Why is Wikipedia's Essjay gone?

In July 2006, Wikipedia honored a veteran editor, a senior administrator. He is a PhD in religion and is teaching at a university in the US but still spends a lot of time editing to make this online dictionary more accurate.

Like every member on Wikipedia, he has the alias Essjay.

By the end of the month, chairman and founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales appointed Essjay as a member of the arbitration committee. In this position, Essjay's decision with 11 others is seen as the final ruling in content modification proceedings between the members of the site.

Being in a towering position, Essjay suddenly resigned, removed all of Wikipedia's personal websites and left his shirt. Reason: people discovered Mr. Essjay with a verbal statement was actually a 24-year-old Ryan Jordan, dropping out of school.

Jimmy Wales, chairman and founder of Wikipedia, said the people 's encyclopedia is still trying to make the most accurate information.Photo: Reuters

If you don't understand why Essjay suddenly disappeared and the seriousness of the event, go to Wikipedia's home page to see that the encyclopedia currently has more than 1.6 million English words, if you include the version In other languages, that number is more than 5.3 million entries.

That means it is nearly 14 times the number of entries from the British encyclopedia Britannica. While Britannica takes nearly two and a half centuries to build up those words and fame, Wikipedia only takes six years to become known worldwide.

More than 75,000 active members have created that feat with the encouragement of anonymity mechanism. With Wikipedia, a watchmaker or professor is the same, can write articles, edit content without creating a registration with authentic self information.

Actually, thanks to that, Wikipedia readers have a panoramic view of an event. But it is also the anonymous mechanism that Essjay overcomes many of Wikipedia's filtering strata to achieve one of the key positions undetected.

The Economist said on March 10 that if a dreamer and an expert disagreed on an issue, they might have to confront each other in correcting the article that morning it seemed popular, but the session In the afternoon, I was very academic.

That's not even a hundred people, so the knowledge provided by Wikipedia will be dull, not focused on the important points. Of course, it can't be helped because many Wikipedia articles are really complete and accurate.

There are already several online encyclopedia projects such as the Citizendium or Conservapedia that overcome this weakness by placing a heavy role on the part of well-known experts. This week, Reuters also quoted Wikipedia's Wales chairman that they are trying to combat information misrepresentation.

Essjay said on Wikipedia that he had permanently retired from the online encyclopedia, but could not. Anyone can come back under another name, another profile. Anonymous!

Minh Huy