Over on the other side of the aisle, Republican John McCain, who will get his party’s nod this week, has gone on record as saying that he’s an “Internet Illiterate’ who never uses e-mail and needs help from aides to find Web sites. That puts him out of step with the 65% of white college-educated men over 65 who use the Internet regularly, according to the Pew Internet Project.

But someone on the red-state side knows the value of the Web, especially in research. That’s evidenced by the changes made to the Wikipedia entry for Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, McCain’s surprise choice for the number two spot on the ticket—almost all of them favorable and by the same editor, shortly before McCain announced his choice in Dayton OH last Friday.

A company named Cyveillance monitors open source data on the Web, such as resumes posted to Monster.com, to predict company mergers, financial announcements and executive changes. According to the Washington Post, the company decided to track Web chatter about the potential vice presidential candidates as a clever way to prove its concept.

Cyveillance reported that Palin’s Wikipedia entry was updated at least 68 times on Aug. 28, the day before the announcement was made. The entry had seen an additional 54 changes during the preceding five days.

While other politicians’ Wikipedia pages have also gotten a new coat of paint this campaign season, many of the day-before changes to Palin’s entry came from one account, user-named “YoungTrigg” (presumably in honor of Palin’s infant son Trig). They added biographical detail, mostly from a published biography of Palin; played up her “eye-popping integrity” and cost-cutting achievements as Alaska governor; and toned down details about both an ongoing influence scandal and her beauty-pageant win as Miss Wasilla in 1984.

The changes also caught the attention of Wikipedia editor Justen Deal, who decided they were a basically biased re-write, possibly by a Republican staffer. He told National Public Radio that the YoungTrigg account had never been used to edit any other Wikipedia entries, making the extensive last-minute revisions more suspect. “At Wikipedia, that’s usually a big red flag,” he said.

The entry received numerous conflict of interest notes. Wikipedia administrators immediately turned off the ability of anonymous editors to make changes to Palin’s page.

By Sunday morning, the person behind the “YoungTrigg” Wikipedia user page had come forward to defend the changes made to Palin’s page and to defend his, or her, impartiality.

“I will acknowledge that I volunteer for the McCain campaign, one of thousands of people nationwide who are working to elect the best candidate for the job,” the page entry said. “Palin was not the nominee when I made my edits, though I certainly am excited about the selection. I don’t believe I have a conflict of interest problem.”

It’s an interesting case in the dynamics of Web 3.0 visibility. On the one hand, Palin was such a long-shot choice for McCain’s VP that it’s very likely her Wikipedia entry was in need of substantial supplement.

On the other hand, finding those changes made hours before her name is put forward and largely by a one-time contributor using a pseudonym certainly looks suspect. According to search monitor Hitwise, searches on the term “Sarah Palin” were 45% higher than those on “Barack Obama” last week. And 38% of those searches went on to the governor and presumptive VP candidate’s Wikipedia page. It’s only natural to assume that someone in the Republican campaign organization foresaw that result. Whether they capitalized on it is a question that will probably never get answered.

Maybe this latest marketing lesson from the campaign trail makes some points about reputation management. First, practice it early and continuously; if the governor’s Wiki page had been up to date, the changes made would have been voted up or down by Wikipedia’s collective editorial mind long before they were needed. The message would have solidified into a usable version, with no fumbling last-minute rewrites.

But secondly, be aware that in this collaborative world, you’re not the final arbiter of how the story of your candidate/ company/ brand will be told. That privilege rests with the group. If they believe they’ve caught you stacking the deck, you could be in for one heck of a backlash.