9611]