Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Oh, and Rob Portman looks...

...like he'll be Mitt Romney's running mate after all. Not only is the Ohio senator pulling away on Intrade, but he's also leading in the number of recent changes to his Wikipedia page. Huh? 

From CNN (my emphasis):

In the past, Wikipedia activity has spiked for vice presidential picks the day before an official announcement was made. In 2008, hours before Republican candidate John McCain announced his vice presidential choice, Sarah Palin's Wikipedia page was getting a heavy edit. According to The Washington Post, the then-Alaska governor's page was changed 68 times the day before the announcement. In the 24 hours leading up to Obama's running mate announcement, Joe Biden's page was edited 40 times.
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On Monday, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan had the most changes with 10, but on Tuesday, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman took the lead with 16 changes made by a Wikipedia user called River8009. The anonymous user deleted a section on controversies, a paragraph about NAFTA and various criticisms of Portman. When the seemingly biased edits were noticed, other Wikipedia users acted to revert the changes and lock the page to prevent more tweaks. River8009 was flagged by Wikipedia for having a "possible conflict of interest."

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