WikiCU announced today that there will be a change at captain’s chair, with Sam Aarons, SEAS ’14 and one of Bwog’s webmasters, taking control of WikiCU’s operations and Bwog taking a longer term advisory role. We’d link to WikiCU, but it’s still plagued by malware. Get on that, Sam.

Statement from the outgoing WikiCU team below:

Dear WikiCU readers,

We are writing today to let you know that effectively immediately, we are entrusting WikiCU to the care of Sam Aarons, SEAS ’14. You might know him as the genius/future tech titan who developed Print@CU. Sam has agreed, after implementing some long-overdue technical upgrades, to transfer the site to Bwog when he is no longer able to maintain it himself.

We started WikiCU in 2006 with a simple vision that information ought to be free, and a single-minded obsession with documenting everything interesting, irrelevant, and in-between about this great university. Alas, the last of us who were part of the founding group of authors, editors, and contributors to WikiCU graduated in 2008.

With the real world looming and physically separated from Alma Mater (for some of us, by oceans), we found less and less time to maintain the site and its content. Yet, we were flattered to know that WikiCU, despite its age, remained a resource for everyone from incoming first-years to, apparently, Columbia’s lawyers, who cited WikiCU in a trademark filing of the Columbia shield itself. (We’re not kidding. Go here for the trademark filing. Look at the “Specimen” created 18-Feb-2009.)

We ask three things: 1) that WikiCU continues to be available as a free resource, 2) that WikiCU remains freely editable by the Columbia community and indeed, by all interested contributors, and 3) that the WikiCU name and the “WikiCU Butler Facade” brand survive.

We are confident and excited at transitioning WikiCU to this next phase. We look forward to this once-unloved archive once again serving its role as a resource and as this great university’s institutional memory for all Columbians, prospective, current, and former. And we are very excited about seeing what the next generation (that’s you) can and will contribute to WikiCU.

We remain, sirs, with great respect, your most humb. obdt. svts.,

The WikiCU Team (2006-2012)

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