Wikipedia
Yesterday I edited a Wikipedia article for the first time. I looked up Melanie Phillips, thinking that I could remove anything nasty and untrue put up by Melaniephillipswatch types. I’d had a conversation in that glorious Cambridge establishment The Maypole a week or so ago about the Phillips article, and it was mentioned that Phillips’ Jewishness had been emphasised rather too much. The friend who mentioned this to me said he had removed ‘Of [[Jewish]] descent’ as he thought the information to be of spurious relevance. So when I looked up Mad Mel yesterday, this phrase had reappeared as the first sentence in the ‘Education and career as a journalist’ section - before the actually relevant information that she ‘read English at St Anne’s, Oxford, before training as a journalist on the Evening Echo’ etc. etc.
Someone obviously thinks that the information is so important, and relevant to MP’s education and journalistic career, that they have reinserted the same phrase several times - I’m currently on my second edit of the page.
I also removed ‘and Puritanical’ from the bulletpoint - She is socially conservative (to be found under Poltical Views). And added this sentence and link ‘Melanie Phillips offers a cogent argument that the ‘liberal’ left that regards her as essentially right-wing and illiberal has been perverted, and has come to represent libertarian rather than truly liberal thinking. In this important article Phillips declares that she is a ‘progressive’ and defender of liberal democracy. The article is available here.’