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, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
- Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.
Creates work for office or simular that doesn't result in much benefit.
- 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.
No. No community support for this and appears to be policy cruft. Better to go with. "makeing up credentials mad result in bad things happening please don't".
- 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.
Oh man please no. Way too buracratic. People wanting to avoid it will would have to remove such claims even when true before running for adminship which wont look good. OR could run into the rather odd case of people mentioning credentials on some projects but not on others.
There was majority support for essjay staying an admin. There were problems above that level but I feel the requirements for running for arbcom are at present about right (in terms of getting a decent mix and number of candidates but not too many) and the community keeps a pretty tight watch on buracrats. Oversight and checkuser are de-facto at least arbcom and or the foundation's responcibilty and thus may be subject to different standards.
On 3/5/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
- 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.
No. No community support for this and appears to be policy cruft. Better to go with. "makeing up credentials mad result in bad things happening please don't".
I don't think community support can be gauged fairly from the response to the Essjay situation. Essjay was a highly respected contributor, and many were inclined to respect and defend his desire to create a fake identity without an informed debate about the nature of credentials, and why it is important that we treat such statements with care.
I believe this debate needs to take place now, independently of the Essjay incident.
Oh man please no. Way too buracratic. People wanting to avoid it will would have to remove such claims even when true before running for adminship which wont look good.
Why won't it look good? I don't believe there's a problem with removing claims, or perhaps adding an {{UnverifiedCredentials}} template.
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I don't think community support can be gauged fairly from the response to the Essjay situation. Essjay was a highly respected contributor, and many were inclined to respect and defend his desire to create a fake identity without an informed debate about the nature of credentials, and why it is important that we treat such statements with care.
I believe this debate needs to take place now, independently of the Essjay incident.
You can have it takeing place now or you can have it independent of the Essjay incident. you can't have both.
Why won't it look good? I don't believe there's a problem with removing claims, or perhaps adding an {{UnverifiedCredentials}} template.
Someone has a degree and mentions it on their userpage. They then apply for adminship but have no wish to provide data on themselves to the foundation. So they have to take the information off. There is then a risk of people holding that against them.
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 3/5/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Oh man please no. Way too buracratic. People wanting to avoid it will would have to remove such claims even when true before running for adminship which wont look good.
Why won't it look good? I don't believe there's a problem with removing claims, or perhaps adding an {{UnverifiedCredentials}} template.
I would be opposed to either one of those. My user page currently states that I'm a PhD student in computer science, and it would be quite a deviation from our normal practice---and not particularly nice---if someone were to remove that sentence, or tag it with some sort of "WARNING: USER MIGHT BE LYING" template. I'd be okay with not being able to put an "Officially Verified" tag on it (though I think that has downsides for other reasons), but I would be much less okay with someone actively removing or tagging it as a possible lie when they had no reason to believe it to be false.
Mandatory verification for claims of being a specific person has a little more going for it IMO... impersonating "Professor Foo of College X" could damage the reputation of Professor Foo, a specific actual human, so the claim might warrant a higher bar for reasons similar to the Biography of Living Persons concerns. Plus, verification that someone is a specific person requires far fewer judgment calls than credential verification.
-Mark
Really, making up fake credentials is only relevant if you try to use it in an argument.
If I said I had a Ph.D in Astronomy for any reason (main reason I can think of for that would be enhanced anonymity), it would be totally irrelevant because I have been involved in 0 astronomy-related articles, I simply do not edit them because I am not interested in that topic.
Even if I were to become an admin on a large wiki, I don't think it would be relevant. I think it only matters if you are a steward, developer, or working for the foundation or somesuch.
Mark
On 05/03/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/5/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
- 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.
No. No community support for this and appears to be policy cruft. Better to go with. "makeing up credentials mad result in bad things happening please don't".
I don't think community support can be gauged fairly from the response to the Essjay situation. Essjay was a highly respected contributor, and many were inclined to respect and defend his desire to create a fake identity without an informed debate about the nature of credentials, and why it is important that we treat such statements with care.
I believe this debate needs to take place now, independently of the Essjay incident.
Oh man please no. Way too buracratic. People wanting to avoid it will would have to remove such claims even when true before running for adminship which wont look good.
Why won't it look good? I don't believe there's a problem with removing claims, or perhaps adding an {{UnverifiedCredentials}} template. -- Peace & Love, Erik
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geni wrote:
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
- Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.
Creates work for office or simular that doesn't result in much benefit.
I think the process should not be related in any way to the office if there is any way at all to avoid it. It should not proceed through a bottleneck of a committee or designated person. It should be highly distributed and networked like all successful wikipedia processes.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
geni wrote:
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller wrote:
- Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.
Creates work for office or simular that doesn't result in much benefit.
I think the process should not be related in any way to the office if there is any way at all to avoid it. It should not proceed through a bottleneck of a committee or designated person. It should be highly distributed and networked like all successful wikipedia processes.
--Jimbo
Any views from the Foundation, or others, in light of the discussion and straw vote:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Credential_Verification#S...
This needs to be resolved quickly (if public interest is to be taken into account) But only one proposal seems to be garnering significant support in the EN community - luke
On 15/03/07, luke brandt shojokid@gmail.com wrote on foundation-l:
Any views from the Foundation, or others, in light of the discussion and straw vote:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Credential_Verification#S... This needs to be resolved quickly (if public interest is to be taken into account) But only one proposal seems to be garnering significant support in the EN community - luke
I note particularly these comments from User:Armed Blowfish -
I believe that any credential or identity verification system will increase systemic bias against people from developing countries, people without documentation, and people too poor to get a good education, if any education at all. UNICEF estimates that one third of the world's population do not even have a birth certificates.(http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0098-7921%28199809%2924%3A3%3C659%3AUODBRI%...) (http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/media_35255.html) The economic inability to get a good education, as is common in developing countries, does not make someone less intelligent.
According to overpopulation.com (http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2001/000050.html), "In 1950 there were two people in developing countries for every person living in the developed world. By 2050, there will be six people living in developing countries for every person in the more developed world." Look, I am not advocating affirmative action, I just don't want to make it impossible for any of these people to become administrators, checkusers, and all that, considering how sadly under-represented they already are.
I agree. It really doesn't fit in too well with our attempts to counter systemic bias to deliberately introduce a new one.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 15/03/07, luke brandt shojokid@gmail.com wrote on foundation-l:
Any views from the Foundation, or others, in light of the discussion and straw vote:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Credential_Verification#S... This needs to be resolved quickly (if public interest is to be taken into account) But only one proposal seems to be garnering significant support in the EN community - luke
I note particularly these comments from User:Armed Blowfish -
I believe that any credential or identity verification system willincrease systemic bias against people from developing countries, people without documentation, and people too poor to get a good education, if any education at all. UNICEF estimates that one third of the world's population do not even have a birth certificates.(http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0098-7921%28199809%2924%3A3%3C659%3AUODBRI%...) (http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/media_35255.html) The economic inability to get a good education, as is common in developing countries, does not make someone less intelligent.
I would have to add here that I believe that even the distinction of an asumption that if you are from a "developed" country that you have money oozing out of your orafices is one that also has to be shot down, and killed completely. Even in so-called developed countries, there are many individuals who don't have college educations due to circumstances and a decided lack of opprotunity. Certainly it is easier to get one from a country who has a pervasive attitude of encouraging their citizens to get a college education and provides that opportunity where possible, but there still are "working poor" even in the most enlightened and developed countries of the world.
And I believe you can get very meaningful contributions from many of these same individuals who certainly don't have a PhD. The difference in the success of Wikipedia vs. Nupedia is a very clear example that having a PhD is not necessarily a manditory prerequisite to developing an outstanding reference work. Least anybody forget, it was clearly stated that degrees mattered with Nupedia contributions, and it was felt that only somebody with a PhD *in that very subject* could contribute what we would call a featured article class Wikipedia article today. Somebody with only a mere bachelor's degree would only be capable of making what would be called a stub. While certainly people who possess the knowledge level of a PhD can (and do!) make meaningful and substantial contributions to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, they are not the most exclusive set of individuals who contribute to featured articles.
It would be interesting to go through the FA articles and see just how many involved major contributions that even mentioned educational credentials at all, or where it even was mentioned in the first place. While I havn't done this sort of statistical analysis, I would think the results of any such search would reveal a decided lack of educational credentials on most subjects by its primary contributors. And FA class articles would be on the statistical tail where I think you would be more likely to find educational credentials brought up in serious discussions.
-- Robert Horning
On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Robert Horning wrote:
And I believe you can get very meaningful contributions from many of these same individuals who certainly don't have a PhD. The difference
Is anyone disputing this? If so, that should be the subject of its own thread.
Accountability should have nothing to do with confirming or verifying the quality of contributions; it is just like a Real Names policy -- a question of a community's standards for trust.
credentials on most subjects by its primary contributors. And FA class articles would be on the statistical tail where I think you would be more likely to find educational credentials brought up in serious discussions.
When this comes up in serious discussions, does it carry weight? I wouldg greatly appreciate references to where this carries weight on Wikipedia.
SJ
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 3/10/07, Kat Walsh kat@wikimedia.org wrote:
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.
Yes, I would like to add my real life experience. Some years ago, I enrolled myself to an academic online database for matching jobs. They are an institute run by government, required my snail mail address to send a new password (and perhaps verify my address) but require no credentials at all. While this kind of information is someday need first when you apply for the opening job, but that is what we want? A commitment as serious as the case you are applying for the job irl? To introduce ourselves online, we need the level of verification even governmental organizations wouldn't require? Personally I suspect how many people would like to commit to the project in such a depth ...
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.
Agreed strongly. As for checkuser, I made a similar question/proposal on meta [[m:Talk:Check user policy]]. If you are interested, please give a look to talk and input your idea. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:CheckUser_policy
Personally I think we are better to require the same qualification for oversight, but it would be another issue ...
Cheers,
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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On 3/11/07, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
As to Anthony's proposal to validate credentials:
I made no such proposal. I haven't even decided whether or not I support Erik's proposal in that regard. In fact, I'm not even sure what the current proposal is, it seems to have been severely diluted.
Anthony
I'd rather not have this involve the foundation, but rather some local "approvals" committe like the bot approvals group or something similar, though a bit more serious.
One advantage to this would be for constructing the user groups needed for revision tagging.
Erik Moeller-4 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. -- Peace & Love, Erik
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