D.C. Democrat Accused of Censoring Scandals on His Own Wikipedia Page

Summer recess may be underway
for the Washington, D.C. City Council, but Councilman Jack Evans, a
Democrat, is hard at work improving his own image. Or, that’s what
some Wikipedia editors allege. They say that Evans, or someone
posing as him, has been scrubbing negative information about
himself from his Wikipedia page.

A user with the name “EvansJack1” made about
35 changes in a roughly 24-hour period between Wednesday and
Thursday last week. EvansJack1 removed unflattering bits of
history,
including “records that show that Evans used
nearly $136,000
of constituent money to purchase sporting event
tickets over the last decade,” and the claim that he once
called a journalist “a fucking idiot.” The user also censored the
fact that Evans at some point had a live in nanny. All of the
information has been restored.

Is it really Jack Evans, though? When questioned by Wikipedia
moderators about a potential
conflict of interest, the individual added the biographical
note “I am the longest serving Councilmember in dc history. I have
been a leader in revitalizing our city and have great
accomplishment, none of which are mentioned. Just a lot of
inaccurate accusations.” He also gave Evans’ personal phone number
to a Wikipedia moderator.

These don’t necessarily confirm that Evans is behind the stunt,
but his office wouldn’t confirm or deny it either when
questioned by the Washington City Paper. For what it’s
worth, EvansJack1 doesn’t care for the City Paper. He
describes it as a “satire” news organization that cannot be trusted
for honest information about Evans, and that Wikipedia is “insane”
for allowing it to be cited.

Wikipedia placed a 48-hour block on EvansJack1 after the string
of changes.

If Evans isn’t behind this stunt, it seems like a cunning plot
to discredit him as an egotist with a bad past. If Evans is behind
it, he has fallen for what so many other egotists with bad pasts
have: the Streisand Effect, which says that the more someone tries
to hide something from the Internet,
the more the Internet will be titillated, and the people will
find out and talk about it.

The real Evans is also currently in hot water for his
unpaid parking tickets in the city.

This isn’t even the first Washington-Wikipedia scandal this
month. As Reason recently noted, someone with access to
Congressional IP addresses has been spending
so much time vandalizing Wikipedia – on pages ranging from
Bradley Manning, to the Cato Institute, to Justin Amash, and much
more – that the site felt compelled to ban all Congressional IP
addresses from making changes for a short while. Of course, there’s

a Wikipedia page all about the history of Congressional edits
of Wikipedia pages.