Here’s a follow-up to last week’s Wikipedia controversy of the week, the revelation that a New Yorker writer of a story about Wikipedia had depended on information from an admin who claimed to be “a tenured professor of religion at a private university” but who turned out really to be a Labrador retriever. Anyway, last week, Wikipedian-in-chief, Jimbo Wales seemed to dismiss the issue. Now, he’s using the discussion section of his User-page on Wikipedia to request that Ryan Jordan (who Wales still refers to by his user name, EssJay) to resign from any “positions of trust” within “the community.”

Quote:

“I understood this to be primarily the matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and not a matter of violation of people’s trust. I want to make it perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on. Even now, I have not been able to check diffs, etc. I have asked EssJay to resign his positions of trust within the community….In terms of the full parameters of what happens next, I advise (as usual) that we take a calm, loving, and reasonable approach. From the moment this whole thing became known, EssJay has been contrite and apologetic. People who characterize him as being “proud” of it or “bragging” are badly mistaken.

(For those who just can’t get enough of this kumbaya singing — and some angry responses — here’s the RSS feed of changes on Wales’ talk page so you can follow along at home.)

(via: Stephen Dubner)

Bonus link: Quote from Nick Carr: “In the byzantine world of Wikipedia, with its arcane language, titles, and rules and its multitude of clans, Essjay wore the robes of a wizard. He was allowed to stand beside - and to serve - Jimbo the White. Together, they would bring “knowledge” to the unenlightened masses. But then the Wizard Essjay tried to slip through the gates of the real. Now the game is up.”

Yesterday, it was that “all software should be social” post and the day before it was that “social networking is a feature, not a product” post. Today it’s the USA Today adds social networking features to their website” post.

I’m impressed. I agree with Steve Rubel’s review, who thinks those who register should be able pipe in stuff we create elsewhere. I’m completely in agreement. I will register on the site (rexhammock), however, I’m not going to make USA Today the center of my identity — this blog is. If they want more of who I am there, they need to open up a series of RSS tubes.

The new features on USA Today are “powered by Pluck.”

Another thing, and I won’t state the obvious point on this observation, as the URLs say it all: I’ve set up two “user profiles in the past 24 hours” you can find one at the URL twitter.com/rexhammock and the other is at the URL http://www.usatoday.com/community/profile.htm?UID=5cf5ea4f48fa43fb.

Bonus link: Tony Hung thinks USA Today may be getting a little ahead of most non-techno-elitists with its socialification features. I will agree that the last people they should listen to are people like me who will complain about the features they didn’t include. However, I think USA Today should do everything they can to be out in front. For good or bad, they have influenced the newspaper industry — and mainstream newspaper readers — for the past 30 years, in terms of what the experience of presenting and reading a newspaper should be. I’m impressed they are trying to get out in front of the pack online, as well. Sidenote: their owner has some local newspapers that are laggards in the whole conversational media thing.

Technorati Tags: conversational media, social media, social networking

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