Al Fasoldt is at it again

Al Fasoldt is at it again, this time taking on Wikipedia. Remember him? Last year I blasted him for spreading FUD about web technology (“FUD Alert“), and then apologized this year for being so harsh (“Apology“). Well, now more people have caught on: tonight I read from this article on Boing Boing and this article on Joi Ito that Fasoldt has slammed Wikipedia and then taken the low road when someone called him on it: this article from Techdirt has the skinny:

Rather than take me up on the experiment, or suggest an alternative, he complained simply that the whole idea of Wikipedia was “outrageous,” “repugnant” and finally (in another email) “dangerous,” and therefore he refused to take part in my experiment. He told me that asking him to take part of an experiment that would show how Wikipedia corrected errors “wouldn’t change the danger” of Wikipedia — and mentioned how important it was that teachers everywhere knew what a dangerous tool this was. After this email exchange, he came to Techdirt himself, and commented that, based on what he read here, he was disappointed in our educational system — and proceeded to misquote a poem.

 

…by refusing to back up his claims, by mis-stating or ignoring nearly everything I said to him and by resorting to misdirection in his arguments, personally, I find Mr. Fasoldt to be untrustworthy — but I suggest you make your own judgment call on that one.

Now, I’ll be fair, I read Fasoldt’s original article that kicked this off, and I didn’t find it problematic. A little FUD-ish, but hey, that’s what he does. It could’ve stayed civil and turned into a good future article for him. But all this followup?

Well, I’m just sayin’.