A Twitter bot that monitors changes to Wikipedia made by U.S. politicians flagged a series of edits originating from Senate offices on Monday.
The congress-edits bot recorded 30 edits over the course of two hours from the same congressional IP address. Most of the edits contained no substance, merely adding a space at the end of paragraphs—something most people wouldn't notice. But the first three edits, which were to the articles for Seymour, Indiana; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Rick Santorum, each had changes in them.
The edit to Rick Santorum was the most substantial, and silly. His party affiliation was changed from Republican to Democrat, and his birthplace was changed from "Winchester, Virginia" to "Fart, Virgin."
The changes to Seymour and Fort Wayne each added people to the "notable residents" section of the page. "Celeste Herr, athlete, artist, scholar" was added to Fort Wayne, while "Alex Craig, resident asshole, personally victimized Chillicen" was added to Seymour.
Because the edits come from a range assigned to Senate offices, it's hard to know exactly who made the edits.
Do you know anything about who made these changes? E-mail patrick.hogan@fusion.net.