Posted on 03/06/2007 6:45:19 AM PST by Alex Murphy
Wikipedia is facing one of its biggest crises after a twentysomething student from Kentucky posed as a professor of religious studies and made more than 20,000 alterations to controversial topics on the online encyclopedia.
Using the pseudonym "Essjay", the bogus professor had become one of Wikipedia's most prolific "editors", trusted to adjudicate on factual disputes and keep the site free from vandalism. He had even featured in an article in the New Yorker, which took his claims to be an expert in canon law at face value.
Now he has been unmasked as Ryan Jordan, a 24-year-old who had created an entirely false identity, claiming to be a tenured professor at a private university, but who relied on books such as Catholicism for Dummies when correcting articles on dogma.
"He holds no advanced degrees," the New Yorker admitted in an editor's note. "He has never taught."
Anyone can alter the site's 5.3 million articles, but some 75,000 people are regular contributors. This loose affiliation of 75,000 obsessives and techno-nerds has now been thrown into turmoil. While many users defended Mr Jordan, others expressed a sense of betrayal. At the weekend, Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, asked Essjay to resign his voluntary position, and now wants senior editors to reveal their identities and prove their credentials. "I have an MA in finance," Mr Wales said. "I could fax a copy of the degree to the office."
Mr Jordan made a final posting late on Saturday. "I hope others will refocus the energy they have spent the past few days in defending and denouncing me to make something here at Wikipedia better."
Was he a heretic?
Yea...like you did.
This exposes the basic fallacy with Wikipedia. It is not vetted, and unless much stronger vetting procedures are put in place, it will never be vetted.
It will be a bunch of people, posting their opinions and backing thm up however they please, some with legitimate data, others with fluff...and therefore is not a reliable source for factual information.
That's not necessarily bad if people do not use it for source and a basis for absolute factual information. The problem is, in our tensil world where people want to believe that 2+2=3, people have been using it like some kind of official and real encyclopedia. Hey, even the official encyclopedias, with their procedures and fact checking, can and are slanted. Wikipedia much more so.
Users just need to be aware of these issues as they pertain to it and then proceed accordingly IMHO>
In this case, I think it's probably a good thing that this guy wasn't a "professor". Professors are often the result of a lifetime of liberal learning which often translate into blatantly liberal viewpoints on religion.
Anyways, it seemed like he was doing a pretty good job and was being evenhanded so who cares...especially if they'll let 10 year olds and 10 year old mentalities edit articles.
I don't see how it matters if he's a professor or not, given that anyone can edit articles.
If he was using "Catholicism for Dummies" as a reference, he probably wasn't doing too bad. Fr. Trigilio is pretty knowledgeable.
So why don't you use "Doctors for Dummies" ^ if they're so knowledgeable? Wikipedia has turned into a joke.
Although I use it extensively, WP definitely has its flaws. Many have complained about "Link Nazis" who use lack of citations as a thinly-veiled excuse to remove any material they disagree with. Interestingly, unsupported (or unsupportable) claims in line with, shall we say, a liberal viewpoint are often left unmolested. The "Neutral Point of View" that is supposed to be the site's guiding principle is a bad joke in practice.
Oh what a Wiki web we weave
He could be posting here on FR.
Whatever his viewpoint, that represents an amazing amount of time and effort. I wonder if he's OCD.
Wikipedia........who reads THAT for Catholic doctrine?
That's entirely possible. IIRC, some years ago there was a prominent Catholic FReeper who represented himself as a priest. He was outed as a fake, but continued to post. Not sure if he's still posting or not.
This is all too true. Little "cabals" of editors own certain pages and there's no getting around them. A few who control a lot of the Catholic pages won't let FishEaters.com (a generic trad website) link on any of the Catholic entries. FE has a page on that at fisheaters.com/wikipedia2.html
You are, of course, Robocop, right?
Myself ~ I'm suffering from a serious case of time-dilation factor. One minute I'm putting down Ali and the next I'm a Freeper with 40,000 posts to my credit.
Aaaaarrrrrhhhghghghghghghghg!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GRRRRR!
I dunno, on strictly technical subjects, I find the majority of the articles accurate and clearly written.
They certainly give a more balanced treatment of the Sacco and Vanzetti case than the dead tree version of Brittanica, to cite one conversial issue.
Do you have any examples of articles or edits posted by this guy?
Actually, the Catholocism for Dummies was written by a very orthodox, loyal to Rome, priest. Certainly better than picking up any random book on the Faith.
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