Free Republic

Essjay (or Ryan Jordan in real life), got away with his pretence because Wikipedians jealously preserve their anonymity. With most entries, anyone can edit without even logging in; or they can create an entirely fictitious online identity before doing so. The effect is rather like an online role-playing game. Indeed, it is easy to imagine some sad fellow spending the morning pretending to be a polyglot professor on Wikipedia, and then becoming a buxom red-head on “Second Life”, a virtual online world, in the afternoon. That anonymity creates a phoney equality, which puts cranks and experts on the same footing....

THE debate over Wikipedia has hit a fever pitch in recent weeks. Supporters of Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia, are pitted against traditionalists who call the site inaccurate and irresponsible. The latest salvo came this week thanks to Rogers Cadenhead, who did a bit of cybersleuthing and reported on Workbench that the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, had altered his own Wikipedia biography. Wired News picked up Mr. Cadenhead's discovery, and a heated debate ensued on Wikipedia discussion boards. According to Mr. Cadenhead's interpretation, Mr. Wales made the changes to play down the role of his former editor, Larry Sanger,...

WikiPedia.org: you can find links to it everywhere. Online forums, scholarly journals, blogs, high school research papers. WikiPedia is an "open source" encyclopedia with the philosophy of democratic contribution. This encyclopedia differs from other more established encyclopedias by its editors; WikiPedia is composed of anonymous people contributing, deleting, and voting on various aspects of articles. WikiPedia is the frontier of online information distribution, with over 830,000 articles in the English language. It does have many criticisms, but there is one very important question that goes ignored by the mainstream media and wikifans alike. Who, exactly, edits WikiPedia? It has come...