I've been thinking a lot about Wikipedia lately. Open. Free. And while many of today's "progressive" educational thinkers tout it's accuracy and ability to report on even long-tail type topics, I'm very surprised by what I don't find there.

Question: Why can I find a Wikipedia entry for only a few of the many prominent leaders in educational technology? Now, I know that anybody can add an entry in Wikipedia - but only those deemed worthy by the community actually stick.

Therefore, why the preferential treatment?

The Precious Few (Ed-techies with Wikipedia entries):

• Stephen Downes
• Alan November
• Will Richardson

There were also several others (like Andy Carvin and David Pogue) that should probably be lumped into the ed-tech crowd, but would probably attribute their Wikipedia entry to some other higher-profile achievement. Andy, for example, is with NPR and David is with the New York Times.

Notably missing in action (in alphabetical order) were:

• Karl Fisch - Surely Shift Happens (seen by more than 10 million people) deserves a place among the Wikipedia immortal.
• Ian Jukes
  
• Marc Prensky - There is an entry, Digital native, which mentions that "Prensky claims to have coined the term...", but no link detailing more information about Prensky and his accomplishments.
• Gary Stager
• David Warlick
  
  
• YOU!
  

On a personal note, I was also surprised that David Wiley (professor at Utah State) had an entry, but none of his USU supervisors had made the cut - not even the dean of his department. To make things worse, Stew Morrill (head basketball coach at USU) and Brent Guy (head USU football coach, 2-10 record as of November 24) each have entries - but then again, we all know that athletics are far more important than academics.

So what gives?

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