Pseudonymity

I find I work best in the early morning. It's strange but seems to work fairly well assuming I don't grossly underestimate the time and work required or my ink supply. Today's task is from my mass media ethics class and is about...ethics. The case study specifically concerns the creation of shill accounts and their effect on society and the marketplace. I wanted to find some mention of the wikiality that takes place on Wikipedia. I can't be sure how often it takes place, but I would suggest more often than Wikipedians will admit. Perhaps ironically, on the page dealing with criticisms of Wikipedia, including inaccurate and sometimes non-existent sourcing for controversial assertions in articles there are several dead external links. It seems that the North Adams Transcript doesn't keep an active archive. Whoops.

Despite it's many flaws, I still consider Wikipedia a nobel endeavor. I have both admiration and pity for those who spend their freetime editting a free encyclopedia. I'm not sure why they do it. I'm even less sure why toast shows up on the list of most vandalized pages.

In related news, I recently went to a little seminar featuring the creator of wiki technology, Ward Cunningham. It was very interesting.