After all this time I find out that my research tool, Wikipedia, can be written and edited by anyone.

It’s been said history is written by the victors. However, in 2008’s presidential contest, history is increasingly being written, rewritten and argued by the supporters, friends, relatives, and maybe even the staffs of presidential hopefuls.

Every day on Wikipedia, the battle for the 2008 election is fought across the candidates’ pages through a steady flow of additions, deletions, edits, and reverts. A study of three days of changes on the candidates’ pages may not be a predictor of popularity or electability, but it certainly is fascinating in its own right.

In terms of activity, on August 17 the winner in sheer volume of changes in a single day was Mitt Romney, whose main biographical page logged a wearying twenty-eight edits. Internet darling Ron Paul came in second with eighteen changes, while others registered few or no edits.

Many of the changes on any given day in Wikipedia are fairly mundane: typo fixing, formatting adjustments, shifts of information from one section of a page to another. Others are repairs of vandalism, the wildly outrageous statements that are the equivalent of scrawls across a campaign poster and are usually quickly deleted. (It’s a safe bet that “Ron Paul is the new spokesman for Fierce Melon Gatorade” is going to be noticed and taken out pretty quickly.)

In the case of Romney’s busy day, most of the activity involved these kinds of small changes. But two larger stories emerged. One was the appearance of a list of financial controversies related to Bain Capital, the investment firm Romney co-founded. During the day, the list was cut, put back, moved to another section, and cut again. It is currently not part of the page.

The other major story for Romney, that had apparently been percolating for a while, was the question of how much information to include about his wedding. Yes, that’s right: his wedding. Romney had had both a civil ceremony for non-Mormons to attend and a ceremony in the Mormon church, which was only for members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Earlier this had been a whole paragraph, with specifics about guests at both ceremonies; as of now, it’s down to one sentence and everyone seems to agree that’s just right.

The amount of activity on any candidate’s page is also dependent on the news cycle. John Edwards had no changes on August 17th. However, on August 18th, a story broke about his investment in a hedge fund that was involved in foreclosures in New Orleans. His page went through the process of adding this information and fine-tuning it. Initially, it appeared as the vague and negative, “Edwards has attacked sub-prime mortgage lenders. In August, 2007, it was revealed by several news organizations that Edwards profited from foreclosing on subprime lenders by repossessing homes of Katrina victims.” Throughout the day, words and information were added until it became the much more specific and factual, “In August of 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that a portion of the Edwards’ family’s assets were invested in Fortress Investment Group, that had, in turn, invested a portion of its assets in subprime mortgage lenders, some of which had foreclosed on the homes of Hurricane Katrina victims. Upon learning of Fortress’ investments, Edwards divested his funds from the investment group and stated that he would try to help the affected families.” Wikipedia editors are always striving for a “neutral point-of-view” and this type of evolution in breaking news is not uncommon.

Story