For the full article go to:Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Wikipedia editor who posed as professor is Ky. dropout
Man resigns post after controversy
By Andrew Wolfson
He touted himself as a tenured professor with doctorates in theology and canon law.
But the volunteer editor and fact checker for the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia turned out to be a 24-year-old dropout from Centre College and Lexington Community College.
Wikipedia, which was founded in 2001 and is run by a foundation in St. Petersburg, Fla., recorded its millionth entry last year -- nearly 10 times the number in the most comprehensive edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, according to the New Yorker article.
In an e-mail to The Courier-Journal, Pamela McCarthy, deputy editor of The New Yorker, said the magazine's editors and writer, Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer Stacy Schiff, "were comfortable" with the material from Essjay because of Wikipedia's confirmation of his work.
But Regrettheerror.com, which reports on corrections in the media, said The New Yorker would have avoided the mistake if it had heeded a cartoon that ran in its July 5, 1993, issue.
It shows a dog typing at a computer keyboard, over the caption, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbc ... 7703060446
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Fot the full article go to:Los Angeles Times - July 24, 2006
Why Wiki Can Drive You Wacky
When free-form information gets it wrong, watch out.
By Bernard Haisch
YOU DO NOT get to choose whether or not an article on you appears in Wikipedia, and you have no veto power over its contents. The article can cast you as a genius or an imbecile, a respected scientist or a crackpot. a vandal could replace a page, any page, with total gibberish. The page on Einstein might have a statement inserted to the effect that he was a Nazi collaborator, or that his theories have been totally discredited, or that he was a silicon-based life form from Proxima Centauri. Wikipedia does not operate by your rules but by its own conventions; I suggest you learn to accept it. I can assure you resistance is futile."
What brought about my Wikipedia battle? As part of my mainstream career in astrophysics, I did NASA-sponsored research and served for 10 years as one of the scientific editors of the leading journal in that field, the Astrophysical Journal. But simultaneously I edited the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which attempts to provide a scientific forum for critical discussion of unorthodox topics, such as parapsychology and analysis of UFO reports, some of which had mundane explanations. I did this as an unpaid public service.
I discovered in June that a Wikipedia editor had written an article on me that concentrated almost solely on the latter topics while virtually ignoring the 100-plus scientific papers I had published. It was a draining editing battle to try to coax the article into something halfway reasonable, which was helped by the decision of the "editor" to drop out of Wikipedia. But the article could again be rewritten by another anonymous editor. Of course, you too might decide to edit my article. Please refrain.
As for me, Oscar Wilde once said: "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." It's a small consolation.
http://www.calphysics.org/WikiOpEd.html
Digital Universe Foundation[BERNARD HAISCH is president of the Digital Universe Foundation, which is working on a free expert-directed online encyclopedia.]
http://www.dufoundation.org/