On 3/11/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: That's a good question. I regard someone lying about their credentials on their userpage to be a bad thing, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a problem. The fact that people apparently knew about this and did nothing about it might be a problem, but I'm not sure it's something that would happen again, and isn't really something that can be solved anyway. I regard lots of other things as problems, but none of them are sufficiently related to this incident except as an "I told you so". Anthony

On 11/03/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: This is a falsehood on the part of the person writing the email. This is not a problem that can be addressed with any sort of credentialing system on the site itself. It's hard enough to get editors to listen to experts when they damn well should be smart enough to. "Actually, the opinion you came to by a process of anal revelation is not in fact as good as the opinion of this here famous expert on the matter." "FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME! DELETE THE EXPERT AS NON-NOTABLE!" - d.

On 3/11/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: I think this also goes to the issue of who thinks credentials are important and who thinks they are not. I write to scientists (university professors) all of the time via e-mail, both using my anonymous Wikipedia name, sending a link to my user page, and using my real name, with my real credentials (I'm a naturalist, not a scientist, and edit a natural history newsletter), requesting reprints of various articles for work on Wikipedia with my Wikipedia information, or my newsletter or my research (I'm a student also) or my artwork (I'm an artist) with my real information. I'm treated the same either way, with my anon Wikipedia account and crappy user page, or with my name, credentials, and links to my work: the scientists politely send me an electronic copy of the article, saying to e-mail them back if I can't open it, adding a few sentences to a paragraph on updated details of the article, or sending me an additional article or references if something is out of date, and encouraging me to write back if I have any further questions. University professors are not as out of touch with the real world as some may think. They know what Wikipedia is. No scientist the world over, no matter how famous, has ever refused me anything that I needed for work on Wikipedia. This will probably not hold true for all Wikipedia editors, and I have enough access to peer reviewed journals that I haven't asked for a lot of articles. But I have spend a lifetime reading scientific literature and requesting information from professors. I have *never* had a request refused. Scientists communicate their research to the world--it's an almost universal aspect of the profession. Wikipedia editor is the only credential anyone needs to ineract on behalf of Wikipedia with a university professor. Essjay's creation was for his own ego. Wikipedia went astray in giving any respect to Essjay based on his own self-proclaimed credentials. But the press were the responsible parties who had an obligation to fact check what they printed. I wish people wouldn't inflated themselves. But I think that who people are is of far less importance than the results of their editing on Wikipedia. And the last I can judge with my own OR. KP

On 11/03/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: We have a hard enough time stopping Wikipedia administrators writing to professors as "a Wikipedia administrator", much less anything else... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 12/03/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia(a)downlode.org> wrote: Of course, this got mentioned in the other half of the thread first before I read it. Sorry. (Yah boo sucks to Gmail's threading.) -- Earle Martin http://downlode.org/ http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/