I'm looking for examples of "extremely" notable academic's editing Wikipedia.

I don't mean ur typical average undergrad. or post grad. professor.

Any examples? were they reverted by a 15yr old admin?

Do you have a threshold in mind? Barry "Moulton" Kort is apparently a big deal in his field. I believe R. Physicist was too, though I can't remember his real name. Both of them were driven away from Wikipedia.

On the other hand, both William Connelly and Pete Hurd are academics who continue to edit Wikipedia, and are (apparently) at least notable enough to have Wikipedia articles. User:Rjensen's a full-fledged academic as well who sometimes does spurts of good work on the history of Alberta (which is why I'm familiar with him). I'm not sure how big a deal he is in academic, though; I do know that he's an admin at Conservapedia.

Im sure some very notable people have edited their own BLPs.

Depends what your threshold is. Jonathan Bowen is a Wikipedia regular, as are Andrew Dalby, Michael Everson Peter L. Hurd etc.

There's a list of notable people who've edited Wikipedia under their own name at Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles. Wikipedia's anonymous setup means that unless someone chooses to self identify, it's generally impossible to say who's editing what.

The guy in this story was an eminent academic. He later contacted the site to request that his real name be removed from the blog post.

A good thread.

* Oxford philosopher Peter J. King http://www.flipkart.com/one-hundred-philos...7918-65w3flerqc was for a number of years, as an administrator under a pseudonym, and also in his real name, until he left in disgust at the 'anyone who thinks they know something about philosophy can edit' policy. See his leaving statement here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Peter_J_King.
* Distinguished linguistic philosopher Nathan Salmon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Salmon has contributed, mostly to his BLP, but also left in disgust after someone slapped the tag "This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject" on it.
* Peter Smith (author of books on Goedel's theorem, long-term editor of the top analytic philosophy journal Analysis) has edited the article on definite descriptions, and was very scathing about it here http://logicmatters.blogspot.com/2009/05/w...-wikipedia.html
* Barbara Hall Partee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Partee is one of the founders of contemporary formal semantics. She edited for about a month, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr.../Barbara_Partee then realised it was totally pointless.
* David Chalmers is very distinguished on the consciousness front. Only lasted for 2 edits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...s/DavidChalmers
* Galen Strawson is son of the late ultra-distinguished Sir Peter Strawson. Active only on his BLP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Gstrawson. I love the way he changes "for many years" to "1987-2000" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=154363752

There is very little reason for an academic to edit Wikipedia. Any academic of any repute at all has access to far better publication channels than Wikipedia (honestly, Wikipedia is a horrible self-publication channel). Wikipedia's culture and dynamics have been cultivated for years to facilitate those involved in issue advocacy, not the unbiased dissemination of information. Ironic, eh?

Most of the academics who ran into flack on Wikipedia have published elsewhere. Some have published on Scholarpedia, some on Google Knol. Wikipedia is not a suitable venue for an academic to publish articles in his or her specialty.

Piotrus is a professor at some school in Pittsburgh. I don't know how dignified he is as an academic, but I like the photo on his user page where he is wearing a nightgown in front of a Christmas tree.

Let's not forget Michael Huemer (User:Owl). Mike has given some reasons why he doesn't edit any more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Owl

Incidentally Mike has written some good critiques of Rand's philosophical expertise, which sadly were not allowed by the Objectivists on grounds of 'notability' (Rand being a lot more popular than Huemer, according to them).

One of the noisier and more notorious cases involved Carl Hewitt, Emeritus Professor of MIT.

Hewitt was scheduled to debate Mike Godwin at Santa Clara University to discuss the issues raised by his case, but Godwin canceled at the last minute, in the wake of a threat of violent disruption by yet another disturbed individual.

It strikes me as odd how some of these "academics" have so much apparent free time to spend on Wikipedia.

An increasing number of academics now study Wikipedia as a prominent example of a dysfunctional system.

Indeed. It is a very fertile field for study. I have long felt that scientific study of Wikipedia may well be the best way to wrest something good and valuable from that pit of agony and dysfunction.

I hate to imagine what the classroom lessons will be like.

PROFESSOR: Okay, class, today we will be studying the rise and fall of Durova and, if time allows, the wit and wisdom of Guy Chapman. And remember that your term papers on Keeper76 will be due next Monday.

Actually that is hilarious!

Jimmy Wales dreaded the classroom lessons, too, and so he dismantled the workshop and course on media ethics that some of us had originally launched at Wikiversity a year ago.

There's a whole list of "Wikipedians with Articles that is probably a decent place to look for these.

Some that jump out to me as academic household names are Kwame Appiah, but he appears to have only made 4 edits.
Edward Felten is another big name (there seems to be a Princeton thing going on here); he made two edits. His main edit seems to have criticism of the material in his BLP, here

Finally, if the account is really him, one Nobel prize winner, Brian David Josephson has edited a fair amount

Probably trying to figure out why so many of their students are showing up with misinformation gleaned from crappy Wikipedia articles.

Professor Tim Pierce of Northern Illinois University instructed students to vandalize Wikipedia to demonstrate how simple it is to change information on the site, before restoring the articles to their previous state. Pierce devised the test after he was "getting a lot of Wikipedia cites last semester where students were citing really dubious information from there".

There is at least one Fields Medallist (mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize) who contributes regularly. Mathsci can tell you more.

I believe I have found an example of what you're looking for. Those durn kids keep removing the analysis of notable academic Phil Sandifer (T-C-L-K-R-D) from the Calvin & Hobbes article. It's a wonder Dr. Sandifer hasn't been driven off like so many others!

Does he still have an article?

Not since 2006.

He MUST have finally run across Slim.

Quite the reverse