Protest…Not In Melbourne!!

Occupy Melbourne Wiki Page Edited by Australian Authorities

Local council in Australia has suddenly faced a problem after it dealt with a protest movement by editing the movement’s Wikipedia article.

It turned out that Occupy Melbourne’s official Wikipedia article was repeatedly edited by a person who used a City of Melbourne PC to remove contentious words. The experts believe that this move seemed to help re-elect lord mayor Robert Doyle in 2012. The edits in question vandalized the page by removing the word “peacefully” to describe the movement. They also purged references to the council’s alleged involvement in dealing with the protest. In reality, Occupy Melbourne’s protesters were removed from the City Square by over 100 police officers.

In response, the City of Melbourne confirmed that the IP address used to edit the Occupy Melbourne Wikipedia article did belong to it. However, it claimed that it was unaware of any authorization to do that and pointed out that actually anyone could edit Wikipedia page and the council did allow limited personal use of council PCs.

When commenting the issue, Robert Doyle claimed that neither he nor any of his staff made the abovementioned changes to the Wikipedia article. But he still stood by his decision to clear the protesters from the streets of the city. Doyle told the reporters that if he was going to alter the page he would make it to his own entry which has a particular view of those events, which he apparently didn’t like.

In the meanwhile, Melbourne City Labor councillor Richard Foster was concerned that the alterations which removed a reference to the council’s alleged involvement in the dealing with the protest were controversial. However, Robert Doyle claimed that the changes didn’t even warrant an investigation at the council.