Election maps and the Wikipedia

Before the noise of the election dies away completely, you should take a look at some of these electoral maps. They’ve been showing up all over the place, but I would direct your attention in particular to the purple county-by-county map near the bottom of this page: Tim Pierce – maps maps maps maps maps. Anything that smooths out the awful abrupt contrast between the rising red tide and the blue periphery makes me feel a little bit better about the future.

In other election-related news, the George Bush and John Kerry pages on the famously promiscuous Wikipedia joined a small list of pages that had to be “locked down” (made off limits to editing by the public) due to editorial abuse by patrons. Bush’s picture was vandalized multiple times, and even the Wikipedia, it seems, has its limits. Some pages are such hot topics that the editors nail the door shut for an unspecified time. In achieving this distinction, Bush and Kerry join such company as Ariel Sharon, Henry Kissinger, and Jane Fonda. Here’s the article about it in the NY Times: Mudslinging Weasels Into Online History.