Michigan State offers course on WP adminship, should be an easy A if you suck up to the right people Options

[Ego Trippin' (Part Two)]

According to this, Dr. Jonathan Obar, assistant visiting professor in the Michigan State telecommunications department, "is teaching a course this semester on how Wikipedia is governed and how administrators are selected." The students' coursework will be based in part on interviews they will conduct with Wikipedia admins. About 25 admins have already signed up to be interviewed.

A previous thread discussed an article by Obar which sung the praises of using Wikipedia in the classroom. I guess he's progressed from teaching students to use Wikipedia to teaching students about Wikipedia's inner functions. Unfortunately, I suspect that Obar will teach the course with a pro-Wikipedia slant.

I was unable to find a course description on MSU's website. Presumably it's out of date.

What do you think the sourcing standards are like for papers in this novel class? Surely there's not much out there in the way of peer-reviewed literature about Wikipedia's governance.
More to the point, is this the first time you've heard of a college course being taught about Wikipedia's inner workings?

[EricBarbour]

I don't understand why y'all are complaining about Obar on this forum.

Instead, write up a precis that Obar is incompetent/dishonest, and send it to the trustees.
The bullshit with his BLP and other editing practices is actually rather embarrassing, it
doesn't make him look like a good academic. Just write up a blow-by-blow account of
what happened, print out the diffs, and send it in with a cover letter saying that Obar
has been raving about Wikipedia while he's been repeatedly violating Wikipedia's own
regulations (pathetic though they are), and might also be collecting money from the WMF
under the table(difficult to prove, but one never knows). Stand back and see what happens.

[thekohser]

...and might also be collecting money from the WMF
under the table(difficult to prove, but one never knows).

That crosses an ethical line, Eric.

Rather than generating a one-off letter, I think it would be better to reach out to perhaps a Michigan State alumni group on Linked In, and get people talking about the visiting professor's misdeeds. Then maybe a larger wave of communication could hit East Lansing.