It’s been awhile since we had any Wikipedia controversy, so maybe it’s mailing list only for insiders! According to a breathless piece in The Register:
“Controversy has erupted among the encyclopedia’s core contributors, after a rogue editor revealed that the site’s top administrators are using a secret insider mailing list to crackdown on perceived threats to their power.”
I just love the language throughout this story: words like “erupted” and “rogue editor,” combined with phrases like “ruling clique” and talk about how the “rank and file” are in revolt. It sounds like the author is describing France in the 1600s — with Jimmy Wales (presumably) playing the role of Seth Finkelstein to turn this into some kind of scandal, I just don’t see what the big deal is. Wikipedia has editors — pretty well everyone knows that by now. They ban people and edit things, and occasionally make mistakes, as the editor in this particular situation has admitted. This is no this entry on the topic, among others. As Stan Schroeder at Mashable notes in his post on the subject, this kind of phenomenon is endemic in almost any large, self-organizing
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