Home Your IT Home IT Wikipedia: Rogue editor EssJay resigns in shame
The scandal over EssJay, or Ryan Jordan’s credentials as a ‘professor with doctorates in religion’ has resigned, after it emerged he was really a 24-year-old Kentucky college dropout.

When news of the latest Wikipedia scandal broke, concerning EssJay, or rather Ryan Jordan, who had claimed to be a professor teaching at a private university, and was uncovered by “The New Yorker” last week, Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, professed not to be worried about it and appeared to sweep the whole episode under the carpet.

Unfortunately for Jimmy Wales and Ryan Jordan, the Internet community was horrified that yet again, Wikipedia was in the news for all the wrong reasons.

EssJay, or Jordan, had worked on over 16,000 Wikipedia entries, either writing or editing them, and had been invited by Jimmy Wales to work on the commercial Wikia project which sells Wiki style websites to anyone that wants them.

Jimmy Wales has claimed that he has been in a remote part of India since the scandal erupted, and despite initially being quoted that he wasn’t worried about EssJay’s use of a pseudonym, he has since decided to ask Ryan Jordon to resign his ‘positions of trust’ over his nonexistent degrees on March 3 from both Wikipedia and Wikia.

On March 4, Jordan agreed to resign, and offered his personal apology not only to Wales, but to the entire Wikipedia community.

Jordan had claimed he fabricated his persona to avoid cyberstalking from users whose entries he had edited, and claimed that he was shocked that the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Stacy Schiff from the New Yorker would publish the information from Jordan’s user page which now claims that Jordan has ‘retired’. Jordan said that “It was, quite honestly, my impression that it was well known that I was not who I claimed to be, and that in the absence of any confirmation, no respectable publication would print it.”

Unfortunately for Jordan, Wikipedia gives the impression that what it prints is correct, even though it has been shown to have published incorrect information which has needed to be corrected on a range of occasions. Because Wikipedia is built, according to Wales, “(among other things) twin pillars of trust and tolerance”, it is hardly surprising that Schiff would assume that an entry on a Wikipedia administrator would be completely truthful.

On the page, linked above, on Wikipedia relating to the resignation of Ryan Jordan, Wikipedia states that: “Wikipedia allows its users to be anonymous, by creating usernames as pseudonyms. However, it is considered unethical to purposely misrepresent oneself to the media, or to use unjustified claims to qualifications to support arguments with other contributors”.

It is understood that Wikipedia is now checking the credentials of all its editors and other ‘official’ Wikipedia staff to ensure that a similar scandal will not eventuate in the future.

FREE WHITEPAPER - REMOTE SUPPORT TRENDS FOR 2015

Does your remote support strategy keep you and your CEO awake at night?

Today’s remote support solutions offer much more than just remote control for PCs. Their functional footprint is expanding to include support for more devices and richer analytics for trend analysis and supervisor dashboards.

It is imperative that service executives acquaint themselves with the new features and capabilities being introduced by leading remote support platforms and find ways to leverage the capabilities beyond technical support.

Field services, education services, professional services, and managed services are all increasing adoption of these tools to boost productivity and avoid on-site visits.

Which product is easiest to deploy, has the best maintenance mode capabilities, the best mobile access and custom reporting, dynamic thresholds setting, and enhanced discovery capabilities?

To find out all you need to know about using remote support to improve your bottom line, download this FREE Whitepaper.

DOWNLOAD!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt

joomla counter

One of Australia’s best-known technology journalists and consumer tech experts, Alex has appeared in his capacity as technology expert on all of Australia’s free-to-air and pay TV networks, including stints as presenter of Ch 10’s Internet Bright Ideas, Ch 7’s Room for Improvement and tech expert on Ch 9’s Today Show, among many other news and current affairs programs.

Connect