During the election campaign a cloud hung over Grant Shapps, the then chairman of the Conservative party. In April, he was accused of editing his own Wikipedia profile and those of other politicians by Richard Symonds, a Wikipedia member of staff and Lib Dem activist. Symonds claimed that Shapps ‘or someone acting on his behalf’ used an anonymous account ‘Contribsx’ to make edits that appeared to be to Shapps’ benefit. But there has been no hard evidence Shapps edited the pages and Symonds has been censured by Wikipedia for his actions.
Now, it transpires that Wikipedia may not have been acting neutrally. Coffee House has been passed an email that was sent around the board of Wikimedia UK, the charity responsible for Wikipedia in Britain. It suggests that the organisation was concerned about protecting its reputation as a politically-neutral charity:
‘We should be glad that Shapps has a pretty safe seat, because if he lost his seat, we would be open to the accusation that the charity had acted in a partisan manner during an election period’
Speaking to Coffee House about the email, Shapps says the whole affair is ‘pretty disreputable stuff’ and described the saga as ‘a rogue politically motivated Wikipedia editor who was able to trump up a front page story during the general election’.
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