[SIGCIS-Members] Fascinating edit war at the Wikipedia page on email

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,

 

The last few days seem to have seen a great deal of back and forth in edits
and on the talk section of Wikipedia's page on email. Pro-Ayyadurai forces
have jumped in to seize on the Huffington Post series as documentation to
rewrite the text to give him a staring role. A cynic might speculate that
the Wikipedia page is the real prize and the Huffington Post articles merely
a means to an end. They have, thus far, been beaten back with heavy
resistance by Wikipedia loyalists. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Email#Recent_published_research:_1978_Inve
ntion_by_Shiva_Ayyadurai.  

 

It is interesting to see the social processes at work in shaping what for
most will be the first and only destination in a search for an authoritative
account of something. I did notice many references to Ayyadurai being edited
over the past couple of years into other, less policed, Wikipedia pages.
This included about a dozen references to his book being added to various
pages before it was even published.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Arttechlaw 

 

Ayyadurai himself saw the removal of previous references to him from various
articles as some kind of conspiracy and documented the process as part of
how "systems of power react when they feel threatened."
http://www.inventorofemail.com/Removal-Of-References-On-Wikipedia-To-VA-Shiv
a-Ayyadurai-As-Inventor.asp 

 

Tom

 

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