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

Ian S. King isking at uw.edu
Wed Sep 3 21:38:21 PDT 2014


It brings to mind what I've thought over the years about some other forms
of vandalism (and I'd argue that Ayyadurai is vandalizing the historical
record): imagine if he put all of this energy into actually doing something
original, instead of crying "conspiracy theory" to promote a "creative"
account that has been roundly disproven.  I wonder if he studied the
anti-vaccine movement?  -- Ian


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 9:22 PM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org> wrote:

> 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_Invention_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-Shiva-Ayyadurai-As-Inventor.asp
>
>
>
> Tom
>
>
>
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-- 
Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS
Ph.D. Candidate
The Information School
University of Washington

Give a man a fire, and he will be warm for the night.
Set him on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
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