Wikipedia Administrator was a Fraud
Posted by Ryan on March 7th, 2007.
In a blink, the wisdom of the crowd became the fury of the crowd. In the last few days, contributors to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, have turned against one of their own who was found to have created an elaborate false identity.
As a student, we all hear that we shouldn’t use Wikipedia as a source. Most of the time, the professor’s argument is that due to its nature, anyone can edit it, and you don’t know what the person’s background in the material is.
Well, this news just adds more weight for the professors, as one of the administrators has just announced his real name, and his real backgound. He is not a professor of religion whose specialty is canon law, as he once led everyone to believe. Instead, he is a 24 year old college drop out.
People have gone through his edits and found places where he was basically cashing in on his fake credentials to bolster his arguments,” said Michael Snow, a Wikipedia administrator who is also the founder of The Wikipedia Signpost, the community newspaper for which he is covering the story. “Those will get looked at again.”
This is what professors are talking about when they say they don’t want to see WikiPedia cited. What if one of the articles a student used had misinformation that was left because of a user’s false credentials? The student gets marked down, and it might make him not use Wikipedia next time, which drives down their traffic. They might tell their friends not to use it as well, which would drive down traffic even more.
I’ll admit it, I use WikiPedia when doing papers. But when I do, I go there to get ideas on other resources to use, resources that the professor will accept. And in the odd chance that I do cite WikiPedia, it’ll be for something that I’ve already cited at least one other, a more legitimate, source for.