On 3/5/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
In response to the EssJay scandal, I want to bring back an old proposal of mine from 2 years ago for greater accountability around credentials:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-May/022085.html
At the time, this seemed like a plausibly decent idea to me, and the reaction at the time was mostly positive, with some reasonable caveats and improvements:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-May/thread.html to read the entire thread of "An idea".
Frankly, I think one of the benefits of Wikipedia is that it forces people to become disabused of Arguments by Authority, to force people to engage in critical thinking, etc.
Why? Because it doesn't rely on the lazy trappings of credentials and curricula vitae and titles and celebrity endorsement, etc.
Any credentialling system can be gamed. So why encourage people to have a false sense of security about something that isn't really needed for the goals of the project?