The Wikipedia Admin Brouhaha

Hardly a month goes by without some new dustup involving Wikipedia — either because someone edited their own entry, or because someone bitched about not being able to edit their own entry, or because someone paid someone else to edit an entry.

The latest brouhaha concerns Wikipedia profile claims), nor does he teach at any kind of educational institution. He is 24, and works for Wikia, the for-profit company started by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. And what was the response to the New Yorker piece? Jimmy Wales told the New Yorker that he regards Essjay’s fake profile as “a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.” On his because he wanted to protect himself from “stalkers” such as Daniel Brandt, who runs a site called point out, however, that Jordan was using his fake profile before Brandt started becoming a nuisance, not to mention the fact that fear of stalkers doesn’t explain why Jordan are arguing that Essjay was a valuable contributor to Wikipedia, that none of the editing he has done is being questioned (although perhaps it should be), and that a person’s actual biographical details should be irrelevant. Even Jimmy Wales seems to feel that Jordan’s misinformation was a harmless mistake, since he on his talk page, and still maintains that he disguised his identity to protect himself from trolls and stalkers. Why he made up the credentials is not explained, although he says that the New Yorker never asked him about his profile or mentioned his qualifications from his profile page, and that he expected the magazine to check those facts. He says it was his impression that it was “well known that I was not who I claimed to be.”

Del.icio.us