(Wisconsin) Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley has been quietly editing her own Wikipedia page

3 years ago by MicroWave to c/news

Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley was scolded by a Wikipedia editor this month for her heavy editing of her own biography on the online encyclopedia.

Last week, a person with the Twitter handle @arizonasunblock from Tampa, Florida, noticed that Bradley, who has been on the high court since 2015, appeared to make major changes to her Wikipedia biography earlier this year.

MicroWave 170 points 3 years ago
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Nougat 125 points 3 years ago

"It's so unfair that my own words can be written down for posterity!"

Tell me she doesn't know that just because you've edited a Wikipedia page, that the previous version still exists, and is likely to draw attention and discussion because of your edits.

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Silverseren 48 points 3 years ago

And is super easy to revert to the prior version too. It's basically two clicks to make it happen. And then have an admin protect the page to only allow established editors so randos can't do this with just an IP address again.

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Nougat 5 points 3 years ago

Just in case she happened to read my comment, I didn't want to use the word "revert" in order to avoid confusion.

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JDubbleu 25 points 3 years ago

I love too that she mentioned, "REAL OPINIONS" as if those are more valid than the exact words she said.

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antizero99 7 points 3 years ago

It said "Actual Opinion" not "Real Opinions".

I'm pretty sure opinion doesn't mean what you think it does. When a judge writes up an opinion it's a bit stronger than me saying what I do or don't like or how I feel about something. Same as between scientific theory and the other definition.

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grue 5 points 3 years ago

Her judicial opinions are the exact words she wrote, though.

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BettyWhiteInHD 60 points 3 years ago
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Maajmaaj 34 points 3 years ago
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thefartographer 12 points 3 years ago

Oh shit! Maajmaaj is offering free fistings! Sign up before Lindsey Graham wears their arm out

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Maajmaaj 9 points 3 years ago
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FuglyDuck 7 points 3 years ago

Thomas and that other guy in florida that helped craft the new educational standards with comments like "[slaves] learned new skills they could use for personal gain..." make me wonder why the hell america hasn't already collapsed in on itself already

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BettyWhiteInHD 4 points 3 years ago
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Blakerboy777 -1 points 3 years ago

I can't comment on the use of "Uncle Tom" specifically.

But we ought not to use insults like that ever. By using them on people who "deserve it", we are basically saying these terrible things are true, but we usually don't say them because it's rude. A better way to think is that we don't use discriminatory insults/slurs because the hatred they represent is completely without merit.

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grue 2 points 3 years ago

because I thought I would get banned

Luckily, this isn't Reddit.

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Maajmaaj 3 points 3 years ago
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JustZ 2 points 3 years ago

It's an inaccurate epithet anyhow. Uncle Tom was overly nice to whites so as not to draw their wrath.

In the end, the whites beat Uncle Tom to death when he refused to give the whereabouts of two runaway slaves.

I don't know what epithet you'd call someone who turned in the two slaves and lived to work the big house another day, but that's what you should call Clarence.

I used to call Clarence an Uncle Tom, but then I read the book.

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BettyWhiteInHD 1 point 3 years ago
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JustZ 2 points 3 years ago

Fair points on all counts.

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DragonTypeWyvern 1 point 3 years ago

As someone who also read the book and was shocked that Tom wasn't the minstrel show Tom that really earned the name: this weird effort to take back his name is self defeating and artificial.

It says quite a lot that people also try to say "Maybe we should call them Uncle Ruckuses instead!"

Mainly, it says they're not clued in enough to realize the show/comic had two Uncle Toms. One had Uncle in his name, the other Tom.

MacGruder wasn't being very subtle, and yet everyone seems to have missed it anyways.

Hell, if nothing else this whole weird idea is erasure of the minstrel shows. If you want to raise some actual awareness then feel free to separate Book Tom from Minstrel Tom, because we need to remember both.

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spacedance -13 points 3 years ago

We're just using racial slurs now? Come on, that's over the line.

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ratman150 6 points 3 years ago

I don't think that's a racial slur my guy, a dictionary indicates it's slang for female genitalia.

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techt 6 points 3 years ago

I believe they're referring to the use of Uncle Thomas, which while perhaps semantically appropriate is definitely a racially charged moniker.

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Maajmaaj -1 points 3 years ago
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GreenMario 6 points 3 years ago

Gosh dang LiBrUlS at it again!

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TruTollTroll 1 point 3 years ago

Right!! They never got no treddfiddy neither for us!! Lol

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empireOfLove 60 points 3 years ago

So this is what my teachers meant when they said "don't trust Wikipedia".

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Silverseren 43 points 3 years ago

Don't worry, it'll be corrected. Issues like this are temporary and ultimately fixed, as this news article coming out helps do.

Politics articles aren't ones I would suggest are inherently reliable in any medium regardless.

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empireOfLove 15 points 3 years ago

Oh I know it'll get corrected. Hard-core wikipedia editors and admins are a different breed, this shit won't last.

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EherVielleicht 0 points 3 years ago

Butt she was quietly, psst.

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ImplyingImplications 8 points 3 years ago

One time in school the teacher actually told us to go on Wikipedia to look something up for a report. I edited the page to change the information to something incorrect. I of course put the correct info on my report. I taught everyone a lesson that day.

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xePBMg9 5 points 3 years ago

Since then you've donated some money to the Wikimedia Foundation, to make up for your misdeeds, right?

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prole 3 points 3 years ago

And then everyone clapped.

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Kalkaline 3 points 3 years ago
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ArtieShaw 48 points 3 years ago

I've seen this happen so many times and it's always so embarrassing. There's a lovely template that you can slap onto an article that says something along the lines of "this article appears to have been edited by someone with a close association with the subject." It's truly a marvel in how close it skates towards saying, "the subject of this bio didn't like parts of what people were saying, so they edited it to suit themselves" without saying exactly that. It's subtly brutal.

Fortunately for the feelings of people who edit their own wiki bios, I suspect that they probably don't feel the sense of shame that I would if I were in that position.

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ChicoSuave 9 points 3 years ago

They're the type of person who is upset they get caught and apologizes of they upset someone but not for their actual transgression.

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Ddhuud 3 points 3 years ago

I'm sorry that you feel like I hurt you...

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grue 2 points 3 years ago

Why use that template when you could revert the self-serving edits instead?

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bdonvr 38 points 3 years ago

Which iirc is against Wikipedia rules

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Tolstoshev 31 points 3 years ago

That’s silly - judges are supposed to have clerks to do that for them.

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Brkdncr 7 points 3 years ago

I’m more concerned that a judge didn’t have a clerk do this. Judges should be half-decent at delegating tasks.

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ArtieShaw 6 points 3 years ago

In 2009-ish my local US House rep had his bio edited from an office in the Capitol building. Repeatedly, in fact. I've always wondered it was done by him or an intern.

Based on the blisteringly dumb things he'd say in public, and the fact that he was one of the vanishingly small minority of Republicans to get redistricted out of his very safe seat in Ohio by his own party - I'm betting that he did it on his own time. Not that I think his "retirement" had anything to do with the Wikipedia bio. It's just something that would fit with his ideas of "having a cunning plan."

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ChicoSuave 29 points 3 years ago

It's uncanny how much "conservative" and "can't take responsibility of their documented actions" overlap.

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Silverseren 29 points 3 years ago

I'll have to go post this to the Wikipedia admin noticeboards to be dealt with, though it's likely someone else has already beat me to the punch if this is hitting the news itself.

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Silverseren 31 points 3 years ago

As I thought, someone already did and the page has been fixed and temporarily protected to prevent another IP address doing this again. A lot more editor eyes will be on the article too from now on.

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thefartographer 22 points 3 years ago

Hey, I wonder what Barbara Streisand's house looks like!

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ArtieShaw 10 points 3 years ago

You know, I never even wondered that until you mentioned it. Maybe I'll check it out because now I'm irrationally curious! I bet it's pretty nice!

(/s)

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Potatos_are_not_friends 26 points 3 years ago

The REAL way to fix this is:

  1. Host a personal blog arguing about details
  2. Use a pseudonym like "SpaghettiSaiyan69" and add start sprinkling those links as reference.
  3. Wait a few more weeks as those links become source of truth
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Ilikepornaddict 9 points 3 years ago

Probably better not to share this information.

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Ddhuud 9 points 3 years ago

It's a shitty thing to do. But not illegal. I'm sure there's something worse to accuse her of doing, than breaking the terms of services of Wikipedia.

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acutfjg 2 points 3 years ago

Don't let shitty things slide just because they aren't illegal.

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