Josh Gordon wrote:
I will consider criticism of Essjay particularly valid when it is accompanied by a general call to eliminate pseudonymous editing of Wikipedia. The vast majority of editors on Wikipedia are anonymous, and I'm sure they have their various reasons, but anyone whose persona is not congruent with their real personality is doing exactly what Essjay did, on one level or another.
It's actually a really interesting thing to think about. Why *does* it matter whether a pseudonym's user page says untrue things? It's intrinsically unverifiable, after all.
And in the same vein, what if there were untrue things on *my* page, which is easily tied to a real-life person? Would it be a problem if it turned out that I hadn't quite completed my PhD? (Remember the admiral who purportedly committed suicide because some of his medals weren't valid? He was sure his whole career was over.) What if my user page said my favorite color was green, when it's actually blue? What if somebody from WP Review calls up a family member on the phone (that being their style), and then reveals my dastardly color deception?
My hypothesis is that it depends on whether the information influences other people in course of our work. Even though we're supposedly all about the content and not who adds it, we still factor in what we think we know about the editor. When I think someone is a theology professor, I'm going to defer a bit in article edits, or spend more time researching before arguing a point of Catholicism. So I've been cheated if that person is not really as knowledgeable as claimed. I would feel cheated even if the false claim was merely to have read a particular book; I will have edited on the wrong assumption that the book informed the other person's work.
Conversely, if I'm found to be lying outrageously about my color preference, no one would care. Review 40K+ edits to look for evidence of color chicanery? Not too likely! A few might take it as evidence of general untrustworthiness, but if on a talk page someone said "that guy lied about his color preference, how can we ever trust him again!", I don't think it would be taken as a license to revert all my past and present edits; instead people just go back to the default process of evaluating content on its own merits.
Stan