Re: [WikiEN-l] On Transparency

A brief contrarian point of view. If Wikipedia is to succeed in any measure to move beyond its tabloid status then transparency is essential. That is, every admin must necessarily have their identity exposed and it surprises me somewhat to see the resistance here - and I find it hard to justify. Authority (in the sense of an encyclopedia) comes because the individuals involved are transparent and respected in some conventional sense. Hidden identity provides no basis for authority since the landscape of individuals is unknown and the changes to that landscape impossible to track. Such that, even if a group of anonymous admins is able to command respect for a period, there is no guarantee, no way to judge, that a group of admins have the same capacity in the future. Indeed, if the current group of admins do manage to establish public confidence then the public is immediately at risk since that group can be opaquely usurped. The short end is that for the long term welfare of Wikipedia admins - all contributors - need to be transparent - otherwise Wikipedia is simply a propaganda engine. That the journal Nature should give any support to the scientific articles in Wikipedia is a cause of great concern - since Wikipedia is not a specialist encyclopedia they have by inference given unfounded credence to the whole. With respect, Steven -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stevenzenith _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l