A Dunedin City Councillor is defending editing his own Wikipedia page saying he was simply repairing "misinformation".
Lee Vandervis' Wikipedia page was edited at 10am on Tuesday by a user named 'Leevandervis'.
The changes were quickly noticed by Wikipedia editors after they flagged a potential conflict of interest. The editors reversed the changes after just 30 minutes.
The changes ranged from minor things like Vandervis' birth date to more significant edits.
Wikipedia allows users to edit information but according to its guidelines users with a conflict of interest need to declare it and suggest changes on the article's talk page not edit it directly. They can edit it only if it contains defamation or a serious error that has to be fixed quickly.
The edits include changing Vandervis' date of birth from 1957 to 1955 and removing a line about him being teased during school. He also added a line about his love of the rock band Pink Floyd.
But along with minor changes, Vandervis also removed a mention of an incident during the election campaign in 2010 when one of Vandervis' volunteers caused a widespread power outage after piercing a power cable while installing an election hoarding.
He also removed references to members of the public that say they were targets of inappropriate behaviour from Vandervis in August 2019, as well as adding sentences critiquing the chief executive of the council Dr Sue Bidrose that collated the 11 allegations.
Another line referencing Bidrose was added in relation to a 12th complaint about a verbal spat between Vandervis and a council member over a parking ticket.
"Leaks from the DCC to social and local print media falsely recast Vandervis' complaint of a staff member as an attempt by Vandervis to get off a $12 parking ticket," was added to the Wikipedia page.
Vandervis told the NZ Herald he was openly trying to correct a "whole lot of misinformation" about himself and believed he was in line with Wikipedia's policy.
