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".
Nowadays, I bring back the proposal for further consideration in light of the EssJay scandal. I think it imperative that we make some positive moves here... we have a real opportunity here to move the quality of Wikipedia forward by doing something that many have vaguely thought to be a reasonably good idea if worked out carefully.
For anyone who is reading but not online, I will sum it up. I made a proposal that we have a system whereby people who are willing to verify their real name and credentials are allowed a special notification. "Verified Credentials". This could be a rather open ended system, and optional.
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with the general public. If you don't care to tell us that you are a PhD (or that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or falls on its own merit. But if you do care to represent yourself as something, you have to be able to prove it.
This policy will be coupled with a policy of gentle (or firm) discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made, unless they are willing to back them up.
How to confirm? What counts as confirmation? What sorts of things need confirmation? These are very interesting questions, as there are many types of situations. But one thing that we have always been very very good at is taking the time to develop a nuanced policy.
Just to take a simple example: how to verify a professor? This strikes me as being quite simple in most cases. The professor gives a link to his or her faculty page at the college or university, including the email there, and someone emails that address to say "are you really EssJay?" If the answer is yes, then that's a reasonable confirmation.
We can imagine some wild ways that someone might crack that process (stealing a professor's email account, etc.) but I think we need not design around the worst case scenario, but rather design around the reasonable case of a reasonable person who is happy to confirm credentials to us.
(This is a lower level of confirmation than we might expect an employer to take, of course.)
For someone like me, well, I have an M.A. in finance. I could fax a copy of the degree to the office. Again, someone could fake their credentials, but I don't think we need to design against some mad worst case scenario but just to have a basic level of confirmation.
--Jimbo
There have been many calls for accountability, and they all seem like a good idea. (including this proposal, of course)
However, I am a tad worried that users who wish to stay anonymous may be treated as less important than those who have credentials which have been verified, etc. I know we can say that users are equal, despite accepting/refusing to do this (optional) verification, but it's a lot like 'optional' RFA questions (which aren't really very optional at all) - at least in my view.
That's only a minor concern however, and I think that this is a good move despite that. Particularly, I'm hoping that something like this could do wonders for public opinion of Wikipedia's reliability and credibility, especially considering recent events. Has a request been filed in the Mediazilla yet?
--Michael Billington
On 05/03/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
For anyone who is reading but not online, I will sum it up. I made a proposal that we have a system whereby people who are willing to verify their real name and credentials are allowed a special notification. "Verified Credentials". This could be a rather open ended system, and optional.
I think this is a fine idea that can only add to the credibility of the project.
I see at least two potential problems, which were addressed to some extent in your original note;
1: Having these 'verified credentials' visible will INEVITABLY lead to incidents of 'I am a verified expert and you are not'. Frankly, I have as much problem with Essjay saying, 'we should do it this way because I am an expert on theology' AT ALL as with it not being true. We just should not be giving greater weight to 'experts' (verified or not). That encourages 'original research' and 'POV pushing' on the esoterica of their fields. Experts should work by providing relevant citations and establishing consensus around text which presents all relevant views... just like everyone else. If you give them a special status that inherently becomes less likely and there aren't enough admins to patrol every edit against it.
2: This would be establishing a form of 'academic status' within Wikipedia that has nothing to do with contributions TO Wikipedia. There will be countless disputes about what constitutes validation and what sort of credentials 'count'. There will be a change in culture from this and people with accepted credentials will feel pressured to reveal them while people without will resent the hell out of it.
I'd suggest going in a somewhat different direction. I think it makes sense for the foundation to REQUIRE verification of identities for some positions, but to not make them public. Board members already have to publicly identify themselves. It wouldn't be unreasonable to require that OTRS responders or Checkusers verify their identities privately with the foundation. You suggested discouraging people from claiming unverified credentials... I'd instead discourage people from claiming credentials at all. Their arguments should stand or fall on their merits and citations, not outside titles and recognitions.
* Jimmy Wales 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".
Nowadays, I bring back the proposal for further consideration in light of the EssJay scandal. I think it imperative that we make some positive moves here... we have a real opportunity here to move the quality of Wikipedia forward by doing something that many have vaguely thought to be a reasonably good idea if worked out carefully.
For anyone who is reading but not online, I will sum it up. I made a proposal that we have a system whereby people who are willing to verify their real name and credentials are allowed a special notification. "Verified Credentials". This could be a rather open ended system, and optional.
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with the general public. If you don't care to tell us that you are a PhD (or that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or falls on its own merit. But if you do care to represent yourself as something, you have to be able to prove it.
This policy will be coupled with a policy of gentle (or firm) discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made, unless they are willing to back them up.
How to confirm? What counts as confirmation? What sorts of things need confirmation? These are very interesting questions, as there are many types of situations. But one thing that we have always been very very good at is taking the time to develop a nuanced policy.
Just to take a simple example: how to verify a professor? This strikes me as being quite simple in most cases. The professor gives a link to his or her faculty page at the college or university, including the email there, and someone emails that address to say "are you really EssJay?" If the answer is yes, then that's a reasonable confirmation.
We can imagine some wild ways that someone might crack that process (stealing a professor's email account, etc.) but I think we need not design around the worst case scenario, but rather design around the reasonable case of a reasonable person who is happy to confirm credentials to us.
(This is a lower level of confirmation than we might expect an employer to take, of course.)
For someone like me, well, I have an M.A. in finance. I could fax a copy of the degree to the office. Again, someone could fake their credentials, but I don't think we need to design against some mad worst case scenario but just to have a basic level of confirmation.
--Jimbo
On 3/5/07, Conrad Dunkerson conrad.dunkerson@att.net wrote:
1: Having these 'verified credentials' visible will INEVITABLY lead to incidents of 'I am a verified expert and you are not'. Frankly, I have as much problem with Essjay saying, 'we should do it this way because I am an expert on theology' AT ALL as with it not being true. We just should not be giving greater weight to 'experts' (verified or not). That encourages 'original research' and 'POV pushing' on the esoterica of their fields. Experts should work by providing relevant citations and establishing consensus around text which presents all relevant views... just like everyone else. If you give them a special status that inherently becomes less likely and there aren't enough admins to patrol every edit against it.
Many people have mentioned this potential drawback, but I suggest that claims of "I am a verified expert and you are not" will be treated by the community in exactly the same way that we currently treat "I am an expert and you are not". In the history of Wikipedia there is, and always* has been a culture of, not so much anti-expertism, but anti-people-who-try-to-impose-their-view-just-because-they-have-such-and-such-qualification.
Basically, I think that this part of the culture is so well ingrained that a verification system is not going to change it.
-- * Go back to, say, the mailing list archives from when they began and you'll find discussions about our approach to experts, particularly experts claiming their word must be accepted as gospel simply because they are an "expert" and getting rebuffed by the community.
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
I think it's a great idea. I've drawn this up into the bones of a proposal, at [[Wikipedia:Credentials]]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Credentials
Jimmy Wales wrote:
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with the general public. If you don't care to tell us that you are a PhD (or that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or falls on its own merit. But if you do care to represent yourself as something, you have to be able to prove it.
I don't particularly like it. I have some credentials, and in a few years when I complete my PhD I'll have some more, but on principle I would not verify them, yet I would continue to state them offhand on my userpage (they're true, after all), although I would not really state anything more strongly than "I research in this area" (a vague non-credential) in an actual content discussion. Verifying credentials opens up a huge minefield of what sorts of credentials count (we now have to come up with an official list of diploma mills, etc.), and promotes a sort of credentialism whose absence is largely responsible for Wikipedia's success. Basically the only way I could see it being beneficial for Wikipedia is in the very narrow sense of avoiding negative press coverage for Essjay-like cases, but that's a small PR benefit for the much larger amount of real damage it could cause to the encyclopedia's quality and community.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
[a skeptical comment of mine]
Actually I came up with a better-thought-out list of things I'm skeptical about (degree of skepticism: 35%) which I posted on the talk page, alongside some comments from other Wikipedians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Credentials
-Mark
On 3/5/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with the general public.
I would modify the proposal: You only need to verify the credentials if you're in a position of trust (adminship or higher). - Reduces the number of necessary verifications - Has less of an impact on the social dynamics of Wikipedia - Gives us a good response to media ("user was not in a position of trust") when other editors use fake credentials - Gives editors a sense of perspective when looking at userpages
On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 14:53:49 +0100, "Erik Moeller" erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with the general public.
I would modify the proposal: You only need to verify the credentials if you're in a position of trust (adminship or higher).
I'd start with admins, but if it is not onerous open it to others. There is definite value in being able to establish your bona-fides. It also helps us to check for subtle bias.
Guy (JzG)
On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 14:53:49 +0100, "Erik Moeller" erik@wikimedia.org
I would modify the proposal: You only need to verify the credentials if you're in a position of trust (adminship or higher).
I'd start with admins, but if it is not onerous open it to others. There is definite value in being able to establish your bona-fides. It also helps us to check for subtle bias.
Is this for PR reasons? It seems to me like the people with advanced credentials are not that often admins due to other demands. This may, however, preclude them from having the time to send in their credentials. I wouldn't want to encourage the concept that admins have more weight in content disputes, and if they are the only ones that can verify their credentials that might be the case.
I wouldn't mind requiring people in trusted positions not be anonymous, but if we are moving to a general credentialing system I wouldn't want that to break down on adminship lines.
Judson (enwiki:cohesion)
On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 08:50:30 -0600, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
I would modify the proposal: You only need to verify the credentials if you're in a position of trust (adminship or higher).
I'd start with admins, but if it is not onerous open it to others. There is definite value in being able to establish your bona-fides. It also helps us to check for subtle bias.
Is this for PR reasons? It seems to me like the people with advanced credentials are not that often admins due to other demands. This may, however, preclude them from having the time to send in their credentials. I wouldn't want to encourage the concept that admins have more weight in content disputes, and if they are the only ones that can verify their credentials that might be the case.
Is what for PR reasons? Start with admins? I guess not; it gives us a defined subset of generally active and high profile users.
I wouldn't mind requiring people in trusted positions not be anonymous, but if we are moving to a general credentialing system I wouldn't want that to break down on adminship lines.
No, I'd see it as something that should be available to all, but I have no objection to trialling it on admins to see what the overhead is like.
Guy (JzG)
On 3/5/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Is what for PR reasons? Start with admins? I guess not; it gives us a defined subset of generally active and high profile users.
Yeah, I mean it would actually be useful for PR, the fact that essjay was an admin did help carry the story in a lot of areas. People outside wikipedia have weird and innaccurate views of what admins are, so if there was some problem with a non-admin user's credentials I don't think people would get so upset.
No, I'd see it as something that should be available to all, but I have no objection to trialling it on admins to see what the overhead is like.
That seems reasonable, I would imagine the admin overhead might be a lot higher per person than non admin, with non-admin users being less involved and willing to verify that information. It does seem like there may be a subset of non-admin users that are very subject-oriented that might enjoy this system though, but I also have no problem taking it slowly as long as the eventual goal is to open it for everyone.
Judson (enwiki:cohesion)
cohesion wrote:
Is this for PR reasons?
PR should always be a secondary reason for doing anything. We should do things because they are the right thing to do for our projects and our community, and if we do that, then the good press will follow in due course.
In this case, my primary concern is restoring a sense within the community that we can trust each other, that we ought to trust each other, and that we are not afraid to be open and honest with each other.
--Jimbo
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/5/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with the general public.
I would modify the proposal: You only need to verify the credentials if you're in a position of trust (adminship or higher).
There are two parts to the suggestion: 1) marking some statements with a "verified credentials" tag, and 2) a "policy of gentle (or firm) discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made, unless they are willing to back them up".
So is your modification that part 1 would be available to everyone, but part 2 would be only necessary for admins?
This could be seen to some extent as an extension of policy that is already in place. Recently a user came to the unblock list because she was blocked for using the name of a college professor. She was given the choice to verify that she was indeed that college professor, or to create an account under a different username.
Anthony
On 3/5/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
There are two parts to the suggestion: 1) marking some statements with a "verified credentials" tag, and 2) a "policy of gentle (or firm) discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made, unless they are willing to back them up".
I'm cross-posting this to wikipedia-l and foundation-l, because it may very well become a Foundation-level issue at some point.
I would support the following:
1) Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.
2) Making up professional credentials is prohibited, and may result in a ban. (This may or may not be covered by existing policy, but judging from the Essjay case, it is probably not sufficiently clear.) This is independent of whether or not the user asks for credentials to be verified. We may investigate claims that are dubious when they are pointed out to us.
3) Any user trusted on admin level or higher who makes a statement of credentials on their user page must have them verified through a team of volunteers designated to this role by the Wikimedia Foundation (we may want to involve the chapters if this becomes international). The process of verification could be similar to what Citizendium uses, i.e.: a) have an existing, credentialed user vouch for the credentials to be correct based on personal knowledge, b) respond to an email associated with a reliable institution, and point us to a web page of that institution where their credentials are listed, c) point to someone associated with a reliable institution we can contact to verify the credentials.
We may extend this to regular users if it proves to scale well.
4) Users with verified credentials will get a little "Verified credentials on <date>" marker on their user page, nothing more. This marker would ideally be independent of the wikitext of the page, and set in the user table instead.
I am opposed to any marker of edit contributions and such -- users who care about credentials can look them up, those who do not care should not be bothered by them in discussions or contributions.
Erik,
This is going to be nightmarish to police and run. Not to mention you have to have a signed release from the person in order to obtain access to this level of personal information.
The whole controversy over Essjay will die down in time. Folks should stop and think things through rather than reacting to the bad publicity. One reasonable step would be that any high ranking member must submit accurate credentials before being appointed to an office of trust.
Let's be honest, if it were a low level editor or admin on the english wikipedia no one would have cared or even noticed. It was because it was a high ranking member of the community who had been used for press interviews.
One other solution is that only PR or spokepersons talk to the press, not just anyone.
Jeff
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 3/5/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
There are two parts to the suggestion: 1) marking some statements with a "verified credentials" tag, and 2) a "policy of gentle (or firm) discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made, unless they are willing to back them up".
I'm cross-posting this to wikipedia-l and foundation-l, because it may very well become a Foundation-level issue at some point.
I would support the following:
Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.
Making up professional credentials is prohibited, and may result in
a ban. (This may or may not be covered by existing policy, but judging from the Essjay case, it is probably not sufficiently clear.) This is independent of whether or not the user asks for credentials to be verified. We may investigate claims that are dubious when they are pointed out to us.
- Any user trusted on admin level or higher who makes a statement of
credentials on their user page must have them verified through a team of volunteers designated to this role by the Wikimedia Foundation (we may want to involve the chapters if this becomes international). The process of verification could be similar to what Citizendium uses, i.e.: a) have an existing, credentialed user vouch for the credentials to be correct based on personal knowledge, b) respond to an email associated with a reliable institution, and point us to a web page of that institution where their credentials are listed, c) point to someone associated with a reliable institution we can contact to verify the credentials.
We may extend this to regular users if it proves to scale well.
- Users with verified credentials will get a little "Verified
credentials on <date>" marker on their user page, nothing more. This marker would ideally be independent of the wikitext of the page, and set in the user table instead.
I am opposed to any marker of edit contributions and such -- users who care about credentials can look them up, those who do not care should not be bothered by them in discussions or contributions.
On 3/5/07, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
This is going to be nightmarish to police and run. Not to mention you have to have a signed release from the person in order to obtain access to this level of personal information.
I'm not sure I've provided enough context to fully explain the proposal. The idea is not to _require_ anything, but to only ask for confirmation if people make the claim _themselves_, and then only for people in positions of trust, or those whose credentials have been called into question. Anyone is free to reach any level of trust without professional credentials.
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 3/5/07, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
This is going to be nightmarish to police and run. Not to mention you have to have a signed release from the person in order to obtain access to this level of personal information.
I'm not sure I've provided enough context to fully explain the proposal. The idea is not to _require_ anything, but to only ask for confirmation if people make the claim _themselves_, and then only for people in positions of trust, or those whose credentials have been called into question. Anyone is free to reach any level of trust without professional credentials.
This is more reasonable. I concur.
Jeff
On 3/5/07, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
I'm not sure I've provided enough context to fully explain the proposal. The idea is not to _require_ anything, but to only ask for confirmation if people make the claim _themselves_, and then only for people in positions of trust, or those whose credentials have been called into question. Anyone is free to reach any level of trust without professional credentials.
This is more reasonable. I concur.
I agree. People should only verify credentials if they want to, usually for claims they make on their user pages (or in on-Wiki discussions).
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm not sure I've provided enough context to fully explain the proposal. The idea is not to _require_ anything, but to only ask for confirmation if people make the claim _themselves_, and then only for people in positions of trust, or those whose credentials have been called into question. Anyone is free to reach any level of trust without professional credentials.
Frankly, this proposal is impractical and unworkable. I am not about to go through all this nonsense to verify stuff - all it's going to do is to make people less willing to state things about themselves on their user pages.
For instance, I have a B.Eng. in Computing from Imperial College, London. I have stated this on every job application I've submitted throughout my professional career (thirteen years or so by now) and have NEVER been asked to verify it. To be honest, I'm not sure I could, easily; I don't know where my actual degree certificate is. I suspect my parents have it, actually. I guess I could phone up the college and ask them to fax something, but this is way too much of a pain in the behind to actually be worth doing for uncompensated volunteer effort at Wikipedia, especially since it's of complete irrelevance to what I'm actually doing here.
If we start requiring that admins must verify every single statement about themselves they make - or even if this is restricted to only claims of professional expertise - this is going to result in the following:
1. Admins will simply remove any statements that aren't worth the effort of verifying. Net gain for the project: zero. 2. People with expertise won't want to become admins, widening an already-existing gulf. The perception in some circles that people become admins because they don't write articles will increase. 3. Only those seeking greater authoritativeness than their writing and argumentative skills already command will find the cumbersome process attractive. Thus, the querulous, the trolls, and those with dubious qualifications will be the ones getting that 'verified' badge to wear to use as a stick in arguments.
I am, since I occupy a position of responsibility, quite willing to verify my identity to the Foundation/Jimbo in private - but verifying other stuff is frankly not worth my scarce time and effort.
-Matt
On 3/5/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm not sure I've provided enough context to fully explain the proposal. The idea is not to _require_ anything, but to only ask for confirmation if people make the claim _themselves_, and then only for people in positions of trust, or those whose credentials have been called into question. Anyone is free to reach any level of trust without professional credentials.
Frankly, this proposal is impractical and unworkable. I am not about to go through all this nonsense to verify stuff - all it's going to do is to make people less willing to state things about themselves on their user pages.
For instance, I have a B.Eng. in Computing from Imperial College, London. I have stated this on every job application I've submitted throughout my professional career (thirteen years or so by now) and have NEVER been asked to verify it. To be honest, I'm not sure I could, easily; I don't know where my actual degree certificate is. I suspect my parents have it, actually. I guess I could phone up the college and ask them to fax something, but this is way too much of a pain in the behind to actually be worth doing for uncompensated volunteer effort at Wikipedia, especially since it's of complete irrelevance to what I'm actually doing here.
If we start requiring that admins must verify every single statement about themselves they make - or even if this is restricted to only claims of professional expertise - this is going to result in the following:
- Admins will simply remove any statements that aren't worth the
effort of verifying. Net gain for the project: zero. 2. People with expertise won't want to become admins, widening an already-existing gulf. The perception in some circles that people become admins because they don't write articles will increase. 3. Only those seeking greater authoritativeness than their writing and argumentative skills already command will find the cumbersome process attractive. Thus, the querulous, the trolls, and those with dubious qualifications will be the ones getting that 'verified' badge to wear to use as a stick in arguments.
I am, since I occupy a position of responsibility, quite willing to verify my identity to the Foundation/Jimbo in private - but verifying other stuff is frankly not worth my scarce time and effort.
I'd be perfectly willing to verify the degrees I say I hold on my user page, but only to the Foundation. In other words, I'd prefer that my simple statement of holding degrees in Engineering and Applied Arts be the one thing I mention about my education, but am willing to provide proof to the Foundation that my degrees are with accredited institutions. In other words, I don't want to get specific about my academic credentials in public, but am willing to verify it (and my identity) in private to the Foundation as long as the documents I send for verification remains private and unpublicised.
The only thing that causes real problems is when people claim to have credentials they don't have to the press. I think we should only require such verification from people who talk to the press. Any credentials someone has do not override WP:OR or WP:V so for the purpose of writing articles they're next to useless. People who claim to be an expert on an article could be asked to have them verified by other editors, but basic policies should come first.
I see no point in requiring admins who make such claims since having a degree in biology doesn't affect your ability to perform admin duties. - ~~~~
Mgm
On 3/5/07, Deathphoenix originaldeathphoenix@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/5/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm not sure I've provided enough context to fully explain the proposal. The idea is not to _require_ anything, but to only ask for confirmation if people make the claim _themselves_, and then only for people in positions of trust, or those whose credentials have been called into question. Anyone is free to reach any level of trust without professional credentials.
Frankly, this proposal is impractical and unworkable. I am not about to go through all this nonsense to verify stuff - all it's going to do is to make people less willing to state things about themselves on their user pages.
For instance, I have a B.Eng. in Computing from Imperial College, London. I have stated this on every job application I've submitted throughout my professional career (thirteen years or so by now) and have NEVER been asked to verify it. To be honest, I'm not sure I could, easily; I don't know where my actual degree certificate is. I suspect my parents have it, actually. I guess I could phone up the college and ask them to fax something, but this is way too much of a pain in the behind to actually be worth doing for uncompensated volunteer effort at Wikipedia, especially since it's of complete irrelevance to what I'm actually doing here.
If we start requiring that admins must verify every single statement about themselves they make - or even if this is restricted to only claims of professional expertise - this is going to result in the following:
- Admins will simply remove any statements that aren't worth the
effort of verifying. Net gain for the project: zero. 2. People with expertise won't want to become admins, widening an already-existing gulf. The perception in some circles that people become admins because they don't write articles will increase. 3. Only those seeking greater authoritativeness than their writing and argumentative skills already command will find the cumbersome process attractive. Thus, the querulous, the trolls, and those with dubious qualifications will be the ones getting that 'verified' badge to wear to use as a stick in arguments.
I am, since I occupy a position of responsibility, quite willing to verify my identity to the Foundation/Jimbo in private - but verifying other stuff is frankly not worth my scarce time and effort.
I'd be perfectly willing to verify the degrees I say I hold on my user page, but only to the Foundation. In other words, I'd prefer that my simple statement of holding degrees in Engineering and Applied Arts be the one thing I mention about my education, but am willing to provide proof to the Foundation that my degrees are with accredited institutions. In other words, I don't want to get specific about my academic credentials in public, but am willing to verify it (and my identity) in private to the Foundation as long as the documents I send for verification remains private and unpublicised. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 05/03/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
The only thing that causes real problems is when people claim to have credentials they don't have to the press. I think we should only require such verification from people who talk to the press.
Something like this is in progress.
I see no point in requiring admins who make such claims since having a degree in biology doesn't affect your ability to perform admin duties. -
Essjay got every trusted position available through 20,000 good administrative edits, not 600 to articles.
- d.
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.
I see no point in requiring admins who make such claims since having a degree in biology doesn't affect your ability to perform admin duties. -
--Jimbo
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.
On 3/8/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
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.
Would we have any ownership of our own articles? I'd rather not have private details of my life up on a wiki page. My concern with your proposal is privacy, not notability. I realize the link would be optional, but an on/off switch is much more coarsely grained than the current system.
Also, verifiability seems too strong for this, because it means *anyone* can verify the details. Perhaps someone wants to state that they are a professor, but not give details of where they teach out to the world to be edited mercilessly. A private confidential verification might be acceptable, but not a public one.
Anthony
On 3/8/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 3/8/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
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.
Would we have any ownership of our own articles? I'd rather not have private details of my life up on a wiki page. My concern with your proposal is privacy, not notability. I realize the link would be optional, but an on/off switch is much more coarsely grained than the current system.
Also, verifiability seems too strong for this, because it means *anyone* can verify the details. Perhaps someone wants to state that they are a professor, but not give details of where they teach out to the world to be edited mercilessly. A private confidential verification might be acceptable, but not a public one.
I'm not saying this has to be done *instead* of other policies, though my personal opinion is that Wikipedia is best served if people are either anonymous & claims about their credentials are recognized to be caveat emptor or people are publicly identified.
I think it's generally a good idea that we eat our own dog food.
Matthew Brown wrote:
I am, since I occupy a position of responsibility, quite willing to verify my identity to the Foundation/Jimbo in private - but verifying other stuff is frankly not worth my scarce time and effort.
Sure, but consider this... in your position of responsibility, you credentials are basically meaningless and I can't think of any reason why we should care. You got your important role in the community for community skills as proven in practice.
That's a bit different from the case of someone who might want to list their credentials on their user page, and who would not mind those credentials being verified for the good of the project and as a point of personal pride.
I think we can keep the two issues separate: knowing who people are if they are in positions of trust is interesting and important, but quite different in some important ways from the issue of stating credentials.
--Jimbo
On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:36:58 +0900, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I think we can keep the two issues separate: knowing who people are if they are in positions of trust is interesting and important, but quite different in some important ways from the issue of stating credentials.
Right, but then we get to the tricky bit: an editor, call him Jayess, comes along, stating he has a PhD in something-or-other, and people decide to ask him to *prove* it because he's relying on it to confer authority in content disputes. Do we have a "put up or shut up" clause?
That's the sticking point for some, I think - and there will be those who think it's useless without, and those who think it's evil with, so it's not an easy call.
Guy (JzG)
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 3/5/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
There are two parts to the suggestion: 1) marking some statements with a "verified credentials" tag, and 2) a "policy of gentle (or firm) discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made, unless they are willing to back them up".
I'm cross-posting this to wikipedia-l and foundation-l, because it may very well become a Foundation-level issue at some point.
I would support the following:
- Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.
In principle this makes sense; but limiting to verifiable bits is going to make it a short list - degree X, licensed Y, employed by company Z between dates W. How do you verify a carpenter, or "freelance consultant", aka euphemism for being unemployed? :-)
Stan
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/5/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
There are two parts to the suggestion: 1) marking some statements with a "verified credentials" tag, and 2) a "policy of gentle (or firm) discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made, unless they are willing to back them up".
I'm cross-posting this to wikipedia-l and foundation-l, because it may very well become a Foundation-level issue at some point.
I would support the following:
Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.
Making up professional credentials is prohibited, and may result in
a ban. (This may or may not be covered by existing policy, but judging from the Essjay case, it is probably not sufficiently clear.) This is independent of whether or not the user asks for credentials to be verified. We may investigate claims that are dubious when they are pointed out to us.
- Any user trusted on admin level or higher who makes a statement of
credentials on their user page must have them verified through a team of volunteers designated to this role by the Wikimedia Foundation (we may want to involve the chapters if this becomes international). The process of verification could be similar to what Citizendium uses, i.e.: a) have an existing, credentialed user vouch for the credentials to be correct based on personal knowledge, b) respond to an email associated with a reliable institution, and point us to a web page of that institution where their credentials are listed, c) point to someone associated with a reliable institution we can contact to verify the credentials.
We may extend this to regular users if it proves to scale well.
- Users with verified credentials will get a little "Verified
credentials on <date>" marker on their user page, nothing more. This marker would ideally be independent of the wikitext of the page, and set in the user table instead.
I am opposed to any marker of edit contributions and such -- users who care about credentials can look them up, those who do not care should not be bothered by them in discussions or contributions.
As many others do I believe this is too bureaucratic, and I don't think it will ever be followed on a wide enough scale to be useful.
I believe that for all but the most hardcore contributors it is too much bother; they won't do it. And among the more dedicated contributors, many will be against it. There's a reason we don't simply take experts at their word -- not because we do not respect expertise, but because for our purposes we need to know *where* the experts got what they know so that someone can independently verify it, no matter how reliable the contributor may personally be.
And how reliable that person is does not necessarily match up to how well-qualified they are... or how much information they are willing to give. There are plenty of cranks who are more than happy to prove six ways from sunday that they have a load of letters after their names, in the hopes that you will be impressed enough to defer to their crankish viewpoint. And plenty of solid contributors who are uncredentialed, who aren't willing to go to the trouble, or who don't believe that it should be required and wouldn't want to use them to influence discussion anyway, who will not participate.
Is it wrong to claim you are something you are not in order to influence decisions? Sure, and I don't condone that. But mandatory credential verification is not something I see as effectively addressing the problem. For whatever reason, some people make things up. Most people don't lie, and I do not think that telling everyone who says on their user page "hi, I live in Arizona, I have a Ph.D. in math, and I want to edit articles about graph theory" that they have to let someone check credentials is going to go over well -- nor is it necessary.
Positions of personal-level trust are different -- checkusers, press contacts, and similar. And for those, I don't care about credentials, unless the credentials are in some way related to what they are doing -- just identity, that they are who they say they are. Already we ask that stewards prove they are over age 18; checkusers *should* be the same. I'm sure we will be more stringent about checking on the identities of press contacts in the future. It is reluctantly that I can accept restricting users from being able to fill these positions without proving identity, because I want to trust that people will not misrepresent themselves, but I recognize that they do not always do so.
As for admins? I'm afraid it may even be counterproductive. It implies that credentials and identity are important to adminship. And this is exactly the wrong impression. It says that we care what kind of standing our admins have for adminship -- separate from their roles as content editors. (And many of the most well-regarded and prolific content editors are not admins.) There is nothing about adminship that needs special qualification other than experience with the site. I care that people who are contributing content are not backing up their statements with false authority -- false credentials, misquoted references, hoaxes, anything of the like -- regardless of their status as admins or not. There is nothing about the position of admin that requires us to know anything other than their history with the site. (The press likes to make a big deal about admins, but if we are doing something in response to press alone against our better judgment we are in a sad state.)
Even assuming we all thought this was a great idea and we were all on board, who is going to be doing the checking? How deep is this going to be? Is someone who has a diploma mill Ph.D. still able to say "I have a a Ph.D." or will all instances needed to be marked with {{unaccredited}}?
I am afraid this is a knee-jerk response, and I am also afraid that saying to the media that we are going to do it (and that is what has been said so far) foolishly commits us to something that may not be a good idea even if we had the resources to do it. And so even as I am for knowing the identities of those in positions of trust, I am against this proposal.
-Kat who advises you to take all of the above with a grain of salt; she only has a BA, which no one here has personally checked up on
On 09/03/07, Kat Walsh kat@wikimedia.org wrote:
Positions of personal-level trust are different -- checkusers, press contacts, and similar. And for those, I don't care about credentials, unless the credentials are in some way related to what they are doing -- just identity, that they are who they say they are. Already we ask that stewards prove they are over age 18; checkusers *should* be the same. I'm sure we will be more stringent about checking on the identities of press contacts in the future. It is reluctantly that I can accept restricting users from being able to fill these positions without proving identity, because I want to trust that people will not misrepresent themselves, but I recognize that they do not always do so.
Something to note: the functions you speak of are really Foundation positions, not encyclopedia project positions. That's why the Foundation has to keep tabs on them.
- d.
The community and Foundation responses to Essjay's unmasked roleplaying have been rather disappointing. Each time it comes up, every community member has an opportunity to remind the world that Wikipedia does not privilege credentials but rather quality of contribution; and that Essjay's contributions and participation were acclaimed and emulated for their consistency, reliability, sensibility and eloquence, not for claims about his present work or past accomplishments.
I cringe at the overemphasis on "using credentials in content disputes" as it relates to this particular case, since there are so many people who DO use their credentials, real or otherwise, in misguided and harmful ways in content disputes on Wikipedia every day -- including active editors and admins who see it as their mission to 'normalize' the POV of the site without consideration of others' perspectives. Essjay's use in this manner was tame and sporadic in comparison.
I blogged something about this: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/sj/2007/03/08#a1437
But I was responding to a thread about accountability in general..
== Accountability and credentials ==
As to Anthony's proposal to validate credentials:
Wikipedia does not privilege editors with academic credentials. Nor are academic credentials a special case of information about oneself on the wiki. Therefore, if you want to create new policy about lying, involving which chastises or otherwise punishes editors for not being truthful, be sure to define the policy in a way neutral to the "academic-qualification" nature of the facts in question.
Wikipedia does not require Real Names, nor does it privilege giving out lots of personal information. It also encourages and depends on verification of FACTS, and not of PEOPLE. Therefore, if you want to set up a verification service for facts -- please do. We would all support this. If you want to set up a verification service for people -- for real names, number of children, age, weight, people slept with -- you can of course offer the ADP stamp of personal-information approval... but I would hate to see it as an official part of Wikipedia.
Finally, adminship is no big deal, and standards for admins should relate directly to their ability to sensibly carry out editing and other policies.
And for most positions it should be confirmation enough to have explicit "ask me no questions" pseudonymity...
SJ
On Fri, 9 Mar 2007, Kat Walsh wrote:
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/5/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
There are two parts to the suggestion: 1) marking some statements with a "verified credentials" tag, and 2) a "policy of gentle (or firm) discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made, unless they are willing to back them up".
I'm cross-posting this to wikipedia-l and foundation-l, because it may very well become a Foundation-level issue at some point.
I would support the following:
Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.
Making up professional credentials is prohibited, and may result in
a ban. (This may or may not be covered by existing policy, but judging from the Essjay case, it is probably not sufficiently clear.) This is independent of whether or not the user asks for credentials to be verified. We may investigate claims that are dubious when they are pointed out to us.
- Any user trusted on admin level or higher who makes a statement of
credentials on their user page must have them verified through a team of volunteers designated to this role by the Wikimedia Foundation (we may want to involve the chapters if this becomes international). The process of verification could be similar to what Citizendium uses, i.e.: a) have an existing, credentialed user vouch for the credentials to be correct based on personal knowledge, b) respond to an email associated with a reliable institution, and point us to a web page of that institution where their credentials are listed, c) point to someone associated with a reliable institution we can contact to verify the credentials.
We may extend this to regular users if it proves to scale well.
- Users with verified credentials will get a little "Verified
credentials on <date>" marker on their user page, nothing more. This marker would ideally be independent of the wikitext of the page, and set in the user table instead.
I am opposed to any marker of edit contributions and such -- users who care about credentials can look them up, those who do not care should not be bothered by them in discussions or contributions.
As many others do I believe this is too bureaucratic, and I don't think it will ever be followed on a wide enough scale to be useful.
I believe that for all but the most hardcore contributors it is too much bother; they won't do it. And among the more dedicated contributors, many will be against it. There's a reason we don't simply take experts at their word -- not because we do not respect expertise, but because for our purposes we need to know *where* the experts got what they know so that someone can independently verify it, no matter how reliable the contributor may personally be.
And how reliable that person is does not necessarily match up to how well-qualified they are... or how much information they are willing to give. There are plenty of cranks who are more than happy to prove six ways from sunday that they have a load of letters after their names, in the hopes that you will be impressed enough to defer to their crankish viewpoint. And plenty of solid contributors who are uncredentialed, who aren't willing to go to the trouble, or who don't believe that it should be required and wouldn't want to use them to influence discussion anyway, who will not participate.
Is it wrong to claim you are something you are not in order to influence decisions? Sure, and I don't condone that. But mandatory credential verification is not something I see as effectively addressing the problem. For whatever reason, some people make things up. Most people don't lie, and I do not think that telling everyone who says on their user page "hi, I live in Arizona, I have a Ph.D. in math, and I want to edit articles about graph theory" that they have to let someone check credentials is going to go over well -- nor is it necessary.
Positions of personal-level trust are different -- checkusers, press contacts, and similar. And for those, I don't care about credentials, unless the credentials are in some way related to what they are doing -- just identity, that they are who they say they are. Already we ask that stewards prove they are over age 18; checkusers *should* be the same. I'm sure we will be more stringent about checking on the identities of press contacts in the future. It is reluctantly that I can accept restricting users from being able to fill these positions without proving identity, because I want to trust that people will not misrepresent themselves, but I recognize that they do not always do so.
As for admins? I'm afraid it may even be counterproductive. It implies that credentials and identity are important to adminship. And this is exactly the wrong impression. It says that we care what kind of standing our admins have for adminship -- separate from their roles as content editors. (And many of the most well-regarded and prolific content editors are not admins.) There is nothing about adminship that needs special qualification other than experience with the site. I care that people who are contributing content are not backing up their statements with false authority -- false credentials, misquoted references, hoaxes, anything of the like -- regardless of their status as admins or not. There is nothing about the position of admin that requires us to know anything other than their history with the site. (The press likes to make a big deal about admins, but if we are doing something in response to press alone against our better judgment we are in a sad state.)
Even assuming we all thought this was a great idea and we were all on board, who is going to be doing the checking? How deep is this going to be? Is someone who has a diploma mill Ph.D. still able to say "I have a a Ph.D." or will all instances needed to be marked with {{unaccredited}}?
I am afraid this is a knee-jerk response, and I am also afraid that saying to the media that we are going to do it (and that is what has been said so far) foolishly commits us to something that may not be a good idea even if we had the resources to do it. And so even as I am for knowing the identities of those in positions of trust, I am against this proposal.
-Kat who advises you to take all of the above with a grain of salt; she only has a BA, which no one here has personally checked up on
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Erik, the only thing I would add is that perhaps instead of simply saying "verified credentials on X date", it should say "Verified Masters Degree from FirstCollegeofWhateverState on X date". I'd hate to see people adding degrees post-verification of their first one, and it not being immediately clear that THOSE degrees are not verified. Of course, you can find that by checking diffs, but if the whole point is to make it immediately discernable...
Philippe
----- Original Message ----- From: Erik Moeller To: English Wikipedia ; wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org ; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 12:21 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] Accountability: bringing backa proposal I made nearly 2 years ago
On 3/5/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
There are two parts to the suggestion: 1) marking some statements with a "verified credentials" tag, and 2) a "policy of gentle (or firm) discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made, unless they are willing to back them up".
I'm cross-posting this to wikipedia-l and foundation-l, because it may very well become a Foundation-level issue at some point.
I would support the following:
1) Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.
2) Making up professional credentials is prohibited, and may result in a ban. (This may or may not be covered by existing policy, but judging from the Essjay case, it is probably not sufficiently clear.) This is independent of whether or not the user asks for credentials to be verified. We may investigate claims that are dubious when they are pointed out to us.
3) Any user trusted on admin level or higher who makes a statement of credentials on their user page must have them verified through a team of volunteers designated to this role by the Wikimedia Foundation (we may want to involve the chapters if this becomes international). The process of verification could be similar to what Citizendium uses, i.e.: a) have an existing, credentialed user vouch for the credentials to be correct based on personal knowledge, b) respond to an email associated with a reliable institution, and point us to a web page of that institution where their credentials are listed, c) point to someone associated with a reliable institution we can contact to verify the credentials.
We may extend this to regular users if it proves to scale well.
4) Users with verified credentials will get a little "Verified credentials on <date>" marker on their user page, nothing more. This marker would ideally be independent of the wikitext of the page, and set in the user table instead.
I am opposed to any marker of edit contributions and such -- users who care about credentials can look them up, those who do not care should not be bothered by them in discussions or contributions. -- Peace & Love, Erik
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On 3/10/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
Erik, the only thing I would add is that perhaps instead of simply
saying "verified >credentials on X date", it should say "Verified Masters Degree from >FirstCollegeofWhateverState on X date". I'd hate to see people adding degrees >post-verification of their first one, and it not being immediately clear that THOSE degrees >are not verified.
Who will carry out this verification? It's going to be a lot of work. Will we investigate which institutions are properly accredited? How will we define that, given that we're dealing with the entire world? Will we require editors to say what their degrees are in too? Someone who says on his user page that he has a PhD and who edits all the time in history subjects will be assumed to be an historian; but what if his PhD is in physics and he has no expertise in history?
I think we could just as easily introduce a culture of strongly discouraging people from saying anything about their academic or professional backgrounds unless they're prepared to give sufficient personal details on their user pages to allow others to check if they want to. In other words, if you're not prepared to say a lot about yourself, say nothing; don't drop uncheckable hints.
I worry that the formal verification thing will take us down the Citizendium road. I think it will inevitably lead to two-tier editing, and this would be a great shame, not least because the editors who present themselves as experts are often not the best editors, so the two-tier ideology would be misleading and unhelpful, as well as unpleasant.
Sarah
Slim Virgin wrote:
I think we could just as easily introduce a culture of strongly discouraging people from saying anything about their academic or professional backgrounds unless they're prepared to give sufficient personal details on their user pages to allow others to check if they want to. In other words, if you're not prepared to say a lot about yourself, say nothing; don't drop uncheckable hints.
I like that a great deal. It does seem to fit better with the current culture, and would be a lot easier to manage.
It's obviously not something I'm worried about, but how would you address Essjay's "disinformation keeps the crazies away" argument?
Thanks,
William
On 11/03/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
It's obviously not something I'm worried about, but how would you address Essjay's "disinformation keeps the crazies away" argument?
Um, I would point at what actually happened as evidence this does not work against a borderline sociopath like Brandt. Saying truthfully what you are prepared to reveal is a better idea.
- d.
NO information keeps the crazies away just as well or better. That's the part of this whole thing I just don't get. WHY in the name of all that is holy (or the lack therof) would anyone create a false identity? Just don't give out identity information, period. It's much easier.
I think we should officially discourage "disinformation", plainly and clearly. Instead, we encourage not giving ANY personal information about yourself online, and being smart about it. For instance, if I join the WikiProject Oklahoma, I think I might also join WikiProject Vermont and Montana too, just to disguise where I live. I'm not giving misinformation, but I'm deliberately obscuring the truth.
Philippe ----- Original Message ----- From: William Pietri To: English Wikipedia Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2007 11:55 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] Accountability: bringing backa proposal I made nearly 2 years ago
Slim Virgin wrote:
I think we could just as easily introduce a culture of strongly discouraging people from saying anything about their academic or professional backgrounds unless they're prepared to give sufficient personal details on their user pages to allow others to check if they want to. In other words, if you're not prepared to say a lot about yourself, say nothing; don't drop uncheckable hints.
I like that a great deal. It does seem to fit better with the current culture, and would be a lot easier to manage.
It's obviously not something I'm worried about, but how would you address Essjay's "disinformation keeps the crazies away" argument?
Thanks,
William
-- William Pietri william@scissor.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri
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On 05/03/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/5/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with the general public.
I would modify the proposal: You only need to verify the credentials if you're in a position of trust (adminship or higher).
- Reduces the number of necessary verifications
- Has less of an impact on the social dynamics of Wikipedia
- Gives us a good response to media ("user was not in a position of
trust") when other editors use fake credentials
- Gives editors a sense of perspective when looking at userpages
-- Peace & Love, Erik
I think we should only introduce restrictive measures (which Jimbo's proposal is) if they are completely necessary. How are credentials necessary to positions of trust? Will they be taken into account when someone is elected; or when the admin makes a decision, votes or weighs in on a discussion? [eg. admins with no credentials are undermined by other users]. I hope the answer to the last question is a firm and resounding notion but even the best intended proposals can put us in an unwanted position.
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 3/5/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with the general public.
I would modify the proposal: You only need to verify the credentials if you're in a position of trust (adminship or higher).
I would say we should start by having it be strictly optional in all cases. In many cases, admins will choose to do it, but for now I think we can start with the soft approach of just offering it as an option.
Notice that in the version begin discussed in my user space, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/Credential_Verification
There is virtually nothing that would need to change about current policies before a start could be made. All that is needed is some standardization of practice.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
In response to the EssJay scandal, I want to bring back an old proposal
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-May/022085.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-May/thread.html
to read the entire thread of "An idea".
For anyone who is reading but not online, I will sum it up. I made a proposal that we have a system whereby people who are willing to verify their real name and credentials are allowed a special notification. "Verified Credentials". This could be a rather open ended system, and optional.
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with the general public. If you don't care to tell us that you are a PhD (or that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or falls on its own merit. But if you do care to represent yourself as something, you have to be able to prove it.
For someone reading and online, but blocked for nearly a year and unable to comment elsewhere, I like it in general. It seems to go even a step further than requiring only admins to verify significant credentials they claim and apply it to everyone.
My primary concern is in practical elements: 1. Who's verifying (e.g., admins verifying themselves, buddy admins verifying one another)? 2. Are they allowed to post credentials while waiting on verification, potentially taking advantage of practical limits in how much can be verified via an extended waiting period? As a rough example, there are citation requests that are essentially infinite, circumventing the point of requesting verfication. 3. Do the credentials override any of the basic policies? E.g., does a verified PhD get to post OR? I foresee latitude problems as it is, much like admins and article creators seem to get months, if not years, to provide sources.
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On 05/03/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with the general public. If you don't care to tell us that you are a PhD (or that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or falls on its own merit. But if you do care to represent yourself as something, you have to be able to prove it.
[For the sake of full disclosure, I'm doing my BSc at KCL.]
I have some concerns with the "impact on the social dynamics of Wikimedia" (as Erik put it) that would result from Jimbo's idea. I fear that users will unfairly be given more worth based upon their credentials.
Academic credentials seem to me to have little to do with many of the skills necessary to being a Wikipedian (even less so when it comes to positions of trust). Sure, one would expect a user with a background in academics to write readable, clear and well-researched articles (such is their training), but beyond this the vast majority of work done on Wikimedia (grunt work, minor edits, &c.) seem little helped. What's more, I'm not sure how credentials would come into the article creation/improvement process anyway: if an article is good and well-referenced then it's quite irrelevent whether it's primary editor has just secondary education or a PhD. [IMO, referencing should *in theory* make the qualifications of our editors irrelevant]
Since academic credentials don't improve the intrinsic worth of an article (at least, I don't believe so) and doesn't say anything about a user's editing, community and administrator skills, I can't see a reason to react to Essjay's controversy with such alarm.
On 3/5/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Academic credentials seem to me to have little to do with many of the skills necessary to being a Wikipedian (even less so when it comes to positions of trust)
But if you feel that way, then wouldn't it be accurate to say that they shouldn't be on a user page in the first place? User pages are supposed to be for helping build the encyclopedia, after all. If credentials aren't helpful, and they're potentially harmful, then by all means get rid of them.
This does raise another issue though. What if someone doesn't claim anything on their user page, but instead links to their web page outside Wikipedia which makes the claim.
It seems like anyone who wants to lie about their credentials could easily use this loophole if it's allowed. But not allowing such links would be pretty much impossible to police (or overly restrictive if no links at all are allowed). This is not saying that it's a bad idea to at least keep the fake credentials out of userspace, just saying that the usefulness is somewhat limited.
Anthony
On 05/03/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 3/5/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Academic credentials seem to me to have little to do with many of the skills necessary to being a Wikipedian (even less so when it comes to positions of trust)
But if you feel that way, then wouldn't it be accurate to say that they shouldn't be on a user page in the first place? User pages are supposed to be for helping build the encyclopedia, after all. If credentials aren't helpful, and they're potentially harmful, then by all means get rid of them.
I think a little personal information on a profile that isn't relevant to the project or the user's work is great. It helps develop a community and relationships between developers.
Also, although the credentials of the lead contributor shouldn't have any impact on an article (it, theoretically, being thorougly referenced), this kind of information can be useful. Learning that a user has credentials in a particular area may encourage me to ask them about a particular reference rather than anyone else. On the other hand, I may ask the same question to a user with no credentials listed on his/her user page because they seem particularly knowledgeable. Since, ideally, the use of credentials on Wikipedia should be limited to this, the Foundation should not need to verify them.
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:07:11 -0500 In-Reply-To: 45EBDB9F.2070808@wikia.com (Jimmy Wales's message of "Mon, 05 Mar 2007 17:58:07 +0900") Message-ID: 86r6s3wgao.fsf@elan.rh.rit.edu User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/22.0.95 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed --text follows this line-- Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com writes:
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.htmlto read the entire thread of "An idea".
Nowadays, I bring back the proposal for further consideration in
light
of the EssJay scandal. I think it imperative that we make some
positive
moves here... we have a real opportunity here to move the
quality of
Wikipedia forward by doing something that many have vaguely
thought to
be a reasonably good idea if worked out carefully.
For anyone who is reading but not online, I will sum it up. I
made a
proposal that we have a system whereby people who are willing to
verify
their real name and credentials are allowed a special
notification.
"Verified Credentials". This could be a rather open ended
system, and
optional.
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us
and with
the general public. If you don't care to tell us that you are a
PhD (or
that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or
falls on its
own merit. But if you do care to represent yourself as
something, you
have to be able to prove it.
This policy will be coupled with a policy of gentle (or firm) discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay
made,
unless they are willing to back them up.
How to confirm? What counts as confirmation? What sorts of
things need
confirmation? These are very interesting questions, as there are
many
types of situations. But one thing that we have always been
very very
good at is taking the time to develop a nuanced policy.
Just to take a simple example: how to verify a professor? This
strikes
me as being quite simple in most cases. The professor gives a
link to
his or her faculty page at the college or university, including
the
email there, and someone emails that address to say "are you
really
EssJay?" If the answer is yes, then that's a reasonable
confirmation.
We can imagine some wild ways that someone might crack that
process
(stealing a professor's email account, etc.) but I think we need
not
design around the worst case scenario, but rather design around
the
reasonable case of a reasonable person who is happy to confirm credentials to us.
(This is a lower level of confirmation than we might expect an
employer
to take, of course.)
For someone like me, well, I have an M.A. in finance. I could
fax a
copy of the degree to the office. Again, someone could fake
their
credentials, but I don't think we need to design against some
mad worst
case scenario but just to have a basic level of confirmation.
--Jimbo
I like this proposal, as it is similar to one I've been bruiting about for the last few days.
The way I see it, there is no really golden mean between full pseudonymity (where you give few to no details about who you are; where "few to no" means that the obtainable information is limited to basically the sort of stuff userboxes cover - excluding stuff like your real name, address, phone number, employment or employment history and other things like credentials), and full transparency. When I saw full transparency, here I mean that enough information about one's life is given that, in principle, one can verify claims about expertise, official credentials, and so on.
Now, note that I emphasize verifiability. This differs from Jimbo's proposal. If I may use some out-moded descriptions, Jimbo's idea where one has another rank in the hierarchy where credentials are deemed verified (past tense) is more of an Immediatist/Deletionist sort of proposal. I am not surprised at it - it is a truth of Wikipedia history that every time a scandal of some sort scars the community, restrictive I/D proposals pop up and gain credence (example: disabling anonymous page creation after Seigenthaler), but that doesn't mean we should just do them. If we implement any such proposals, disarrayed and dismayed by a recent scandal, we will have to live with it a long time, particularly if orders for it come from the top and are enforced by changes in the MediaWiki software (remember, "code is law"). I understand many elder editors are not particularly convinced restricting page creation worked and that it should be turned on again, but because the order for that restriction came from the top and is implemented in code, it is literally impossible for anons to create pages except through meatpuppets of registered editors. And this has been the case for quite literally years (come this December, I think it will have been 2 full years). So if we are considering proposals which will give a subset of registered editors official imprimatur, possibly reflected in the software itself (not sure how else the "Verified Credentials" would be implemented), then we need to be rather careful.
That said, I also don't like the proposal because it adds yet another level to the hierarchy (how will it go? Anons, editors, Verified Credential editors, admins, bureaucrats, Checkuser, Oversight, stewards, board, Jimbo?), because it centralizes the activity of checking credentials, and just in general imposes overhead - the whole point of wikis is to reduce overhead and bet that it enables good users more than bad ones.
What we need to do is discourage the in between. There is no golden mean, but this does not mean we should set up yet another heavyweight process to verify people on the transparent end of the spectrum, but rather we culturally or perhaps by guideline or policy say that claims to expertise not backed up by verifiable information should be discounted and the claimer treated exactly as if they were pseudonymous. Let people claim to be professors, if they want, but let no one treat them as professors without sufficient reason to believe that. One cannot legislate common sense, as the saying goes.
On Mar 5, 2007, at 12:58 AM, Jimmy Wales 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:
There are two issues that I believe are being mixed in this discussion, and that may require a different treatment.
1. Identity 2. Credentials
1. Identity -- The Amazon.com RealName (TM) is designed to guarantee the *indentity* of the person, by the simple means of providing a credit card account that Amazon uses to verify the account holder name via CSV.
The main idea behind RealName is that if you are willing to put your real name up there with your comments, reviews, etc. you will be extra careful on what you write, and readers of your reviews will take that into account when reading them.
A "Confirmed Identity" system could be easily added to WP. If we had such a system in place, the Essjay scandal would have never happened ... TNY fact checking team would have only needed to run a check on Essjay "RealName"... rather that take his user page at face value.
This "Confirmed Identity" can be displayed alongside the username in edit histories, as well as an icon on the user's page. Implementation is quite simple.
2. Credentials -- This is a tougher one to implement and somewhat against the grain of the community culture; most of our content is not developed by experts with credentials, but by people that are passionate about the subjects they edit.
Going for an "identity" system, rather than a "credentials" system will also remove the possible negative consequences in edit disputes: "I have a PhD. in Greek literature, and I tell you that you are wrong about Parmednides". After all, if you are Joe Blow, tenured professor at the University of Guam, and you have a "Confirmed Identity" tag certifying that you are indeed Joe Blow, your credentials can be easily verified by whomever wants to make the effort to do so.
-- Jossi
On 3/5/07, Jossi Fresco jossifresco@mac.com wrote:
On Mar 5, 2007, at 12:58 AM, Jimmy Wales 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:
There are two issues that I believe are being mixed in this discussion, and that may require a different treatment.
Identity
Credentials
Identity -- The Amazon.com RealName (TM) is designed to guarantee
the *indentity* of the person, by the simple means of providing a credit card account that Amazon uses to verify the account holder name via CSV.
The main idea behind RealName is that if you are willing to put your real name up there with your comments, reviews, etc. you will be extra careful on what you write, and readers of your reviews will take that into account when reading them.
A "Confirmed Identity" system could be easily added to WP. If we had such a system in place, the Essjay scandal would have never happened ... TNY fact checking team would have only needed to run a check on Essjay "RealName"... rather that take his user page at face value.
This "Confirmed Identity" can be displayed alongside the username in edit histories, as well as an icon on the user's page. Implementation is quite simple.
This sounds much more like what we might want. Is Amazon's system open, or will we have to craft our own? It seems like the sort of thing that would be useful in more online settings than WMF projects, so we could likely get coding support from the wider FLOSS community, if we publicised the project.
If we really want to implement something like this, I can see a call for mandating Confirmed Identity for all positions of trust higher than Admin (adminship, whether or not it's still "not a big deal", is probably not a big enough deal to require Confirmed Identity from all 1000+ admins.) I think requiring Confirmed Identity from all future press contacts is a no-brainer, at this point.
- Credentials -- <snipped>
I think any direct confirmation of credentials would be problematic, and possibly erode community values that have served us well. Any effective confirmation of credentials will confirm identity as a side-effect; we shouldn't require superfluous effort from either editors or the office.
On 3/6/07, Michael Noda michael.noda@gmail.com wrote:
This sounds much more like what we might want. Is Amazon's system open, or will we have to craft our own?
Given it's Amazon it won't be open and may well be unlawful to create our own. They probably have a patent covering it.
On Mar 5, 2007, at 8:10 PM, geni wrote:
Given it's Amazon it won't be open and may well be unlawful to create our own. They probably have a patent covering it.
Don't think so. They have a TM on the mark "RealName", but that is it. Anyone can setup an indentity validation system: all online shopping carts do: there is a subsystem called AVS ([[Address_Verification_System]]) in which a credit card is used to validate name and address of the person making a purchase online. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Verification_System
-- Jossi
On Mar 5, 2007, at 7:52 PM, Michael Noda wrote:
This sounds much more like what we might want. Is Amazon's system open, or will we have to craft our own? It seems like the sort of thing that would be useful in more online settings than WMF projects, so we could likely get coding support from the wider FLOSS community, if we publicised the project.
We can "roll our own" if needed be. If we do it with credit cards, it is a no brainer. But given that we use PayPal for our fundraising drives, the Foundation could approach PayPal and see if they are willing to lend a hand. PayPal has a "confirmed indenity" program as well.
If we really want to implement something like this, I can see a call for mandating Confirmed Identity for all positions of trust higher than Admin (adminship, whether or not it's still "not a big deal", is probably not a big enough deal to require Confirmed Identity from all 1000+ admins.) I think requiring Confirmed Identity from all future press contacts is a no-brainer, at this point.
That could be a good first step.
-- Jossi
Jimmy Wales 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:
After some thought I'm fairly ambivalent about this. On the one hand I have some concern that this could lead to some people with "verified credentials" throwing their verified weight around inappropriately, on the other hand it may quiet some of our less dedicated critics. Either way I doubt much will come of it in terms of actual article quality and I probably won't bother to get verified myself. I'm satisfied that my edits stand on their own merits and they mostly aren't related to my degrees anyway.
More generally, however, I am concerned about the idea of quickly implementing new policies in direct response to breaking scandals. It's been well over a year now since we lost anonymous article creation in the aftermath of the Siegenthaler Kerfuffle and I still have no idea whether it improved our quality, or even whether it had any effect on how Wikipedia is perceived. Is this Essjay Affair even going to continue to be a big thing outside the Wikipedia community? Something like the webcomic notability issue seems more likely to remain a long-term PR problem than this, IMO, unless we start seeing a flurry of additional Essjays popping out of the woodwork.
On 3/6/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
After some thought I'm fairly ambivalent about this. On the one hand I have some concern that this could lead to some people with "verified credentials" throwing their verified weight around inappropriately, on the other hand it may quiet some of our less dedicated critics.
I think the community has always been sceptical and disapproving of people who try to gain advantages in disputes or enforce their versions of articles simply because they have certain credentials. There are regular discussions in the mailing list archives about Wikipedia's "anti-expert bias", going way back to 2001.
I think this is so well ingrained in the Wikipedia culture that a verification system wouldn't be able to displace it, especially if it were implemented as nothing more complicated than a small note on a user's userpage saying, "yes, this person is not lying".
Either way I doubt much will come of it in terms of actual article quality and I probably won't bother to get verified myself. I'm satisfied that my edits stand on their own merits and they mostly aren't related to my degrees anyway.
The main goals of such a system, as I see them, would be to help editors trust each other with respect to the credentials that they claim, and to help those members of the reading public who are interested in the question "who writes Wikipedia?" to have greater trust in Wikipedia.
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?
This story just hit the Google News front page. The associated press is reporting that Ryan was dismissed from Wikia. Anyone know if this is true or not?
Anthony
On 3/8/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
This story just hit the Google News front page. The associated press is reporting that Ryan was dismissed from Wikia. Anyone know if this is true or not?
Anthony
The evidence we have suggests he resigned.
On 3/8/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
This story just hit the Google News front page. The associated press is reporting that Ryan was dismissed from Wikia. Anyone know if this is true or not?
Ryan was not dismissed. He resigned.
Angela
On 3/8/07, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/8/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
This story just hit the Google News front page. The associated press is reporting that Ryan was dismissed from Wikia. Anyone know if this is true or not?
Ryan was not dismissed. He resigned.
Angela
Part of the source of confusion is that he was dismissed from ArbCom but resigned from Wikia.
On 3/8/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Part of the source of confusion is that he was dismissed from ArbCom but resigned from Wikia.
Technically, IIRC, asked to resign from ArbCom, if there's a difference. Not asked to wrt Wikia (at least not in public that I saw).
-Matt