I’ve been informed that the Wikipedia article on “The Natural Born Citizen Clause in the US Constitution” has been updated to correct previously incorrect information regarding to Alexander Hamilton’s proposal for language on Presidential eligibility (Hamilton himself was not born in the United States) and to provide additional references. (Actually, this page gets updated a lot.) It appears that Hamilton’s proposal was never actually presented to the Convention.
There are a host of great references to original sources on the page.
“Actually, this page gets updated a lot.”
It does *now*, but it’s fascinating to look back and see when that page got so busy. Unsurprisingly, it was fairly stable before October 2008. Then, right about the time Birther lawsuits started getting filed, the frequency of editing really took off.
Going back further, there was also a heightened interest in page edits in January-March 2008, concurrent with the GOP primaries and talk of McCain’s status as an NBC.
But go back before that, and you’ll find that Wikipedia’s NBC page used to be fairly uneventful.
I love looking at things like that. Sarah Palin’s page had about 900 edits from its creation in 2005 through August 28, 2008.
It had around 2,000 edits just on August 29th and 30th.
OK, as long as I’m in obsessive mode:
Barack Obama’s page was created a year and a half before Sarah’s was.
The first revision was about 70 words long, including:
…so, yeah. Major secret about his dad, huh? Teh WP knew about it in early 2004.