As I've made clear already, I'm all for trying to find a way vouchsafe the reliability of those of our articles that actually are reliable. We've just got to make sure we don't shoot ourselves in the foot doing it!
I'd like to ask this: what is the purpose of this present certification proposal?
*If* you're trying to improve the credibility of Wikipedia among people who *really need* accurate information about the reliability of articles--people like students, teachers (at all levels), librarians, and anyone doing serious research--then I don't see how this proposal can work. Why should any of these sorts of people believe that an article *actually is* reliable, just because a dozen participants have pressed a button saying it's good--if it's possible that not a single actual expert has looked at it? We've all seen instances of articles that looked OK to nonexperts but that turned out to be, in the opinion of an expert that happens by, decidedly inadequate. It doesn't take an epistemologist to see that accuracy cannot be vouchsafed by a vote--10, or 100, or 1000 approving Wikipedians certainly *can* be wrong!
But that isn't the most important issue here. The most important issue is this: I suspect that, if I understand it correctly, implementing the proposal would actually *undermine* Wikipedia's credibility. Here is what all sorts of sober thinkers, not on the project, will think about it when they learn about how articles are certified: "The same people who *write* these articles, of uneven quality and obviously questionable credibility, are the ones who presume to certify that they're accurate? Well, if the people in charge of the project think *that's* how to guarantee the reliability of an article, that's reason to think the articles *aren't* reliable, and that the project shouldn't be taken seriously."
By contrast, the proposal I made not long ago (I know, I haven't followed up--I suddenly got very busy), of having a completely separate website, managed by actual subject area experts, containing a subset of Wikipedia articles, achieves the purpose (improving the credibility of some Wikipedia articles among librarians et al.) much more handily.
By no means am I saying that credentialled people, or "experts," are (because they're experts) *necessarily* reliable. Plenty of people with lots of credentials can't give us a trustworthy opinion as to the reliability of an article. But we can't do better, and it's the opinion of these people--the duly anointed "knowers" (the tongue's in cheek here)--that students, teachers, and others look up to for their benchmark as to what is currently known. That's a fact. It's not a WikiWiki fact or attitude, but it *is* a fact, and we can't change it. The more "elitist" proposal might not be "WikiWiki," but there IS no WikiWiki way to satisfy teachers, librarians, and serious researchers about the reliability of a WikiWiki.
Now, if satisfying the librarians et al. is not your aim with the proposal, I think that's too bad; but then I really do have to wonder what the point of this certification proposal is. Is it a way for Wikipedians to win kudos from each other? If so, can we please not do that? Wikipedia is *not*, I think, about building a community and winning kudos and stroking egos. It's first and foremost about building an *encyclopedia*.
Larry Adding a new sig! "We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell