Wikipedia Scandal: Secret Mailing List December 6, 2007
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Wikipedia.trackback
As a Wikipedia administrator, I’m really sad now. You have certainly heard about this recent scandal centered around a secret mailing list where the top admins discussed issues like blocking or banning editors, etc. In a system like Wikipedia, I thought it could never happen.
Controversy has erupted among the encyclopedia’s core contributors, after a rogue editor revealed that the site’s top administrators are using a secret insider mailing list to crackdown on perceived threats to their power.
Many suspected that such a list was in use, as the Wikipedia “ruling clique” grew increasingly concerned with banning editors for the most petty of reasons. But now that the list’s existence is confirmed, the rank and file are on the verge of revolt.
Even if the power of mass collaboration can sometimes lead to negative consequences, as long as we have editors like TimVickers or SandyGeorgia, I’m totally confident that the quality of our featured articles will improve even better.
If you’re interested in joining our medical team in the online encyclopaedia, please check out these posts:
- Medicine in Wikipedia: Reliable Information?
- Why to work in Wikipedia: I’ve been mentioned in Nature Medicine
- Ask Dr Wiki vs medicine in Wikipedia
- Medicine in Wikipedia and Citizendum
- Why to use Wikipedia: answer for Eye on DNA
The register is well-know as a source of poorly written sensationalist articles, so I’m going to wait untill a better news source sums it up.
The register is well-know as a source of poorly written sensationalist articles, so I’m going to wait untill a better news source sums it up.
Actually, if harsh, the writing is pretty accurate on most of the basic facts (if you disregard ignorance about Wikipedia terminology).
…not at all…but the abuse of popular accumulated datum on much of the totality of garnard and learned knowledge cannot hinge on the excitability of well intentioned self appointed pundits…it would be nice yes if every professor and learned scientist would get on line for a popular application of Known and Unknown knowledge…but in the scholastic endeavor…precedence and reference has to be made…why should a learned council summarily volunteer all the extent of their knowledge when their livelihood depends on people showing up on campus for an education? …If forward thinking and mass application are to be garnerd in society…shouldn’t knowledgable people with real qualifications that historically are vehemently preserve…not somehow utilize the medium to make a few bucks?
…does some daemon on one of the network modes threaten you because he has to substantiate the qualifying factor of the information proposed?
…let me tell you about these people…many as specialized American technological labor…are profusely adamant about preserving what they have…and not just for the totality of the experience for the fashion whole of popular application of wares that are specific skills accumulated…and expatiated in some manner…techno guru’s abound in cyberspace equally…the preservation of applicable skills is desperately endangered when the totality of experience is truncated to the front end mechanism of a semantical whole.
you know knowledge and information is not just a homogenized mass media alone on the trail of “nosferotsu”…this is the endeavor of artists poets historians and laymen alike…in a cashmere sense of applicable [livingdry] of scholars and scientists…but not alone for Etruscan fables of a fashion statement and boetian ethnocentricity…
Thanks for your vote of confidence, but there are a lot of excellent science editors on Wikipedia, I can’t take any particular credit.
Tim