Over the past two weeks, ParkRidge47 has effectively and persuasively illustrated the role voter-generated content will play in race to 2008. With over 2.3M views at time of writing, his 1984 culture-jack has become the canonical example of a voter-generated content coup. And while ParkRidge47 deserves a tremendous amount of credit for his work, it is important to remember that his is just one piece in an evolving story - why, the laughable Anti-Obama version of the ad has over 380k views despite its one-star rating.

Over the course of the 2008 campaigns, we'll see many of these new influencers emerge, and we'll be sharing their stories on TechPresident. A great example of where this influence is at play is in Wikipedia. In previous coverage, I found that candidate Wikipedia sites outranked candidate websites in search frequently, while always being in the top 5 search results. Wikipedia scholar Andrea Forte, in a comment to my blog, wrote:

If tasked with finding information about a candidate and given 5 links that include the candidate's own page first and the Wikipedia page last, how many people would end up clicking on Wikipedia despite the lower rank? I've done many interviews and observations of information seeking online and a whole lotta (approaching 100% in my experience; this data is primarily coming from observations of youth ages 16-18, so not voters, but soon-to-be voters.) people just click on the Wikipedia page first if it's anywhere to be seen.

Wow. And my gut tells me she's right. When people want to find out information about a candidate, they're clicking on Wikipedia. So who are these editors? Who are these people playing a significant role in shaping the internet identity of political candidates? In other research, I identified the top editors of candidate Wikipedia entries. One of these editors, Wasted_Time_R, stood out as the top editor on both the Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani Wikipedia entries. With over 200 edits in the interval I sampled, Wasted_Time_R has had a profound impact on shaping the identity of these two presidential candidates. This is fascinating to me, so I asked him for an interview.

Wasted_Time_R is Jonathan Schilling, a 52 year old software architect and all-around nice guy. He started editing Wikipedia in 2005, and he's never turned back. He's an asset to Wikipedia and its quite possible that he's one of the most influential voices shaping the identity of both Rudy and Hillary.

Fred Stutzman (TechPresident): In research I conducted for TechPresident, I found that your Wikipedia user name was the top editor for both Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani's Wikipedia entry. Can you tell me a little bit about your interest in these two articles?

Jonathan Schilling: I've been a steady editor of the Hillary Rodham Clinton article (and its later subarticles, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton controversies, Political views of Hillary Rodham Clinton, etc.) since Spring 2005. I don't have a compelling interest in HRC compared to any other political figure, but somehow back then I got into some edit battles over her 2000 campaign results, then filled in a glaring omission (nothing on her career in the Senate up to that point) and thus became "invested" in preserving aspects of the article, a feeling that has only increased since then as I've sunk more time and effort into the beast. (That's one of Wikipedia editing's "hooks".)

In contrast, I only started editing Rudy Giuliani a month or so ago. I swore I wouldn't start in with another political article, but I happened to look at it one day, and the organization of it was just dreadful. So I jumped in ... but I don't know if I'm going to persist with it or not. Again, I have no compelling interest in Rudy either ... however, I must admit, both HRC and Rudy have interesting life stories and lots of juicy material (both political and personal), so I guess that's part of the interest.

FS: As an experienced Wikipedia user and editor, could you share your views on the quality of information presented in Wikipedia, particularly the quality of information presented in candidate Wikipedia entries?

JS: You could write a sociology paper about the editing history on the Hillary Rodham Clinton article. At any time, there's been one dominant editor, who by superior force of will may not have always been able to get everything he wants into the article, but is certainly always able to keep what they *don't* want out of it. Then there have always been a couple of other major editors, who keep the article on their watchlists and stage edit discussions (and sometimes battles) with the dominant and each other. Then there have been any number of drive-by editors, who make some change but don't stick around to see it reverted (or do, but realize how much effort would be required to battle the regulars, and give up quickly). Then, before HRC became semi-protected, there were the anons, who would engage in *constant* vandalism, always along the theme that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian communist power-hungry criminal witch.

Two years ago the dominant was JonGwynne, and the article had something of an anti-HRC slant because of him. Then he got banned from WP (for actions on other articles). Then the dominant became LukeTH, who thought nothing of committing a string of 100 or 150 edits in a row. He was *very* pro-HRC, had a completely different way of looking at NPOV, and the article became something of a hagiography, with any mention of her controversies purged from the mainline sections and walled off in a separate Controversies section (and later, subarticle). I had a lot of battles with him. Then he got married or something and disappeared. So then I became the dominant, and gradually have been altering things to try to find the right balance in the article and its subarticles. I think there have been roughly the same number of "this is a whitewash!" versus "this is a hatchet job!" criticisms; this doesn't guarantee fairness, but at least might be indicative of it.

FS: For many of the 2008 presidential candidates, their Wikipedia entry is a prime result in a Google search. Do you feel this is fair? Considering its placement and use as an information resource, do you feel the Wikipedia community has a special responsibility for these articles?

JS: I noticed sometime after I started that Google was ranking WP articles very highly. In some cases, I *have* felt a responsibility ... for instance, a couple of years ago the Tony Bennett article was very short and embarrassingly bad and ranked third in Google. I thought this was wholly unacceptable, and since I liked Bennett's music and his career arc is a great storyline, decided I would be the one to fix it. I did a lot of research and wrote the entire article you see there today. Now it's ranked second on Google ... it's a good feeling to know I've done that.

Are the high rankings "fair"? I don't know it if comes out of Google's page reference count ranking system, or if Google just has a policy of ranking Wikipedia highly. If the latter, I would disagree with it.

FS: With such a divisive topic as presidential politics, how do you feel the Wikipedia community does in keeping articles NPOV?

JS: Over a longer stretch of time, not too bad. Over shorter stretches of time, it can be a problem. The HRC shifts mentioned above are one example. And for the last few days, for another example, people have been piling all sorts of negative bits into the Giuliani article. I'm the only editor I see gatekeeping most of this stuff. If I wasn't doing this, the article would be very anti-Giuliani.

FS: What is the greatest problem facing candidate Wikipedia entries? Systematic bias? Vandalism?

JS: I would say, an inability to convey the real essence of a candidate. Right now the HRC article is pretty comprehensive, for example, and I think it's reasonably balanced ... but if you had never heard of her and just read the article, you wouldn't get an accurate sense what she is like, or how polarizing she is, or what her opponents find irritating about her, or how she's much more effective in small audiences than in large speeches, things like that. When I've tried including such material, it's always gotten kicked out in NPOV disputes.

Another way of saying this is, that Wikipedia articles of this sort tend to be dry and lifeless. If you read a long biographical profile in the New Yorker or the NYT Magazine or some such place, it would have more color and life in it. But WP NPOV rules make doing that virtually impossible.

FS: Do you have any predictions for how candidates might use Wikipedia in the 2008 cycle, particularly how they may use or manipulate their entries or the entries of competitors.

JS: I've heard of Congressional staffers doing this for their boss. It would be harder at the presidential level, since the articles have a lot more people looking at them. Crude tactics like wholesale removing negative material from your own article or dumping negative material into others' articles probably won't stick.

There's a whole art to inserting your opinion or slant into a WP article without it being obvious that you're doing so, but you have to be a fairly experienced editor. It's unlikely that campaign staffers will have the time to master WP's rules and unspoken practices and whatnot to get to this level. It's more likely that candidate article manipulation will be done by regular WP editors, who happen to feel passionately for and against certain candidates.