The fight for the communist past of Petr Pavel’s wife. A war rages over her biography on Wikipedia

The fight for the communist past of Petr Pavel’s wife. A war rages over her biography on Wikipedia
The fight for the communist past of Petr Pavel’s wife. A war rages over her biography on Wikipedia
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Was she in the communist party or not? Did she study at the Klement Gottwald Military Political Academy? Or not? The hitherto little-known soldier Eva Pavlova is experiencing unprecedented interest and a fight for her page on Wikipedia. The website of Eva Pavlova, the wife of the presidential candidate Petr Pavlo, has undergone almost two dozen edits in recent days. The fight of the contributors took place primarily over her communist past and her studies. On her Wikipedia page, her former membership in the Communist Party alternately appeared and disappeared, later the paragraph about her study was expanded to include information about when she left the party and that she regretted her membership.

Wikipedia is created with the help of several million contributors, every user can participate in the creation of the most famous internet encyclopedia and everyone can change any password. Therefore, so-called editorial wars often take place on its pages, when someone does not like a certain wording in the password and changes it. While in professional exact passwords the change can be beneficial, in social and political matters it is extremely sensitive data that can completely change the overall tone of the information.

The current editorial war is being waged over the wife of the finalist in the presidential election. In the case of Eva Pavlova, users have changed information about her pre-revolutionary history at least sixteen times in recent days. “After graduating in 1983, she continued her studies at the Women’s Military Vocational School at the High Military Aviation School in Košice, and subsequently at the Bratislava High Military Pedagogical School, which she completed in 1990,” the page read on January 15. Two days later, the information changed, with the fact that it was the Military Political Academy of Klement Gottwald in Bratislava.

Another editor was even more specific. “In 1985, she wanted to continue her army career, so she applied to study at the Klement Gottwald Military Political Academy in Bratislava. She was told that she did not have a suitable personnel profile, on the basis of which she applied to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. She was successfully accepted to study and graduated from school in 1990. On November 20, 1989, she resigned from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia,” Wikipedia said late on January 17.

However, the information about Ms. Pavlova’s communist past was apparently not liked by another Wikipedia contributor, who in the meantime deleted information about her membership in the Communist Party of the Czech Republic from the box. A little later, however, someone else rushed in and returned the political affiliation information. And so people could read that Pavlova resigned from the party on November 20, 1989.

Early in the morning of January 18th, the paragraph about Pavlova’s education was expanded by a short sentence. “Even so, she tried to study at the university, but in the end she applied to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia,” the page stated. In the following hours, the article was expanded to include the information that Pavlová, otherwise an active soldier, considers membership a mistake.

Fighting for passwords

Pavlo’s opponent, Andrej Babiš, also has experience with editing on Wikipedia. Editorial wars were fought on the page, for example, about his family’s past, or about the case of his son Andrej Babiš Jr. For example, in 2017, his page was edited 537 times and 11 times it was even temporarily closed by the editors and could not be edited.

The co-founder of Wikipedia himself remembers the editing war. In 2005, it was revealed that Jimmy Wales, who co-founded Wikipedia with Larry Sanger, had been consistently removing any mention of Sanger as one of the founders from his Wikipedia entry.

The article is in Czech

Tags: fight communist Petr Pavels wife war rages biography Wikipedia

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