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Which may be why going to a user-to-user web-of-trust paradigm, with certain well-respected editors (who may or may not be board members, but are acting ina private capacity) may be better.
- --Avi
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wikien-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
1. Re: Proposal for simplified credentials model (Florence Devouard)
From: Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com>
To: wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:07:04 +0100
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for simplified credentials model
William Pietri wrote:
> Florence Devouard wrote:
>> Many editors of huge quality are not willing to provide their real name.
>> Why would they consider sending this information to a totally anonymous
>> email address handled by volunteers, who are not necessarily identified
>> under their real name and have signed no confidentiality agreement them ?
>>
>
>
> Is there possible compromise between your position and Eric's?
>
> There are plenty of companies in the credential validation business.
> Most of them are set up for slightly different uses, but I'm sure there
> are some creative ones we could work with.
>
> The notion is that for anybody who would like their credentials
> validated, they can pay a third party to do the work. The Foundation
> would only get involved to select trusted vendors and verify the vendor
> accounts on Wikipedia. In addition to verifying credentials, they could
> perhaps verify real names, or that the user has only one verified
> Wikipedia account. For the limited cases where the Foundation wanted
> things verified, they could cover the cost of the verification;
> otherwise, people would be on their own.
>
>
>
> Personally, I don't have much of an opinion on this topic, but I thought
> I'd suggest the possibility.
>
> William
Hello,
As of today, the Foundation does not have the infrastructure to deal
with this. We are working on a very limited staff, so the only
verifications that have ever been done were for example for candidates
on the board of Trustees. The office also know all the real identities
of the checkusers I was told. Practically, this can only be small scale.
But more importantly, it is important to limit the legal risk of the
Foundation. When someone is unhappy about a false statement about him or
a defamatory comment in an article, they rarely try to sue the author of
the statement (they will often try to hunt him down though). Usually,
they want to sue the Foundation. In most cases of course, if there is a
real problem, the bad content is fixed, but a few people behave in bad
faith, and try to get the opportunity of a mistake in an article to sue
us, get famous and get rich.
A very nasty guy could sue us and get us down. One of the ways we can
decrease our liability is by presenting Wikimedia Foundation pretty much
as a host provider rather than as a publisher/editor in the traditional
sense.
As long as editing rules are in the hands of the community, we have a
stronger case claiming that we are only host providers.
Other situations, including Wikimedia Foundation "deciding who the
arbitrators are", "deciding who should be blocked", "deciding what the
rules for deleting porn images are", "deciding which articles should be
deleted", "collecting information about users to give them access to
certain tools" etc.... are all actions which tends to indicate that the
Foundation is not only a host provider, but rather acting as the "editor
in chief".
Which is why, aside from any scalability issues, I think it is not the
Foundation business to enter into any credential controlling activity.
It makes sense for board candidates. It makes sense for checkuser
because there is a technical access to data with confidentiality
agreement. But getting involved in the process of collecting credentials
is something we better stay away from.
I think Erik is perfectly on agreement with me on this point. But I
wanted to explain in a clearer way the reasoning.
Cheers
ant
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