Blame Loki

Someone equally mischievous has been "vandalizing" Wikipedia entries about United States congressmen, adding bogus information to the open source encylcopedia. According to a WSJ article,

Someone altered the Wikipedia entry on Sen. Tom Coburn to say that the Oklahoma Republican was voted "most annoying senator" by his peers and used a vulgar term to explain why. An attack on Sen. Robert Byrd added text stating that the West Virginia Democrat, the oldest senator, is "180 years old."

Given the nature of wikis, political supporters were quickly able to fix the errors, and no prolonged "editwar" ensued. The kicker: IP address logs reveal that the pranksters accessed the Wikipedia from within the Senate's own computer network. Said founder Jimmy Wales, "we would hope the House and the Senate would conduct themselves with a little more decorum." Haven't people learned that everything they do on the Internet is being watched?

Update: The Post delves deeper and also reports that the Wiki gurus have blacklisted would-be Capitol Hill editors.