I gotthis email this afternoon from someone who apparently reads my blog.
“FYI: Gary Weiss, who has been pretty hard on you and Sharesleuth onhis blog, is fixing to do some heavy editing on your article on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban ). His username(he doesn’t use his real name) is Mantanmoreland. Unless you orsomebody gets on it, you’ll look pretty bad by the time he’s done.”
I hadn’t check out my wiki page in a long time, so i go on there and read some history about myself that never happened, other stuff that was just wrong and found out that I admired some guy named Brian and that I was related to some guy named Adam. Two people I had never heard of in my life.
But I digress.
As I go through making some updates, I get to the part about Sharesleuth.com that was entered by someone with a login of”Mantanmoreland”. Which of course matched what the emailer had suggested to me. As it turns out , this same login name is an author on the Gary Weiss Wikipedia page.
This is whatMantanmoreland wrote:
“In July 2006, Cuban financed creation of [[Sharesleuth.com]], which will publish negative information about publicly traded companies. Cuban will short-sell shares of companies mentioned in Sharesleuth in advance of publication. That has been widely criticized.”
So I edited it to the following:
“In July 2006, Cuban financed creation of Sharesleuth.com, which will set out to uncover fraud and misinformation in publicy traded companies. Cuban’s disclosure that he will take positions in the shares of companies mentioned in Sharesleuth in advance of publication has raised controversy”
Now I thought that would be the end of it. Not a chance.
As you can see from the history, 39 minutes later, here comes our friend MantanMoreland to change it all back. (You can see the change history here).
So Mantanmoreland must have had this on his watchlist, keeping an eye out for me. (Does this person have anything better to do with their time?) and he or she edited my changes quickly:
“Cuban’s has said that he will take positions in the shares of companies mentioned in Sharesleuth in advance of publication. That has been widely criticized “
Criticized vs Controversial. Is it a big difference ? Doesnt matter.
Now little “Wikiwars ” are inconsequential in the big scheme of things.The Wikipediahas a conflict resolution process in place to deal with such matters. But what has happened here leads me to ask a question.
If Mantanmoreland truly is Gary Weiss, is it ethical for a journalist to try to push his point of view on a public document under a pseudonym ?
Wouldn’t an ethical journalist publish his or her name ?
Didnt a journalist get fired or reprimanded for taking sides under a pseudonym on Yahoo Message Boards ?
Is Mantanmoreland the pseudonym of Gary Weiss of http://garyweiss.blogspot.com/
And if it is, how much time do you plan on spending trying to update my wiki page gary ?