Most of us awoke this morning to find out Adam Curry had been editing the Wikipedia entry for podcasting to make himself sound more like the inventor of the genre than he really is. Although, to be fair, he is probably the reason podcasting has taken off at this point in time. Not that someone else wouldn't have eventually placed rich media within an RSS enclosure, but do give him props for at least that. Podfather he is, podblazing one-man show, he is not.

When someone edits Wikipedia without logging in to a user account, the IP address is recorded to guard against abuse. Four times this year, an IP address controlled by Curry, 82.108.78.107, has made revisions involving the early history of podcasting.

The blogosphere is on fire right now bashing him, and I can see the legitmacy of the outcry, but put yourself in his shoes. Wouldn't you be at least a little tempted to make yourself sound cooler than you really are if you were sure you wouldn't get caught?

But, caught he did in fact get. Maybe that's the real issue here...

If he had realized his IP was not only being logged, but would easily be tracked back to him, he probably would have been a little more gracious in his giving others credit. But, alas Mr. Curry didn't realize, I guess, a simple 'whois.net' would reveal the IP to be registered to him.

So, the moral here is, you can be a jackass, as long as you don't get caught.

Now, I have given my spiel about being nice and understanding. Now I am going to share a few random quotes that I thought some were absolutely hilarious (and it's really evil of me to laugh at this but I just couldn't help but include it). And, of course there were others that were just plain mean. I only included one or two of those.

From the Digg story:

Dayyve:
I'm still trying to figure out why peeps listen to Adam Curry? My gawd I'm not going to take advice from anyone who hasn't changed their hairstyle since 1987. Anyone have any good recommendations to share?

aggrazel:
Adam Curry invented Podcasting,
al gore invented the Internet,
Someones Uncle invented Superglue ...

fwonkas:
Jeez, think you all can lay the hate on a little more thick? I'm still not quite sure what you think of this guy

MisterKen:
Props for the hair.
He went from the Farrah to a sort of Jennifer Aniston-esque shag.
That's sassy!

Andrewd2:
Man, we know who you are, and your role in the development of podcasting. Do you not get enough props from the podcasting community already? He must feel like a tool. After something like this, he will never get any real street cred. The stink from this will hang on him FOREVER. loser.

motorbikematt:
Podcast: Someone had the revolutionary idea of taking a compressed audio file and putting it online. Yeah, doesn't sound so sexy when I describe it for what it is, does it you morons? It would have been a great idea if streaming audio wasn't already around for over a decade before the word "podcast" entered the lexicon.

wynnwill:
I will agree that he did sell out on the whole biodiesel thing. I will say, though, that is he is oblivious enough to not hide his IP, I believe he could have accidentally deleted the Wikipedia entry.

And from the original story, this was priceless:

But he was never a developer on iPodder (now known as Juice), so he might want to squeeze those guys into the encyclopedia on his next editing run.

and from fis comments section:

David K:
In related news, a bearded Al Gore has been holed up in a log cabin in Tennessee, wearing only a pair of tattered boxer shorts, where he has been secretly editing Wikipedia entries to make sure he gets props for inventing the Internet.

Melampo:
I think it matters. After all America was discovered by the English and not by Columbus, right? at least so Wiki says..

Freb:
podcasting is teh suck!

Brian Carnell:
Seth: Al Gore's claims are still bogus. The Internet occurred in spite of Gore whose vision was for a very centralized system of networked computers. If he had been advocating TCP/IP-style interconnection he might have had a point, but Gore's vision was a long way from what ultimately became the Internet.

This would be a bit like a Senator who support the space program in the early 1960s taking credit for playing a pivotal role in the creation of velcro.
Original Story: Adam Curry Caught in a Sticky WikiCurry's Responses: His Blog and His PodcastThe Wikis: Podcasting and Adam CurryBlogs talking about it:

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