On 3/8/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
The only thing that causes real problems is when people claim to have credentials they don't have to the press.
I don't think it is only about the press. I think it is hurtful to the community when people lie. I know a lot of people whose feelings were really hurt by the lies told in the current case, and it makes them wonder about other people. That's sad.
A modest proposal: allow users to link to Wikipedia articles about themselves (an "identity link"). We may want to segregate off the identity articles (because of notability concerns), but we have excellent systems in place for verification and attribution for articles in the general space. Then we just need to establish mechanisms for verifying the identity links; or we can state as policy that such claims have to be taken with caveat emptor, but if someone is found to be falsifying such a claim, that is immediate grounds for banning.