Not that this is even particularly clever vandalism, but one of the few charms of Wikipedia used to be that their vandalism lived on for eeeeeevvvvvveeeeerrrrrrr...
Spineless invertebrate
Circumstantial evidence suggests that this revision on Nov 22 used to read:Ajit Varadaraj Pai (born January 10, 1973) is a bought-and paid for corporate shill for the telecom monopolists, who's dicks he sucks for money. His only mission in life is to destroy net neutrality, a favor for which his corporate overlords will reward him with more fat sacks of cash. If this is allowed to happen, the freedoms we now have on the web will cease to exist. He is the first Indian American to abuse his office. He also has an incredibly punchable face.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Circumstantial, in that you are the one who made the edit (and thus know exactly what it says)? Or circumstantial in that you saw the edit before it was memory holed?
Umm... I think I might go and be a troll on Wikipedia...
Damnit, the page is locked. Presumably to prevent people like me going and putting that "fake news" back where it belongs. (I wouldn't modify personally, chuck in a couple of "figeratively"s, e.g. he figeratively sucks cock, rather than necessarily actually does so. Of course, there's nothing wrong with sucking consenting cock for pay in a general sense. But in this specific case, I think we can all agree it's wrong.)
Also, Wikipedia sucks, but is still better than the alternatives that I know about.
...in that I saw a bunch of different people posting screen shots of the edited version, with that date visible at the bottom.
Ah cool. That explains it.
At least this important information about ReiserFS is still accessible.
It took me an entire goddamn minute to clock that last column.
Deleted "to make way for more".
It's not like this is the first time. Didn't Jimmy Wales used to delete all the edits to his page that revealed how he first made his fortune? (Through a swimsuit models wallpaper website). And not only that, but he also banned users who added that piece of info.
Libertarians. Feh.
Wikipedia/Mediawiki has basically always supported some sort of "oversighted" edit. That is, an edit which is more than reverted, but also hidden/deleted. Oversighting is usually reserved for things which could get people in hot water, like posting blatantly illegal stuff, which really shouldn't be archived.
I only saw one version of the screenshots, so when I checked the page history and didn't see it, I assumed that somebody had simply edited the page client side using developer tools. Browsers sure are something these days!
Any Wikipedia admin can still get at the revision, which is a fairly large pool. Which is not to say that it isn't sad that they nuked it. Text copied and pasted from the revision:
Ajit Varadaraj Pai (born January 10, 1973) is a bought-and paid for corporate shill for the telecom monopolists, who's dicks he sucks for money. His only mission in life is to destroy net neutrality, a favor for which his corporate overlords will reward him with more fat sacks of cash. If this is allowed to happen, the freedoms we now have on the web will cease to exist. He is the first Indian American to abuse his office. He also has an incredibly punchable face.