Wikipedia Wars: The Opening Salvo
A student-worker at Fairleigh Dickinson illustrates the least harmful style of conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia
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On August 12, 2013, user Mfuzia was banned from editing Wikipedia.
His fate was sealed two months earlier when he entered into an edit war with user Nstrauss over the article for the court case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, a byzantine and momentous Supreme Court case about the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
Eighteen days before the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the case, Mfuzia added a paragraph about public opinion polling on the case conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s (FDU) survey group, PublicMind1. Nstrauss promptly removed Mfuzia’s contributions, and the two went back and forth adding and deleting the snippet in an old fashioned edit war.
Mfuzia’s continued reversions of Nstrauss’ deletions must have pushed Nstrauss over the edge, as two days later, Nstraus…
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