Ed Bilodeau

This weblog had moved: http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/

# Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

# Blogging may be harmful to chances for tenure : Too Much Information?: ""A blog raises your profile, but it raises your profile for something other than research," Carroll said. And even if you are extremely productive as a scholar, he said, some professors may view a blog as sign that you could be spending more time in the laboratory or library, engaged in traditional research."

It is interesting to note that as much as tenure is touted as being a mechanism for supporting academic freedom, my impression is that it is more often used as a control device to regulate the behaviour of academics seeking tenure.

Tenure also underpins the "crisis" in scholarly communication, creating an artificial dependence on expensive journals, and I think explaining why academics have not moved en mass to take advantage of the web as way of sharing knowledge.

Some institutions have begun to take a more enlightened path to tenure. Some even include teaching excellence as part of a candidates portfolio! But overall, I would say the concept has been twisted beyond recognition and no longer serves the university, academics, or society well. We need to move on.

Ed Bilodeau

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

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