Another Congressman in trouble for screwing around on Wikipedia

Over at Blog PI, they've got the latest story of a Member of Congress getting caught trying to screw around with his entry at Wikipedia. This time, it's Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-MN), and the headline says it all - "Gil Gutknecht, Fire Your Internet Strategist":

As the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported late last night, Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R) is the latest member of Congress to be caught red-handed trying to rewrite his own Wikipedia entry. Like the others who edited before him — and got busted before him — Gutknecht wanted to eliminate a reference to a broken campaign promise, and so, brilliantly replaced the section with a few hundred words from Gutknecht’s official bio, thereby also making Wikipedia unwitting plagiarists. What it ended up getting him was a whole new subhead about the incident — not to mention the unflattering Strib coverage.

Gutknecht's Wikipedia site, now reverted back to its original text, is here.

As we wrote four months ago here at P&T, Wikipedia just ain't worth it. We'll repeat what we said then:

Here's the deal -- while it's a tempting target, it really doesn't matter. Do undecided voters visit the Wikipedia sites of candidates? No. All this "warfare" is akin to the lawn-sign wars engaged in by the interns. It's certainly not a prize worth getting fired over. It's not even worth the chance of a negative headline in your candidate's race that makes a campaign manager look like an immature twit.

Every community has rules. You wouldn't go streaking naked through the fancy downtown big-money club wearing only your candidate's bumper stickers. Don't screw around with Wikipedia in nefarious ways.

And yes, it's OK to correct factual errors - but really, seriously, don't get stupid. Rule #1 - don't get fired.