Erik Moeller wrote:
On 3/8/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
But the Foundation should be entirely kept away from this. There is NO way our rare employees should have to deal with editors credentials.
I agree - which is why the simplified proposal only works through an OTRS queue handled by volunteers (similar to the permissions queue), and is voluntary.
At the same time, I believe this proposition will scare away some people and will result in people not telling what they are educated or trained in;
Why would such a person have a problem saying "I do not want to verify my credentials, thanks"? That seems like a simple enough thing to ask.
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 ?
This is I think a slippery slope toward requesting identification for various jobs.
Nobody proposes anything mandatory at this point (except perhaps that people have to tolerate simple disclaimer templates of their choice on their user page).
I think we are dangerously going on a path with less and less of transparency.
You are suggesting that people (who may be from many different origins - including from countries no OTRS volunteers have the single idea of the educational system) send to an anonymous email address, a proof of credential that the OTRS volunteers will have to take the time to analyse, take the responsability to validate, then report on the wiki.
And editors will have to trust that, without seeing the information ?
I think that is weird. Really. And, seeing the pain that is already going on on OTRS to manage current emails, I think it will not scale because too complex.
Why not launching a campaign rather with two goals * those who are identified are invited to provide some references for anyone (anyone, publicly) to check the information. * educating the press interviewing editors that they should simply think of asking the person to provide relevant data * make it clear that lying about credentials and using that expertise "power" is bad. I guess Essjay feels very ashamed right now, and so would anyone in his right mind.
What counts is not the credential of the person, but giving a source for a controversial content. This is not because someone has a validated phd that he should be more reliable than another.
But people can, and will, make reference to the credentials people claim on their user pages. Both the people claiming them, and others reading them. The Essjay case has shown this.
Last, we should stop being the valet of the press. Each time there is a noise in the press, some feel we should respond, apology, change the way we are doing things.
Not each time. When some newspaper reports "Wikipedia claimed xy was a pedophile" and it is just a common case of vandalism that was fixed in 5 minutes, then we realize this is hyperbole and shouldn't result in immediate action.
When USA Today had an editorial that showed that a serious case of personal attack vandalism remained for months, then this led to some positive reforms about living people biographies (much of the current en.wp policy on this topic was written after the incident). I do not regret these reforms in the slightest.
In the fake credentials case, I also think some cautious reform steps are in order. We're not going to become a "credentialed encyclopedia", but it makes perfect sense to me to treat such statements with some disclaimers, in lieu of any verification. Irrespective of any media event, for a typical user, the simple fact that Wikipedians have thought about such things, and come up with a carefully balanced policy for them, would inspire some trust.
Sticking our collective head in the sand is as dangerous as acting like we don't have one. I believe the credentials problem deserves serious attention. Therefore I think this is an important & healthy discussion, and I hope you will continue to contribute to it.
I am willing to discuss it.
But I insist that the Foundation be not involved in this. If the Foundation itself pushes a policy of this type and manage credential stuff, we are clearly labelled editors.
And it will really bugs me if I see in the press an official statement from the Foundation that we promise to work to provide such checking, when we will not.
And who will take the time to explain the various languages communities that "euh, no, this will not happen actually"
What I mostly want to make sure is that this happens because editors think it is important, not because the WMF told them it is mandatory from now on.