'The War Logs' Most Edited Page on Wikipedia Today

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, “The War Logs” is the most edited page on Wikipedia today, according to Wikirage. The article was created at about 6pm ET yesterday, by a user called BDell555, who identifies himself as a Canadian “economist/financial markets guy.”

Many of the edits the article has been receiving concern the inclusion of links to the original documents over on the Wikileaks site. Starting at about 10am ET today, an unidentified user has been determinedly removing the links, first calling them “illegal information,” then, as the links were replaced by other users, saying they were doing so “at the request of President Obama,” then saying the links constituted “copyright infringement.”

The debate has moved over to the article’s “Discussion” page, where a user called Figureofnine asserted: “The Wikileaks documents are widely available, and removing it from Wikipedia would accomplish nothing.” The anonymous user replied: “Even the New York Times refrained from publishing everything. Wikipedia may be one of the easiest sites to access this information for those with little familiarity with the internet.” Another user called Sstrader brought up the publication of the Pentagon Papers and added “This isn’t China. There’s no need to ‘protect’ people from otherwise readily available information.” The anonymous user replied: “The Vietnam war was over before wikipedia was created so including the Pentagon Papers on wikipedia does not put troops in danger.” Yet another user called Shiftchange replied: “We have to be neutral, so even if linking to the material put troops in harms way, it isn’t a factor we should consider…. We aren’t here to consider foreign policy or to be discreet or to take sides, we are here to inform.”

Meanwhile, the article on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is the 24th most edited page, after articles on singer Meat Loaf, the film Salt, and an article on BBC show Top Gear’s test track.

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