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Midnight University

Thai educational website

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 22, 2024
Entity authorityQ6583862
Source-derived summary

Midnight University is a Thai virtual university for free public education. It contains over 1,500 scholarly articles. In 2006 it received more than 2.5 million visits per month from users around the world. Besides providing scholarly articles, the Midnight University website provides space for the public to discuss social and political issues. It is based in Chiang Mai.

Following the 2006 Thai coup d'état, Midnight University's website was shut down after Chiang Mai University management and staff protested the junta's draft interim charter. Kasian Tejapira of Thammasat University claimed the website was "the foremost free and critical educational and public intellectual website in Thailand. The shutdown was not only a huge loss to academic and intellectual freedom in Thai society, but also the closure of a free forum for the contention of ideas so as to find a peaceful alternative to violent conflict in Thailand." Kraisorn Pornsuthee, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) Permanent Secretary claimed ignorance of the shutdown of the website and declined to give his rationale or opinion about the matter.

Editorial summary

“Midnight University” enters the record as thai educational website. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Midnight, University and Thai can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2006—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Midnight, University and Thai.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Midnight University” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Midnight, University and Thai provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 22, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q6583862. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Midnight University”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Midnight University primary sources, Midnight University archive and Midnight research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Midnight University”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Midnight University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.