The rise of Wikipedia seems to have afflicted some scholars with a mild case of existential panic. And understandably so: When the world’s most popular reference tool is such an egalitarian outfit, that can be interpreted as a fairly stiff challenge to the value of expertise, right?

It most certainly can, writes Larry Sanger in a new article on “The Fate of Expertise After Wikipedia.” But fear not, scholars: Expertise, he says, will win out in the end.

Seasoned Wikipedia watchers are already familiar with the saga of Mr. Sanger: He was there with Jimmy Wales when the online encyclopedia was founded (and, in fact, when its predecessor, Nupedia, was conceived), but he left Wikipedia in 2002 because he felt the site’s credentials-be-damned approach benefited vandals and kept away scholars. In 2006 he unveiled Citizendium, a competing encyclopedia that entrusts editing power to approved...

For many years, campus CIOs argued that our contribution to the leadership of the university was limited by the fact that we were the new players in the president’s cabinet. Well, as a profession we’ve been at it for about 30 years now. We appear to be rather routinely “only one technology implementation away” from a bigger leadership role on the campus.

It is time to ask some important questions and try to chart a path to a different level of discourse on the campus. Years ago fast networks and services like e-mail were things you could only experience on the campus. As members of the campus community have become accustomed to robust and reliable consumer-technology experiences outside the university, the self-image of the IT leader providing special-enterprise network services is no longer consistent with the experience of most people on the campus — and in most cases not the basis ...

Manx, Aasax, Ubykh, Eyak: Once spoken in, respectively, the Isle of Man, Tanzania, Turkey, and Alaska, all four languages have died out in the last 35 years. Of the 6,000 or so languages still heard in the world, about 2,500 are at risk, and 199 have fewer than 10 speakers left, according to Unesco.

To bring attention to the plight of these endangered linguistic species, Unesco today unveiled an interactive online version of the latest edition of its Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. (The print edition comes out next month.) The atlas draws on the work of more than 30 linguists, supervised by its editor in chief, Christopher Moseley of Australia.

Users of the atlas can search by country or area, language name, number of speakers, or vitality, which includes five categories: unsafe, definitely endangered,...

The most visible defendant in the recording industry’s supposedly dwindling mass-lawsuit campaign may still get his day in court Webcast — just not next week, a federal appellate judge decided yesterday.

Joel Tenenbaum, backed by Harvard Law School, has become a poster child for opposition to the recording industry’s copyright-infringement litigation. A graduate student at Boston University, Mr. Tenenbaum was sued for illegally downloading seven copyrighted songs. Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society is fighting to stream his case online.

Last month a federal judge in Massachusetts, Nancy Gertner, ruled for a Webcast of a pre-trial hearing — filmed by the Courtroom View Network and carried gavel-to-gavel by the Berkman Center — but the recording industry appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and several...

Orlando — Sure, it’s an exaggeration to say that all academic inventors think that their university technology-transfer offices don’t do enough pitching to get their inventions into commercial use, or that all tech-transfer folks think academics have an unrealistic (read: inflated) view of how attractive their inventions might be to companies and investors.

But that problem does often hang over such enterprises. And even under the best of circumstances, few would disagree that it would be better all around if researchers were better informed about how their inventions are being handled once they are disclosed to the university.

The backers of a Cornell University Web tool dubbed MyIP could go a long way toward closing that information gap.

The portal allows inventors who have reported inventions to the university to track the status of patenting and...

Skidmore College’s baccalaureate distance-learning program, University Without Walls, may become another casualty of the economic crisis.

The program, started in 1971, was never designed to turn a profit. But the rate at which it is losing money—more than $100,000 annually since about 2003—has become a problem as the upstate New York college has sought to streamline its budget in the face of endowment losses. Unless the program is overhauled, officials say, it will sink deeper into the red.

The program, which costs $6,300 per semester for full-time students, offers a Skidmore degree at a significant discount compared to the nearly $25,000 per semester charged to residential students. Although economic downturns tend to push more students to enroll in online education programs, enrollment in University Without Walls remains well shy of where it would need to be for the program to...

Just days after someone posted security-camera footage to YouTube that showed an associate vice president at the University of South Florida helping someone steal a bicycle, the administrator, Abdul S. Rao, is resigning.

Stephen K. Klasko, dean of the university’s medical school, announced at a faculty meeting last night that Dr. Rao would step down effective this Friday. Dr. Rao, senior associate vice president for research in the university’s health division, admitted that he had helped a day laborer take a bicycle parked at a loading dock behind the university’s Byrd Institute.

He said in a statement that a “lapse of judgment” led him to give permission to a “nearly homeless man” to use the bike, which a student later reported stolen. “I have no excuse,” ...

Like a number of technology leaders at urban universities, I remain hopeful that as the final details of the stimulus package come together, infrastructure funds for inner-city computer networking remain part of the vision of 21st-century America.

In my last blog post, I outlined the opportunity for a new urbanism, which I called the emergent smart city. I’d argue that we’ll also soon see a new form of economy and human habitat, what I would call the “connected village.” Just as important as wiring urban areas is making sure that superfast broadband connects the very edge of the network in rural towns and villages, just beyond the bright lights of our cities.

What has become clear is that as much as $2.5-billion in stimulus will be made available to support a rural infrastructure...

Medpedia, a new online medical encyclopedia relying on user-generated content from anyone with an M.D. or a Ph.D. in a biomedical field, officially became available today. The venture, which has the backing of numerous leading medical schools, was explored in an earlier Chronicle article that takes a detailed look at issues for contributors and users of the site. —David Shieh

An administrator at the University of South Florida has been placed on leave after he admitted to stealing a student’s bicycle from behind a campus building, according to a report in The Tampa Tribune. In an Internet-era twist, the incident was caught on surveillance camera and posted to YouTube.

The YouTube video shows a woman parking her bike at a loading dock. The video then shows footage several hours later, as a van pulls into the loading dock and two men inspect the bikes and take one. One of the men was apparently Abdul S. Rao, senior associate vice president for research in the university’s health division. He is also a professor of surgery and molecular medicine.

According to The Tribune, Dr. Rao said he was trying to help a day laborer find transportation, and loaned the man a bike from the back of...