On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 10:14 PM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<-----Original Message----- From: Anthony wikimail@inbox.org To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org; wjhonson@aol.com Sent: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 7:11 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium
Sure, I can. And I did. And they approved my application.
FWIW, the application process used to be even more onerous. They required a CV from everyone. I and many others refused to apply. Then they made it easier, requiring only a 50 word biography. I thought that was reasonable.
You don't. So don't apply. No big deal.>>
And you by your own admission above, *knew* why they were asking for that information. However they don't state why they are asking.
"All Citizens are *required* to maintain biographies on their userpages. Why? Because we are taking real-world responsibility for our contributions and making real-world relationships with each other. A name by itself conveys little information to others. The purpose of user pages is to be helpful to the development of *Citizendium*. Therefore, authors' user pages will be regulated by the *Citizendium*'s constabulary. " http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:User_Pages (linked from the application)
That's my problem. If you are going to require information, you should state why you are requiring it. Not simply that it's required.
If you want to know why they are requiring it, you should ask them, not bitch.
This is even more true in the case of wikis where the information is present for... ever.
I'm sure they'd be happy to delete a biography upon request.