"Stephen Park" stephenpark15@gmail.com writes:
On 3/5/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/5/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
William Pietri wrote:
This especially concerns me as you used your
administrative powers to
enforce your minority view in a disagreement in which you
were very
actively involved. Wouldn't it have been better to let
somebody who had
less involvement decide the outcome?
William, I understand that feelings are running high and people
feel
they need an outlet. Still, we have a very serious situation
here
where the subject has left Wikipedia and yet is continuing to
be
attacked. Bear in mind that he's being discussed by what we
believe to
be his real name, so BLP kicks in here, and we have to be
careful what
we say, and respectful of his right to get on with his
life. It's
important to discuss the political fall-out so we can work out
what
the lessons are, but comments about the person aren't
necessary. As
David said, it was an uncertified RfC, and he was within his
rights to
delete it.
Sarah
Let's ban the New York Times as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/technology/05wikipedia.html?ref=business
March 5, 2007 A Contributor to Wikipedia Has His Fictional Side By NOAM COHEN
In a blink, the wisdom of the crowd became the fury of the
crowd. In
the last few days, contributors to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, have turned against one of their own who was found
to
have created an elaborate false identity.
Under the name Essjay, the contributor edited thousands of
Wikipedia
articles and was once one of the few people with the authority
to deal
with vandalism and to arbitrate disputes between authors.
To the Wikipedia world, Essjay was a tenured professor of
religion at
a private university with expertise in canon law, according to
his
user profile. But in fact, Essjay is a 24-year-old named Ryan
Jordan,
who attended a number of colleges in Kentucky and lives outside Louisville.
Mr. Jordan contended that he resorted to a fictional persona to protect himself from bad actors who might be angered by his administrative role at Wikipedia. (He did not respond to an
message, nor to messages conveyed by the Wikipedia office.)
The Essjay episode underlines some of the perils of
collaborative
efforts like Wikipedia that rely on many contributors acting in
good
faith, often anonymously and through self-designated user
names. But
it also shows how the transparency of the Wikipedia process
oeôòô all
editing of entries is marked and saved oeôòô allows
readers to react to
suspected fraud.
Mr. Jordan's deception came to public attention last Monday when
The
New Yorker published a rare editors' note saying that when it
wrote
about Essjay as part of a lengthy profile of Wikipedia, "neither
we
nor Wikipedia knew Essjay's real name," and that it took
Essjay's
credentials and life experience at face value.
In addition to his professional credentials and work on articles concerning Roman Catholicism, Essjay was described in the
magazine's
article, perhaps oddly for a religious scholar, as twice
removing a
sentence from the entry on the singer Justin Timberlake, which
"Essjay
knew to be false."
After the article appeared, a reader contacted The New Yorker
about
Essjay's real identity, which Mr. Jordan had disclosed with
little
fanfare when he recently accepted a job at Wikia, a for-profit company.
A pity they didn't bother to name Daniel Brandt as that reader. You know it was him, I know it was him, but not naming him means we can't mention it in his article as yet another interesting/notable thing Brandt has done, even though we know perfectly well who that "reader" is.
General thoughts: this actually isn't too hostile to Wikipedia, especially given that The New Yorker said "neither we nor Wikipedia", specifically exculpating Wikipedia in general. We come off looking perhaps overly trusting or naive, but what questionable actions there seem to fall under the Essjay and Wikia rubrics.