Saint John Sea Dogs staff got a surprise Tuesday when they looked at their Wikipedia page and saw an unapproved post exploiting two girls and former members of the team.
President Wayne Long says he wasn’t aware the page had been altered to include derogatory comments until CTV News showed him the post.
“It’s obviously something that anybody can go on there, anybody can post really anything they want and we have zero control over that,” says Long. “It’s one of the prices we pay for being in the public and having the public scrutinize and look at you. We’re obviously disappointed, but again, our organization had nothing to do with it.”
Sea Dogs staff reviewed the post and found similar unflattering comments made on former player Jonathan Huberdeau’s page. The posts were traced to an IP address in Montreal.
Dwayne Barton works with computers and says IP addresses can be tracked, but it’s not always an easy task.
“An IP address is basically a house address for your computer,” says Barton. “Probably would have to obtain a warrant or subpoena from the court and then they’d go to the Internet service provider and say ‘who was using this IP address from this time, to this time’ and they’d say, ‘well it was this household,’ then they could track it down.”
Sgt. Jay Henderson says the Saint John Police Force deal with complaints on several social media sites, but Wikipedia isn’t one they hear from much.
“It’s very hard to monitor that, because, Wikipedia, it’s all, the content is all individually added. So, it’s not one particular person,” says Henderson.
The posts made on the Sea Dogs page have since been removed. While staff don’t have any say on what is posted on their Wikipedia page, they say they will be monitoring it more closely.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Ashley Dunbar
