On 3/2/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Because, generally, we don't expect people to lie about their academic credientials. How many editors in that area who would know if he were making it up do we even have? And, again, Essjay was (yes, the word is now was) a very trusted member of the community - he kept the charade up enough where few, if any, would bother questioning him anyway. That's a problem, and it's disturbing that you don't recognize it.
Why not? And why would you suppose if you for example tried to pass yourself off as a Th.D that people who actually are wouldn't find certain things odd about what you say? This entire charge against Essjay falls under the pseudonym issue, and of course is entirely ironic that most of the critics happen to be either disgruntled (Kelly) or themselves anonymous. The issue is between Essjay and the New Yorker. We dont have a personnel screening policy. The onus was on the Pulitzer prize winning author to check her sources, not to rely on a third party.
he lied about having a high degree of education, used that high degree of education as leverage, and quite possibly lied regarding why he created the trumped-up persona as well. Not that he ever had to trump up his creds to achieve the same goal, of course, which is the other problem.
Nor would there be much of a way he could accomplish this if he wrote things about which he didnt know or understand. I agree that it seems improper to represent oneself as an expert to gain weight. But theres a paradox here: A site that owes its existence in part to its anti-credentialist ethos is all of a sudden to now supposed to conform to a credentialist modality when its unpaid participants interact with the "national media"? (below). The real reason people are upset is because noone with credentials could tell, even in spite of his attaining a position as a "respected authority" on Catholic subjects. Are our experts on trains supposed to have engineering degrees now? Is the credibility of the site somehow diminished due to one editor's mistake in misrepresenting himself? Nonsense.
Giano wrote on User talk:Essjay:
"Fortunately though the rules and laws of fraud are very clearly defined. Deceiving the national press with false qualification to add weight to one's statements has disgraced us all."
No, it hasnt. Please keep things in context. Your usage of words like "rules" "laws" "national press" and "disgrace" are so out of context as to be meaningless.
- Stevertigo