A series of Wikipedia pages relating to UK politics, including that of David Cameron, were briefly defaced with images of Ed Miliband urging people to vote for the Labour leader in the final hours before polls close.
Entries on the Conservative party, Ukip, George Osborne, Boris Johnson, Ken Clarke and Nigel Farage pages were all given a red background, with “vote Labour” printed in white block capitals above a picture of Miliband.
The vandalism left no other information visible for each entry.
Nick Clegg’s page appeared to have escaped defacement, but former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy’s page was also showing a picture of the Labour leader.
Even Miliband’s own page was defaced with the red background and picture, as were the pages of other Labour politicians, including 1930s Labour leader George Lansbury.
Editors of the online encyclopaedia had removed most of the pictures and slogans from the pages within about 20 minutes of them first appearing, but not before screengrabs were circulated on Twitter.
so if you google charlie kennedy and go onto his wikipedia page something weird happens. http://t.co/SLRnAXbKKj - soft miliband stares
— Sof. (@sofiejenkinson) May 7, 2015
Ed Miliband’s wikipedia page is amazing today #GE2015 @UKLabour @Ed_Miliband http://t.co/mdz6d9w7Cl pic.twitter.com/9bfOmdd6JM
— Oliver Smith (@OliverSmithEU) May 7, 2015
'@David_Cameron Wikipedia page seems to be taking a slide to the left... @Ed_Miliband http://t.co/rF93GcRSEV pic.twitter.com/XV5PlP88hd
— John Mulgrew (@newsmulg) May 7, 2015
No individual or organisation has claimed responsibility for the defacement of the pages.
Stevie Benton, Wikimedia’s UK organiser, told the Guardian the vandalism had occurred when different templates used to build political articles had been changed. “Certain templates, for example the one for ‘Local elections 2012’, have been changed, and that means any page that used that template would have changed too,” Benton said.
“In most cases, our volunteers are spotting the changes in two or three minutes and changing the templates back, which will fix all the pages in the template.”
The person, or people, responsible are not registered users, he added. The site’s volunteers identified a number of different IP addresses changing the templates but did not know if it was “a co-ordinated effort by different people in different locations or a single person using a roaming IP address”.
