In 2008, people were wondering who would become John McCain’s running mate for the presidential election. We all know now that it was Sarah Palin. Leading up to the announcement, her page on Wikipedia was the most edited of all candidates, according to TechPresident.com.
Who were editing those pages, and what were they editing? According to Forbes, most of them come from the politicians and their aides, whiting out “controversial information.”
Will the same approach work this time? Can Wikipedia correctly pick Mitt Romney’s running mate for this year’s presidential election?
Apparently, it can. Based on the number of edits, Wikipedia had correctly picked the vice presidential nominee again, which, as we all know now, is Paul Ryan.
That was about a week ago. Paul Ryan’s Wikipedia page had the most edits, followed closely by Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal. Two days after TechPresident.com put up their results, Wikipedia locked pages for all potential candidates from being edited.
No matter, they’ve already correctly picked the winner. I wonder if this approach would work for the next election, now that it’s a well-known process.