Baker on Wikipedia: save our stubs!

Speaking of the NYRB, there is a totally “charming” article about Wikipedia by Nicholson Baker this month. Baker is exactly the kind of person I want to have speaking for Wikipedia, and his focus is not on reliability or legitimacy or the moral panics that so many seem to grasp at, but on the dangers of the “deletionists” and his one-man crusade to stop them from ruining what is in his estimation (and I agree) the true charm of Wikipedia, it’s ability to take the ephemeral, the obscure, the barely noticed and the everyday as seriously as the most revered data points of our collective experience. He asks for our help in preventing the deletionists from winning…

Christopher Kelty does anthropological and historical research on science and technology, free and open source software, intellectual property and open access, the history of software, and the ethics and politics of nanotechnology. He also teaches classes about all of these things. From 2001 to 2008 he was assistant professor of anthropology at Rice University, in Houston, TX. He know teaches at UCLA and splits his time between the Information Studies department, the Anthropology Department and the Center for Society and Genetics.