Today’s Winston Smith: William Connolley

William Connolley: Today's Winston Smith

 Life imitating art, but it’s actually a bit scarier than the latest movie.  As some of us have suspected for quite some time, it appears there is a virtual army of “Winston Smiths” on Wikipedia that make sure that all articles pertaining to climate change follow the party line.  

Laurence Solomon is on this, and has discovered quite a lot.   

Connolley is in the leaked CRU emails as well:  1167961271.txt 1168022320.txt  

Even my kids’ teachers in middle school wouldn’t let them use Wikipedia as a source.  How about the masses?  Lesson:  Don’t believe everything you read.  

Learn more about Winston Smith here. And yes, the irony is intentional. Wikipedia is fine for basic facts on topics without politics or controversy (though often the information is incomplete and inaccurate at best).  For the real untainted information on Winston Smith, read the novel 1984.  

Update December 27, 2009:  James Delingpole at the Telegraph UK as been on this topic as well.  

Update 2, December 27, 2009: They’re still at it, trying to delete the “Climategate” page:  

Climategate scandal   

Climategate slated for deletion at Wikipedia?

Looks like Connolley and his band of merry climate alarmists are still at work!  

As an aside, Bing.com currently shows 50,700,000 hits for “Climategate”, while Google.com shows 4,230,000 hits.  Does Connolley have friends there as well?  

Hmm…content for another post? 

Update 3, December 28, 2009:  The Climategate page has been deleted. The link above (repeated here: Climategate scandal) now redirects to another Wikipedia page.  

Winston Smith would be proud. 

Link to Wikipedia edit page below (hat tip to magicjava who has been following this activity on Wikipedia): 

Climategate deleted on Wikipedia

Update January 2, 2010: 

Connolley seems to spend a lot of time editing on Wikipedia: 

Connolley’s edits on Wikipedia Propagandapdedia

What does he do in his spare time?