Spectator columnist and Telegraph blogger Toby Young has spent hours removing embarrassing information from his Wikipedia page in a sustained campaign of edits lasting more than six years. After denying bigging up his parliamentary prospects in an anonymous Spectator diary column earlier in the week, we had a bit of fun trying to get Young to deny writing about himself in the third person.
@PSbook @MrSteerpike I deny it. Mr Steerpike isn't me. It's an error. Can you correct the story please?
— Toby Young (@toadmeister) September 23, 2013
We did this because we know that that he has made 200 edits to his own Wikipedia page over a period of six years. Young reckons he can get away with this because he is doing it from an account called “Tyoung8” and sometimes uses the first person pronoun in his edit summaries:
@PSbook @GuidoFawkes Yes, that's me. How did you figure that one out, Sherlock? No wait. I use the word "I" in the notes…
— Toby Young (@toadmeister) September 23, 2013
So Scrapbook had a poke through his edits, whereupon it became clear he had a habit of attempting to censor embarrassing information — even when references to sources are supplied. This is a breach of Wikipedia rules.
- Repeatedly deleting his full name, Toby Daniel Moorsom Young (source here)
- Deleting references to his whinging about the difficult of finding domestic servants (here)
- Deleting references to sympathising with UKIP in his Sun on Sunday column
- Deleting the fact his free school displaced dozens of local charities (here)
- Deleted his comments on Question Time that he wouldn’t report his child to the police if he discovered they were looting during the London riots (here)
His full edit list can be found here. Do let us know if we’ve missed something.