If you go to B.C. New Democratic Party leader Adrian Dix’s biography online at Wikipedia, you will find that he is married to a poet, has Type 1 diabetes, is fluently bilingual and served as Glen Clark’s chief of staff when Clark was the NDP premier.

What you won’t find on the ubiquitous user-edited digital encyclopedia is any reference to Dix’s darkest days or his biggest admitted mistake, when he falsified a memo in an effort to protect Clark from allegations of conflict of interest. Or that he was fired for it, or that the memo-writing affair was part of the casino scandal that led to Clark’s resignation and paved the way for the Liberal election sweep of 2001.

It isn’t for lack of trying by a number of Wikipedia users, who have been adding those facts and others to Dix’s online biography, even if some of those additions are coloured with political invective.

But, for at least the past two years, ever since he became the NDP leader, Dix’s biography has been carefully stage-managed by an anonymous group of people who cleanse any negative comment, even if it was cited by credible sources or has been accepted by Dix himself.

In recent days, as the province gets ready for the May 14 provincial election, the digital fight over Dix’s personal history reached a climax. Since April 6, details of the “memo to file” incident have been re-inserted at least 10 times, and just as quickly removed. On Tuesday morning, a Wikipedia editor with powers to lock the page did so, leaving online a cleansed version that omits any negative bits of Dix’s history.

For the leader of the opposition that has stopped — at least temporarily — the problem of subjective editing that has befallen many politicians and celebrities.

Premier Christy Clark isn’t immune from this. Her Wiki page has had personal and sexist comments added, capitalizing in part on recent stories about her reaction to comments about her looks.

Unlike Dix’s page, there have been no efforts to remove a number of negative references, including her close connections in the BC Rail scandal. The biography of Conservative leader John Cummins hasn’t been tinkered with and all three party pages at Wikiedia are not subject to the same level of attention as Dix’s biography

In the past 90 days, Dix’s online history has been read at least 20,000 times, according to Wikipedia. Christy Clark’s biography was viewed nearly 60,000 times in the same period.

Both the NDP and the Liberals say they are not behind the constant editing of Dix’s Wiki biography. Many of those adding in the “memo to file” information are newly-registered users or are hidden through Internet Protocol addresses that can’t be easily traced. The Sun was unable to contact any of the people making changes on either side.

On Tuesday, Dix made light of the affair, saying he doesn’t pay attention to his Wikipedia entry, but noted a recent Sun story citing his birth date used incorrect information that clearly came from Wikipedia. (His birthday is April 20, 1964, not April 26.)