--- Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:

I suggest that the existing procedures are adequate for this. If someone seems to be trying it on then we can tell them to change their username because misleading or disruptive usernames are not allowed. If they say that is their real name we block them anyway. No appeals.

But what if it is their real name anyway? What if they fax a copy of their driver's license and birth certificate to Jimbo and it read " Jeremy Irons" or "Frank Zappa" or "Christina Applegate". What then? Do we say, sorry buddy, we know you've been a contributor for years, and you're a swell guy, but you gotta change your anme because some hollywood actor has more rights that you?

I say if you can prove your identity, it's first come first served.

(check out nissan.com. The guy, Uzi Nissan, registered nissan.com in 1995, to support his business, nissan computer corporation. Nissan Motors Corporation of Japan has been suing the living daylights out of him for 5 years (always denied, rejected, by US courts.))

===== Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan@yahoo.com chris.mahan@gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/

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--- Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:

I was told most emphatically that because his parents made the mistake of giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator also chose, he would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.

Perhaps the policy was short-sighted and needs a revisit?

===== Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan@yahoo.com chris.mahan@gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/

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I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario. However, if a person *were* to have the same name as a different, better known person, it would be unfair to block the less known person. It would be a good idea for that person to say on his or her user page that he or she is not the famous person, though.

Josh Gerdes (en:User:JoshG)

Sean Barrett wrote:

Christopher Mahan stated for the record:

...

--- Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:

...

I was told most emphatically that because his parents made the mistake of giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator also chose, he would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.

Perhaps the policy was short-sighted and needs a revisit?

"Short-sighted" is a much nicer word that I would use. ;->

On Jan 11, 2005, at 9:59 PM, Daniel Mayer wrote:

--- Josh Gerdes wikipedia@gerdesfamily.com wrote:

...

I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario. However, if a person *were* to have the same name as a different, better known person, it would be unfair to block the less known person. It would be a good idea for that person to say on his or her user page that he or she is not the famous person, though.

But what famous person in their right mind would want to use their real name? In fact, famous people are likely already among us - blissfully incognito.

-- mav

I can think of two right off.

--- Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:

The answer to your question is, Michael Everson and Adam Carr (although they're not celebrities of the level that they get a lot of publicity)

The second type of celeb is what I was talking about. And the two people you cite are only widely known within narrow circles. Heck most of my uni professors would also qualify in that regard.

-- mav

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

You made some good points. Yes, I know that many people have the same name, even mine. :-) If there were a famous person named Josh Gerdes, though, I would want to mention that I am not him, especially if there were an article about him. It is true, though, that fame is often somewhat localized.

Josh Gerdes (en:User:JoshG)

Robert Brockway wrote:

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Josh Gerdes wrote:

...

I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario. However, if a person *were* to

Actually it isn't. It is quite common for people to have the same name regardless of how famous they are. This is the main reason police habitually refer to people using their full name (including middle name) if they have one.

Type your own name into www.switchboard.com and be disappointed about how many people have your name in the US alone :)

I used to work with Jim Carey. The real Jim Carey? Well the one I knew was real, although he wasn't famous. I've heard of many other examples of a person having the same name as someone who is famous.

...

on his or her user page that he or she is not the famous person, though.

If it were me I'd be inclined to let people figure it out for themselves :) In fact if it were me and someone insisted that I put a marker on my home page indicating I was not the other "famous" Robert Brockway I'd likely be insulted and that'd be the last you'd see of me.

Besides, who is famous is culturally dependent. As an Australian I am certain I could name people who I consider to be famous but who non-Australians would not. What if we encounter Bruce Paige or Ray Martin? I may wonder if they are the famous person but you may not (unless you are also Australian). In the case of Bruce Paige you'd probably need to be from my home state to recognise the name. I just looked up Ray Martin in Wikipedia. He's a Canadian politician? But I thought he was an Australian TV presenter. Another couple of people with the same name.

Cheers,

Rob

Sean Barrett wrote:

use it. The specific example I used was my colleague Moamar Qazafi. I was told most emphatically that because his parents made the mistake of giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator also chose, he would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.

You were not told this by me, and there is no policy which would support this. Please don't confuse random emails from I don't know who with policy.

If there are actual cases of people with real names being barred from editing wikipedia due to people being offended by those names, then please tell me.

Otherwise, let's not get hysterical about a commonsense policy, huh?

--Jimbo

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales stated for the record:

Sean Barrett wrote:

...

use it. The specific example I used was my colleague Moamar Qazafi. I was told most emphatically that because his parents made the mistake of giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator also chose, he would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.

You were not told this by me, and there is no policy which would support this. Please don't confuse random emails from I don't know who with policy.

If there are actual cases of people with real names being barred from editing wikipedia due to people being offended by those names, then please tell me.

Otherwise, let's not get hysterical about a commonsense policy, huh?

--Jimbo

No, Jimbo, I was not told this by you, and I'm not concerned enough to dig through the mailing list archives and find who did state it (it was during the Affair of the Throbbing Monster Rooster), but published policy can be and is interpreted as supporting this ridiculous position. [[Wikipedia:No_offensive_usernames]] states that "Wikipedia does not allow ... Names which promote racial/ethnic/national/religious hatred ... Fairly or unfairly, the line between acceptable and unacceptable user names is drawn by those who find the username inappropriate, not by the creator of the name."

There is no exception in the policy for name proven to be real.

Ray Saintonge wrote:

...

[No celebrity usernames]

Such a policy would require defining when a person is a celebrity.

...perhaps the policy could be "everyone more famous than Jimbo", after all it would be quite embarassing if a policy required [[User:Jimbo Wales]] to change their name!

Pete/Pcb21

http://www.bopnews.com/archives/002710.html#2710

On Jan 13, 2005, at 1:11 AM, Tim Starling wrote:

Stirling Newberry wrote:

...

http://www.bopnews.com/archives/002710.html#2710

Just a couple of facts that weren't obvious to me at first glance but which I think are important:

1. The linked article was written by Stirling Newberry
2. Stirling Newberry is involved in a heated dispute over the

[[Intelligent Design]] article.

The article makes more sense when you read it in that context.

-- Tim Starling

Other way around. I am on the ID article because it is a test of the current system. It's easy to keep out Holocaust denial, because the POV that it is cover for is universally rejected. Much harder is removing intellectual fraud that is cover for some fraction of a popular point of view. If wikipedia is merely mobocracy, then it does not converge on credibility.

There are similar articles on other aspects of creationism, many of which, ahem, would get you laughed out of first year biology or geology. Those arguing for expert gatekeeping have these articles as proof that the system doesn't work, or, at the very least, is unstable - prone to being upset at any moment, and untrustworthy because one never knows if one is going to get garbage disinformation.

The reality of this is that there are risk adverse users of information, and there are also purveyors of disinformation. The risk adverse information users lie in fear of exactly what is going on on wikipedia's articles on Creationism: organized intellectual fraud being let through the gates.

This is a security flaw in wikipedia's process, the argument of open source projects is that flaws are easily discovered, reported, and dealt with. The argument of proprietary projects is that such flaws are best dealt with by small selected groups of people out of reach of others.

On Thursday 13 January 2005 01:11, Tim Starling wrote:

Stirling Newberry wrote:

...

http://www.bopnews.com/archives/002710.html#2710

This is a bit more abstract, but I was recently exploring some concepts with respect to Wikipedia and intelligent design as well.

http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/epistemological-authority 2005 Jan 06 | Epistomological Authority

Two recent discussions have prompted me to return to question of epistemological authority. In the case of the online collaborative Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, a founding participant, lamented the inability of the community to accept and retain contributions from "experts." Also, creationists have re-factored their doctrine into a pseudoscientific "theory" of intelligent design and advocate that it be taught alongside, or instead, of evolution. I believe both of these cases share the conditions that there is such a thing as expertise, but that all views are potentially ideologically biased. Can the community at large distinguish authoritative arguments, or must we be cynical and believe that all arguments are biased but some are only more eruditely presented? (In fact, I've realized that the bulk of continental social "theory" is about identifying such biases: Boudieu's doxa and symbolic violence, Hall's naturalization, Gramsci's hegemony, Marcuse's and Adorno's technological veil, Weber's symbolic violence, Foucault's episteme, Barthes' exnomination ('unnaming') etc.).

In An Introduction to Reflexive Sociology Pierre Bourdieu (1992) discusses a couple of his conceptual contributions which may be of use in understanding these debates. A field is a cultural domain in which participants have a stake in and compete with each other for the accumulation of some sort of capital (i.e., social capital).

Like any social universe, the academic world is the site of a struggle over the truth of the academic world and of the social world in general. Very rapidly, we may say that the social world is the site of continual struggles to define what the social world is; but the academic world is a peculiarity today that its verdicts and pronouncements are among the most powerful socially. In academia, people fight constantly over the question of who, in this universe, is socially mandated, authorized, to tell the truth of the social world (1992:70).

One of Bourdieu's preferences is that fields be true to themselves and operate autonomously and in a "scientific" manner.

A scientific field is a universe in which researchers are autonomous and where, to confront one another, they have to drop all nonscientific weapons -- beginning with the weapons of academic authority. In a genuine scientific field, one can freely enter free discussions and violently oppose any contradictor with the arms of science because your position does not depend on him or because you can get another position elsewhere. (1992:177)

My own understanding is that scientific does not equal academic: academic authority is based on a hierarchical application of judgment to those who allegedly know less; while closely associated with the academic, scientific assessments should be discernible to those who know the same or even less. Above, Bourdieu introduces the notion of "scientific arms": legitimate means of dispute. In Jonathan Sarfati's response to the creationist book Teaching About Evolution, he notes that the creationists claim that the National Academy of Sciences "resorts to arbitrary, self-serving 'rules' to determine what qualifies as 'science' and what doesn't." Of course, and presently in America we have the confounding situation that a great majority of the members of the National Academy of Sciences accept evolution, but a frightening proportion of Americans don't.

A field is all the more scientific the more it is capable of channeling, of converting unavowable motives into scientifically proper behavior. In a loosely structured field characterized by a low level of autonomy, illegitmate motives produce illegitimate strategies and, furthermore, strategies that are scientifically worthless. In an autonomous field such as the mathematical field today, by contrast, a top mathematician who once to triumph over his opponents is compelled by the force of the field to produce mathematics to do so, on pain of excluding himself from the field. Being aware of this, we must work to constitute a Scientific City in which the most unavowable intentions have to sublimate themselves into scientific expression. This vision is not utopian at all, and I could propose a number of very concrete measures designed to make it come true. For instance, where we have won a national referee or evaluator, we can institute an international panel of three foreign judges (of course, we must then control for the effects of international networks of mutual knowledge and alliances). When a research center or a journal enjoys a situation of monopoly, worked to create a rival one. We can raise the level of scientific censorship by a series of actions designed to upgrade the level of training, the minimal amount of specific competency required to enter the field, etc.

In short, they must create conditions such that the worst, the meanest, and the most mediocre participant is compelled to behave in accordance with the norms of scientificity in currency at the time (1992:177).

Interestingly, Bourdieu is advocating censoring "nonscientific" claims. Which, while not very democratic, can be meritocratic -- though I think his proposals for committees implausible. Yet, while Bourdieu is sympathetic to the autonomous operation of a field he does not want to focus on a particular methodology or bureaucracy, but the almost anarchistic competition under an already agreed to metaphysical system.

There is in history what we may call, after Elias, a process of scientific civilization, whose historical conditions are given with the constitution of relatively autonomous fields within which all moves are not allowed, in which there are immanent regularities, implicit principles and explicit rules of inclusion and exclusion, and admission rights which are being continually raised. Scientific reason realizes itself when it becomes inscribed not in the ethical norms of a practical reason or in the technical rules of scientific methodology, but in the apparently anarchical social mechanisms of competition between strategies armed with instruments of action and of thought capable of regulating their own uses, and in the durable dispositions that the functioning of this field produces and presupposes. (1992:180)

But, in the case of the creation/evolution debates, what is at stake is the metaphysical system of judging what is and is not science; in Wikipedia, what is and is not good, neutral, and authoritative content? Creationists object to natural science as a baised metaphysical system, or even a religion, like their own supernatural literalism. It is at this point, that I find their position simply incoherent and can no longer sympathetically engage in the debate. The divine, supernatural, and the ineffable may exist and be revealed to some, but these are not legitimate discourses in a public sphere in which others do not have access to the inspired source. The alternative that I can understand is as Robert Pennock (2001:84) wrote in Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, "The methodological naturalist does not make a commitment directly to a picture of what exists in the world, but rather to a set of methods as a reliable way to find out about the world -- typically the methods of the natural sciences, and perhaps extensions that are continuous with them -- and indirectly to what those methods discover."

As I discussed in Scandal and The Politics of Science and Vice Versa, "We can never know everything. We haven't the capacity nor time to give informed consideration to every important issue. So we rely upon labels and personalities to set the default values of our opinion." A claim of authority is a claim of being worthy of being deferred to. In the case of Wikipedia, if people are to accept it as an Encyclopedia, it seemingly must prove itself as an authority being worthy of being deferred to. Such proxies are often determined by the judgments of peers, judgement of superiors, method, majorities, personal experience, and results. And the difficulty with both the Wikipedia and debate on evolution is that the best method, results, is not immediately apparent. If we stop teaching evolution now, the effects would be long-term and confounded with many other social variables. And how does one "objectively" judge the quality of Wikipedia?

Two of the key differences between Wikipedia and open source software development are that with questions of protocol and code one can easily make authoritative claims based on the results, and consequently such communities tend to be meritocratic. As I wrote in Why the Internet is Good, "With the cacophony of ideas, proposals, and debates, and a lack of a central authority to cleave the good from the bad, how does one sort it all out? It sorts itself out. ... The success of any policy is based simply on its adoption by the community." Encyclopedia making is not so fortunate, and Wikipedia strives to be more open, accepting anonymous contributions even, than most all open source projects. Nor can we simply rely upon the naked authority of expertise and academia: expertise should be supported, but to be accepted the results of expertise must also be widely perceptible to the larger public.