Councillor edits own Wikipedia page to ‘repair misinformation’

• Published date: 29 April 2022
• Publication title: Otago Daily Times (New Zealand)

The page of Lee Vandervis was edited at 10am on Tuesday by a user called ‘‘Leevandervis’’

The changes were quickly pulled up by a Wikipedia editor who reversed the edits 34 minutes after they were made and flagged the user as having a possible conflict of interest.

Wikipedia’s guidelines state that users with a conflict of interest should declare them and propose changes on the article’s talk page rather than editing directly, unless the article contains defamation or a serious error that needs to be corrected quickly.

The changes ranged from edits of biographical details to complete rewrites of some of the more recent controversies in which Mr Vandervis has found himself embroiled.

Mr Vandervis initially declined to address the editing directly, saying he was ‘‘in a position of trying to repair a whole lot of misinformation’’ which he had only recently been made aware was on Wikipedia.

He later forwarded an email he sent to Wikipedia, saying that he was openly trying to correct erroneous claims about himself on the site and he believed he was in-line with its editorial policy.

Unlike many users of the site, he did not use a pseudonym, Mr Vandervis said.

Biographical changes included an edit to Mr Vandervis’ date of birth, from 1957 to 1955.

A line about Mr Vandervis being teased at school for having a Dutch name was removed and a mention of...