San Jose this month tested what seemed to us a brilliant new strategy for getting busy motorists to mind their speed around road work. As several motorists reported to us, a programmable temporary electronic sign used to advise passing drivers to ease off the accelerator along Tully Road between Senter Road and Lucretia Avenue was rather colorful in making its point.

“SLOW DOWN F—–,” the sign blared out in the predawn darkness, hailing passing drivers with an F-bomb. Hey, it got their attention! Some even sent us photos. How often does a mere speed advisory merit such notice from the motoring public?

San Jose Transportation Director Hans Larsen told us the blue language in bright lights wasn’t intended. The changeable message sign, he said, was being used by the city’s pavement maintenance contractor, and the lock on the sign equipment either was broken or inadvertently left unlocked.

“The message was the result of a local prankster,”Â‰” Larsen said. “The message was corrected the same morning we were notified of it. We have advised our contractor to better manage the security of their signs.”

Larsen lamented that “we can consider this a sign of the electronic times — a new form of graffiti and hacking, Silicon Valley style.”

But perhaps the “prankster” is on to something.

With Rosen unscathed, Gillingham Jr. won’t run

All summer long, the rumor mill buzzed about Santa Clara County prosecutor Chuck Gillingham Jr.’s big plans to challenge his boss, District Attorney Jeff Rosen, for re-election.

But the fervor has all but disappeared since state Attorney General Kamala Harris in August cleared Rosen of any wrongdoing after a civil investigation into his practice of quietly rewarding his top deputies with time off to make up for a union-negotiated pay cut.

In an interview last week, Gillingham ended the suspense, telling IA he definitely won’t be throwing his hat into the ring. Candidates have until March 7 to file, but usually announce much earlier.

The veteran prosecutor refused to go into much detail about his reasons. But clearly, the prospect of asking friends and others for money was distasteful. Rosen already has amassed a sizable war chest, according to campaign finance reports.

Raising money wasn’t Gillingham’s only problem. He also would have no viable message, political experts opined. Rosen is largely in sync with voters, including his support for easing the state’s Three Strikes Law. The first-term DA has gotten heat from some prosecutors and the Government Attorneys Association for taking a hard line on discipline, particularly after suspending prosecutor Daniel Carr for a month without pay for failing to turn over evidence to the defense until the brink of a big gang trial.

But as one politico wagged, “What’s Gillingham going to say in his ads — that Rosen disciplined members of his staff he believes stepped out of line?”

Wikipedia strips page from San Jose councilman

San Jose City Councilman and mayoral candidate Sam Liccardo no longer has a Wikipedia page. An administrator of the free, collaboratively edited online encyclopedia deleted Liccardo’s page this month after concluding the councilman’s campaign was trying to make it too laudatory.

“The ‘article’ on Liccardo was basically an opinion piece on Liccardo, which his campaign staff ” seemed determined to puff up,” Wikipedia administrator Michael Lowrey told us.

Lowrey, nicknamed Orange Mike, cited as a puffery example: “Liccardo has played a leading role on the council in crafting new incentives to boost economic development in San Jose.” That, Lowrey added, led to “his enemies riposting with, ‘Unfortunately, in one of Mr. Liccardo’s classic missteps, his decision to sue Major League Baseball rather than reach compromise has endangered the proposal.'”Â‰”

“Since ordinary City Council members are not generally considered notable enough to merit articles about them in an encyclopedia,” Lowrey said, “I decided as an administrator that the thing to do was delete the entire thing.”

Liccardo said it was “unfortunate” and that he hoped his page would be restored soon.

He can take solace that he’s not the only San Jose council member without a Wikipedia entry. Ash Kalra, Xavier Campos, Rose Herrera and Don Rocha don’t have their own Wikipedia pages either, and Johnny Khamis’ page is being considered for deletion too.

The entry for Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen, also running for mayor, says nothing about the “Little Saigon” controversy that spawned a failed recall effort. The page history shows that an anonymous volunteer editor with the handle Ironbob deleted that information Oct. 7, a move another volunteer editor, Sunnyvale resident Jim Griffith, called “inappropriate.”

Ironbob also acknowledged a role in getting Liccardo’s page stricken, thanking Orange Mike for honoring the deletion request.

Matthew Roth, a spokesman for the Wikipedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, said the “community of editors tries to maintain a neutral encyclopedia.” We don’t doubt that, but it seems some of the entries for local politicians are works in progress.

National media focus on Tony West, Ro Khanna

As close observers of the national media — we read as well as write here at IA — we couldn’t help but notice a couple of pieces recently that cast glowing light on local figures.

The first was a New York Times piece last weekend that described the negotiations between JP Morgan Chase and the U.S. Justice Department that resulted in a record $13 billion fine.

The Times reported that the turning point in that deal came when JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called Associate Attorney General Tony West and said these words: “I think we should meet in person.”

West, you may remember, is a San Jose native who lost a council race to Cindy Chavez in 1998 and an Assembly race to Manny Diaz in 2000 — after which his career veered upward toward Washington, D.C.

According to the Times piece (http://goo.gl/e0Xg6X), he helped craft the final settlement with AG Eric Holder, a deal that sounded very much like haggling in a bazaar. (A side note: West is the brother-in-law of California AG Kamala Harris, who brought her own lawsuit against Dimon’s bank last May.)

The second piece worth noting was a Salon.com profile of Ro Khanna, the former Obama commerce official who is challenging Mike Honda for Congress (http://goo.gl/dbUzS9). The piece tries to dispel the idea that Khanna is a technoid-libertarian who doesn’t understand the role of government. It anoints Khanna as Silicon Valley’s candidate, with a biting quote from Napster co-founder and former Facebook President Sean Parker.

“We feel for a long time that Silicon Valley hasn’t been represented at the federal level,” Parker said in a slap that might extend further than Mike Honda.

Internal Affairs is an offbeat look at state and local politics. This week’s items were written by John Woolfolk, Tracey Kaplan, Scott Herhold and Paul Rogers. Send tips to internalaffairs@mercurynews.com, or call 408-975-9346.