• drugs
• wikipedia

As we gear up for this year's "War on Christmas," I thought I'd point Blogora readers to another campaign using Reagen-esque rhetoric. The Great Meadows Middle School librarian is telling students to "Just say no to Wikipedia":

A US SCHOOL librarian is treating the do-it-yourself online encyclopaedia Wackypedia like a drugs curse.

• Jim Brown's blog
• Login or register to post comments
• Read more

• wikipedia

The terrible story of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit just got way weirder:

Investigators are looking into who altered pro wrestler Chris Benoit's Wikipedia entry to mention his wife's death hours before authorities discovered the bodies of the couple and their 7-year-old son.

Awhile back, Sinbad's Wikipedia entry erroneously listed him as deceased, but that was a hoax. This is very different. Someone added this to the page a full 14 hours before authorities discovered the bodies of Benoit, his wife, and his child:

"Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy."

Benoit's Wikipedia entry has been locked.

• Jim Brown's blog
• 3 comments

• wikipedia

In response to the massive media response to the Middlebury history department's ban of Wikipedia, the college hosted an open forum (this link provides video of the forum alonf with a transcript).

Aside from their insistence on "banning" Wikipedia (or, at least, using the language of banning), it seems to me that this department has done better than most in dealing with the issue. They have only said that students cannot cite Wikipedia, and this open forum shows a willingness to think and talk about the issue. Interestingly enough, Middlebury seems to be using a very wiki-ish strategy in dealing with this debate - open discussion.

• Jim Brown's blog
• Login or register to post comments

• rhetoric
• wikipedia

Hi, everyone. I'll echo Cynthia and say it's nice to join the fray.

I know we already did all this R-word stuff, but I thought I'd update everyone on the Wikipedia entry for "Rhetoric." About a week ago, the entry still defined rhetoric as persuasion via "oral language," but a user named Navidnak did some great work reorganizing the entry. The article now starts with a breakdown between classical and contemporary rhetoric. Now, I'm not 100% comfortable with this split, but at least things are becoming more nuanced.

Experts (like the readers of the Blogora) should be in this conversation. Please bear with me as I put one more call out to this agora...please stop by Wikipedia and use your expertise.

• Jim Brown's blog
• Login or register to post comments