Jeff Raymond wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I was most amused to see Daniel Brandt ranting about it, considering that avoiding Brandt's blatant stalking and harassment of editors was one of the main reasons for Essjay doing it.
While there is some irony there, I suspect many "this isn't a big deal" people are, well, missing the point. If Essjay simply said "I'm a guy who's initials are S.J. from Location, and my specialty is in religious areas," and then it turns out that he's R.J from Different Location, then there's no real problem - he created a pseudonym and sent people off-track in a whole different area. The problem comes when he claimed to be a tenured professor, a PhD even. His expert opinion was then solicited in discussions (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Five_solas&diff=prev&...), probably giving extra weight to it, and he even made a claim of being one of Wikipedia's "foremost experts" on the subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Confession&diff=prev&...), which I posit was possibly blatantly false given his true education levels, and certainly not a statement he could make an educated stab at.
Wow. This combined with the letter to a professor claiming tenured professorhood suggests that this went well beyond merely evading stalkers, and Geni's point that the deception starts well before Brandt doesn't improve the situation.
The initial lie isn't so good, although I could wave that aside as a youthful mistake. But what appears to be a continuing pattern of deception, including about the initial deception, makes it hard to know where some actual truth starts. It certainly makes Wikipedia look pretty bad to the guy on the street.
William