I rarely point out what Democrats are doing well online, especially in Florida. But when lessons can be learned from the opposition, I find it necessary to share. The Florida Democratic Party ran a very creative attack on Republican Congressman Adam Putnam today on Wikipedia. Putnam, running for Commissioner of Agriculture, had his Wikipedia page as well as a page title "Hypocrisy" hijacked by the Party calling him a hypocrite (see screenshots below). The Party then distributed these screenshots to traditional reporters, bloggers and other Democratic "talkers" in the State.
Wikipedia is a web-based, free-content encyclopedia project based on an openly-editable model, meaning that anyone can edit anything about anybody on the site. Over the years, Wikipedia's credibility has increased as more people have begun to use the open-platform and post accurate information. What could be damaging for Putnam and other candidates (who all could fall victim of this sort of attack), is the effect Wikipedia pages have on search engines. Wikipedia pages frequently rank towards the top of Google search result pages and if a candidate is not watching closely, their Wikipedia pages can be hijacked with very unfavorable information from their opposition (see screenshot of Putnam's Google search results below):
To avoid this from happening to your campaign, you can "watch" Wikipedia pages of your choosing and receive updates any time they are edited.
