Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, stops by VCU for a discussion on culture in the digital age.

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/searc...icle_id=4645106

Less than 24 hours after Jimbo's appearance, a Wikipedia administrator (our beloved User:Durova) issued a “one-month lock down” on the article about VCU in Wikipedia, citing some “conflict of interest” editing that VCU Professor Buffington was encouraging her students to make (with good intentions and in good faith).

This further shows how insensitive and somewhat “out of touch” with reality that Wikipedia's admin authorities can be. They expect that this notion that every editor must write only on topics where they have no personal conflict of interest should be inherently obvious to everyone. Pet shop owners should write the [[Nuclear physics]] article. Senior managers at nuclear power plants should write the [[hamster]] article. It makes so much sense, in the construction of an authoritative encyclopedia, doesn't it?

I’m in dialogue now with Professor Buffington, helping her to see that there are better ways. Better ways, my friends.

Greg

Beneath it all, once again, is the BIG LIE that Wikipedia is an Actual Encyclopedia, and that Wikipunks are therefore somehow qualified to judge other people's Qualifications and Potential Conflicts Of Interest.

There is no hope for anyone if we do not keep attacking the BIG LIE at its root.

Jonny

Looks like User:Durova decided to be nice and lift the protection on the VCU article, but not before making it very clear that a VCU panelist who actually dared to disagree with a Wikipedia policy was "very irresponsible"; and that Durova's unprotecting the page is certainly a magnanimous "gesture of goodwill".

Thank you, Durova! The Virginia Commonwealth University -- nay, the wide swath of higher education EVERYWHERE -- thanks you for your generosity and contribution to the furtherment of human knowledge.

She's even ramping up a "WikiProject Classroom coordination" that she had been working on, so that educators will more properly use and interact with the wonderful resource that is Wikipedia (i.e., inculcate today's youth to labor for the Hive, before their impressionable minds get exposed to too much reality.)