Oliver Ames and Wikipedia

I'm judging student created websites for the State National History Day competition this Saturday. While checking an entry on the Manhattan Project I ran across a reference to "the Ames process" and decided to follow up. The Ames process is a scientific technique for creating weapons grade uranium, but luckily it was not developed by the family here as a way of settling local disputes. When the Manhattan project was created pieces of this massive program were farmed out to various universities including the University of Iowa located at Ames, Iowa. Ames was named in honor of Congressman Oakes Ames when the place was being considered as a possible terminus for the Union Pacific. For those planning a pilgrimage don't miss the nearby Skunk River.

One thing lead to another and I was soon at the Wikipedia entry for Governor Oliver Ames the son of the Congressman. Lo and behold, next to a factual entry on the Governor was a photo, not of the beefy Governor, but his uncle, Oliver II. The nice thing about Wikipedia is that you the reader can offer corrections. When I did, I discovered that all contributions from Oliver Ames High School have been blocked due to a nearly infinite number of erroneous and malicious postings. A list was available and some were indeed malicious although many were mistakes made by enthusiastic but ineffective student researchers. Considering that I was once listed as a "beloved and prominent" citizen of Easton, one should take all Wikipedia entries with a grain of salt. However, when I revisited the site for the Governor this morning, the offending picture had disappeared and a link to a Wikipedia article on Oliver II was added to the entry. Checking back on the site a couple of sentences ago, a picture of the governor had now appeared in place of the wrong one. Who was that masked man (or woman) who was up early fixing Wikipedia? We don't know. In fact from the discussion posted with the article, it's been known since April that the picture was erroneous yet it was only changed today. I don't know whether this is an indictment of Wikipedia or a demonstration that the system worked-just thought you should know!