So much for the hopes that it would get lost in the weekend news. Nope. They ran it in Monday's Technology section, where it will be read widely. All in all, it is a relatively softball story, at least.
It will be interesting to see how the rest of the major media react to this. I'm not making any bets.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think The New York Times piece fails to capture the recalcitrant denial of Essjay's supporters. Even now, there’s a large contingent of high-ranking Wikipedians with administrative privileges who are loyal to Essjay and are censoring much of the internal criticism of Essjay that would otherwise appear on Wikipedia. Personally, I cannot fault Jimbo or The New Yorker for being deceived, as they have apologized and taken subsequent remedial measures. What I can and do fault is the culture of credentialism that is so easily exploited by impostors. For a longer tome on my views, please see my recent XODP Blog post.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteYou raise some good points in both your comment here and in the post in your blog. I hope to be able to respond to them in detail in an upcoming blog post. It's definitely the case that the Wikipedia community is adverse to criticism and tends to suppress it from Wikipedia itself (see, for example, the way the community responded to the "Why Wikipedia is Failing" essay; my comments are here). This is largely because Wikipedia is has become largely socially oriented, rather than goal oriented, which is itself a very disturbing development if you're interested in Wikipedia as an encyclopedia and not merely as an online meeting space.