I had an idea the other day while I was on a radio interview.
Someone was making the usual (uninformed) complaint about Wikipedia that we "pretend to have no authors" -- which is nonsense of course -- but the undertone (in my opinion) of the criticism was that Wikipedia is written by a bunch of random morons on the Internet rather than Real Professionals. As such, it is argued, it's a perfectly fun forum for people to post their stupid rants, but it is not an encyclopedia.
However, I travel all over the world meeting Wikipedians, and surprise surprise, most of them are Real Professionals of some sort. And of course, Wikipedia *is* an encyclopedia.
Now, here's the idea that I had, and there are perhaps some reasons it is a bad idea, but I think it has more merit than not, so I wanted to bring it up for feedback and see if it is something we want to start thinking about and discussing more generally.
Some years ago, Amazon.com instituted a system that they were calling something like "Real Names intitiative" for user reviews. In order to increase the public perception of trust in those reviews, they made it possible (but optional!) for people to go through a process to identify themselves by their Real Names.
We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
What kinds of credentials would be acceptable? This could be totally open to a community process. Clearly, all sorts of college degrees make sense, but the wide kinds of expertise that are involved in writing Wikipedia might call for useful credentials of many kinds.
Examples would include computer certifications such as MSCE or LPI or Redhat. Our article on [[Amateur Radio]] has surely been edited by people who have advanced licenses. Published books might count as a credential. Magazine articles. Awards, recognitions of all kinds. Positions held in relevant organizations.
Have you won a prize at a dog show? Then this is a credential which testifies to the public about your expertise in that area.
Such an initiative would have to be done carefully in order to respect our (fairly anti-credentialist) culture. First, anyone who ever suggests that a credential gives one precedence in editing gets a bonk in the head with a WikiClueStick. Second, it should be made clear at every point of contact with a credential system that it is fully and completely optional.
The idea is this: people wonder, and not unreasonably, who we all are. Why should the world listen to us about anything? People think, and not unreasonably, that credentials say something helpful about that. As it turns out, we mostly do know something about what we edit, and although we never want Wikipedia to be about a closed club of credential fetishists, there's nothing particularly wrong with advertising that, hey, we are *random* people on the Internet *g*, but not random *morons* after all.
--Jimbo
Hi, Sometime ago, I created on French Wikipedia a "wikipedians per expertise domain" page (Wikipédiens par domaine de compétence [1]) that may fit your idea (actually 55 users listed). Personally I prefer this kind of community pages to list this information rather than icon stick near some user names.
Aoineko
[1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikip%C3%A9diens_par_domaine_de_...
I had an idea the other day while I was on a radio interview.
Someone was making the usual (uninformed) complaint about Wikipedia that we "pretend to have no authors" -- which is nonsense of course -- but the undertone (in my opinion) of the criticism was that Wikipedia is written by a bunch of random morons on the Internet rather than Real Professionals. As such, it is argued, it's a perfectly fun forum for people to post their stupid rants, but it is not an encyclopedia.
However, I travel all over the world meeting Wikipedians, and surprise surprise, most of them are Real Professionals of some sort. And of course, Wikipedia *is* an encyclopedia.
Now, here's the idea that I had, and there are perhaps some reasons it is a bad idea, but I think it has more merit than not, so I wanted to bring it up for feedback and see if it is something we want to start thinking about and discussing more generally.
Some years ago, Amazon.com instituted a system that they were calling something like "Real Names intitiative" for user reviews. In order to increase the public perception of trust in those reviews, they made it possible (but optional!) for people to go through a process to identify themselves by their Real Names.
We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
What kinds of credentials would be acceptable? This could be totally open to a community process. Clearly, all sorts of college degrees make sense, but the wide kinds of expertise that are involved in writing Wikipedia might call for useful credentials of many kinds.
Examples would include computer certifications such as MSCE or LPI or Redhat. Our article on [[Amateur Radio]] has surely been edited by people who have advanced licenses. Published books might count as a credential. Magazine articles. Awards, recognitions of all kinds. Positions held in relevant organizations.
Have you won a prize at a dog show? Then this is a credential which testifies to the public about your expertise in that area.
Such an initiative would have to be done carefully in order to respect our (fairly anti-credentialist) culture. First, anyone who ever suggests that a credential gives one precedence in editing gets a bonk in the head with a WikiClueStick. Second, it should be made clear at every point of contact with a credential system that it is fully and completely optional.
The idea is this: people wonder, and not unreasonably, who we all are. Why should the world listen to us about anything? People think, and not unreasonably, that credentials say something helpful about that. As it turns out, we mostly do know something about what we edit, and although we never want Wikipedia to be about a closed club of credential fetishists, there's nothing particularly wrong with advertising that, hey, we are *random* people on the Internet *g*, but not random *morons* after all.
--Jimbo
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
Hi, Sometime ago, I created on French Wikipedia a "wikipedians per expertise domain" page (Wikipédiens par domaine de compétence [1]) that may fit your idea (actually 55 users listed). Personally I prefer this kind of community pages to list this information rather than icon stick near some user names.
Aoineko
[1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikip%C3%A9diens_par_domaine_de_...
We have done the same on nl a couple of months ago also: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedianen_naar_expertise
We now have a whole series of wikipedians by ...... pages
Even one Wikipedians and the sources they use: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedianen_en_hun_bronnen
It has links to seperate pages in peoples userspace in which people basically put lists of the books etc they use. This so we could ask eachother for help. Like you have a book about X could you please look something up for me?
Waerth/Walter
Walter van Kalken wrote:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
Sometime ago, I created on French Wikipedia a "wikipedians per expertise domain" page (Wikipédiens par domaine de compétence [1]) that may fit your idea (actually 55 users listed). Personally I prefer this kind of community pages to list this information rather than icon stick near some user names.
It has links to seperate pages in peoples userspace in which people basically put lists of the books etc they use. This so we could ask eachother for help. Like you have a book about X could you please look something up for me?
That's an interesting idea. My own personal library is manic in proportion, and I really would like to make better use of it. The problem would come in trying to list what I have available. :-)
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
Sometime ago, I created on French Wikipedia a "wikipedians per expertise domain" page (Wikipédiens par domaine de compétence [1]) that may fit your idea (actually 55 users listed). Personally I prefer this kind of community pages to list this information rather than icon stick near some user names.
It has links to seperate pages in peoples userspace in which people basically put lists of the books etc they use. This so we could ask eachother for help. Like you have a book about X could you please look something up for me?
That's an interesting idea. My own personal library is manic in proportion, and I really would like to make better use of it. The problem would come in trying to list what I have available. :-)
I was happy I am in Thailand in this respect, as in the Netherlands I still have over a hundred books (mostly 2nd ww) so I only had to list about 20. We already had the first usefull exchanges in people asking eachother to look things up. Basically most of us wrote down everything, from specific dictionaries and encyclopedias through travelguides to very specific books. We could even have something on Meta ..... the wikilibrary? the wikisearch?
Walter/Waerth
Waerth/Walter
On 5/25/05, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
It has links to seperate pages in peoples userspace in which people basically put lists of the books etc they use. This so we could ask eachother for help. Like you have a book about X could you please look something up for me?
That's an interesting idea. My own personal library is manic in proportion, and I really would like to make better use of it. The problem would come in trying to list what I have available. :-)
I was happy I am in Thailand in this respect, as in the Netherlands I still have over a hundred books (mostly 2nd ww) so I only had to list about 20. We already had the first usefull exchanges in people asking eachother to look things up. Basically most of us wrote down everything, from specific dictionaries and encyclopedias through travelguides to very specific books. We could even have something on Meta ..... the wikilibrary? the wikisearch?
Walter/Waerth
Waerth/Walter
To scale well, this would be have to searchable by book, wouldn't it? (Very tedious to look through, say, 50 Wikipedians' user pages just to see if they have this particular book.) This would be very useful if it could work..
Cormac
On 5/25/05, Cormac Lawler cormaggio@gmail.com wrote:
I was happy I am in Thailand in this respect, as in the Netherlands I still have over a hundred books (mostly 2nd ww) so I only had to list about 20. We already had the first usefull exchanges in people asking eachother to look things up. Basically most of us wrote down everything, from specific dictionaries and encyclopedias through travelguides to very specific books. We could even have something on Meta ..... the wikilibrary? the wikisearch?
To scale well, this would be have to searchable by book, wouldn't it? (Very tedious to look through, say, 50 Wikipedians' user pages just to see if they have this particular book.) This would be very useful if it could work..
Yes but then we could also have a book-club-type VP, where I' could go and say..."I am stuck on this article, does anyone have a book that says anything about notafishes and their natural habitat?". It could even be cross projects and cross languages. I really like this idea. After a while, I am sure we'd know who has what and if not, who can tell us who has what.
Delphine
Delphine Ménard (notafishz@gmail.com) [050526 03:10]:
On 5/25/05, Cormac Lawler cormaggio@gmail.com wrote:
I was happy I am in Thailand in this respect, as in the Netherlands I still have over a hundred books (mostly 2nd ww) so I only had to list about 20. We already had the first usefull exchanges in people asking eachother to look things up. Basically most of us wrote down everything, from specific dictionaries and encyclopedias through travelguides to very specific books. We could even have something on Meta ..... the wikilibrary? the wikisearch?
To scale well, this would be have to searchable by book, wouldn't it? (Very tedious to look through, say, 50 Wikipedians' user pages just to see if they have this particular book.) This would be very useful if it could work..
Yes but then we could also have a book-club-type VP, where I' could go and say..."I am stuck on this article, does anyone have a book that says anything about notafishes and their natural habitat?". It could even be cross projects and cross languages. I really like this idea. After a while, I am sure we'd know who has what and if not, who can tell us who has what.
I believe there were various people talking about projects to list and standardise references - such that if a given book were used as a reference, you could look it up in that list for more detail. This would hook very nicely into that.
- d.
I agree with Aoi.
We all here are an expert in at least one area. And I guess most of us could show diplomas. The other ones could show their expertise in fields which are not sanctified by diplomas. It make little sense to me to highlight some of us and not the others.
I am not supportive of such an icon. It means little to me. Someone could be an expert in one field and a perfect ignorant in another. So what would the icon be useful to ?
However, if we can show to the outside that we also have some experts in certain fields, well, this can be good.
Ant
Guillaume Blanchard a écrit:
Hi, Sometime ago, I created on French Wikipedia a "wikipedians per expertise domain" page (Wikipédiens par domaine de compétence [1]) that may fit your idea (actually 55 users listed). Personally I prefer this kind of community pages to list this information rather than icon stick near some user names.
Aoineko
[1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikip%C3%A9diens_par_domaine_de_...
I had an idea the other day while I was on a radio interview.
Someone was making the usual (uninformed) complaint about Wikipedia that we "pretend to have no authors" -- which is nonsense of course -- but the undertone (in my opinion) of the criticism was that Wikipedia is written by a bunch of random morons on the Internet rather than Real Professionals. As such, it is argued, it's a perfectly fun forum for people to post their stupid rants, but it is not an encyclopedia.
However, I travel all over the world meeting Wikipedians, and surprise surprise, most of them are Real Professionals of some sort. And of course, Wikipedia *is* an encyclopedia.
Now, here's the idea that I had, and there are perhaps some reasons it is a bad idea, but I think it has more merit than not, so I wanted to bring it up for feedback and see if it is something we want to start thinking about and discussing more generally.
Some years ago, Amazon.com instituted a system that they were calling something like "Real Names intitiative" for user reviews. In order to increase the public perception of trust in those reviews, they made it possible (but optional!) for people to go through a process to identify themselves by their Real Names.
We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
What kinds of credentials would be acceptable? This could be totally open to a community process. Clearly, all sorts of college degrees make sense, but the wide kinds of expertise that are involved in writing Wikipedia might call for useful credentials of many kinds.
Examples would include computer certifications such as MSCE or LPI or Redhat. Our article on [[Amateur Radio]] has surely been edited by people who have advanced licenses. Published books might count as a credential. Magazine articles. Awards, recognitions of all kinds. Positions held in relevant organizations.
Have you won a prize at a dog show? Then this is a credential which testifies to the public about your expertise in that area.
Such an initiative would have to be done carefully in order to respect our (fairly anti-credentialist) culture. First, anyone who ever suggests that a credential gives one precedence in editing gets a bonk in the head with a WikiClueStick. Second, it should be made clear at every point of contact with a credential system that it is fully and completely optional.
The idea is this: people wonder, and not unreasonably, who we all are. Why should the world listen to us about anything? People think, and not unreasonably, that credentials say something helpful about that. As it turns out, we mostly do know something about what we edit, and although we never want Wikipedia to be about a closed club of credential fetishists, there's nothing particularly wrong with advertising that, hey, we are *random* people on the Internet *g*, but not random *morons* after all.
--Jimb
o
Anthere wrote:
We all here are an expert in at least one area. And I guess most of us could show diplomas. The other ones could show their expertise in fields which are not sanctified by diplomas. It make little sense to me to highlight some of us and not the others.
Most of the people I know here at university who occasionally edit Wikipedia (admittedly, there are not many) tend to edit articles unrelated to the diplomas anyway. For example, one computer science student who is a friend of mine is most interested in philosophy, culture and arts related articles.
I think that it could be a good idea, especially if stretched to crediting authors for their articles if they have a real name (via a template at the top of the talk page, or bottom of the article possibly). The problems are, obviously, that this causes problems for younger Wikipedians in that they could never have a degree at the age of 15, or whatever. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@wikia.com To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 1:57 PM Subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea
I had an idea the other day while I was on a radio interview.
Someone was making the usual (uninformed) complaint about Wikipedia that we "pretend to have no authors" -- which is nonsense of course -- but the undertone (in my opinion) of the criticism was that Wikipedia is written by a bunch of random morons on the Internet rather than Real Professionals. As such, it is argued, it's a perfectly fun forum for people to post their stupid rants, but it is not an encyclopedia.
However, I travel all over the world meeting Wikipedians, and surprise surprise, most of them are Real Professionals of some sort. And of course, Wikipedia *is* an encyclopedia.
Now, here's the idea that I had, and there are perhaps some reasons it is a bad idea, but I think it has more merit than not, so I wanted to bring it up for feedback and see if it is something we want to start thinking about and discussing more generally.
Some years ago, Amazon.com instituted a system that they were calling something like "Real Names intitiative" for user reviews. In order to increase the public perception of trust in those reviews, they made it possible (but optional!) for people to go through a process to identify themselves by their Real Names.
We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
What kinds of credentials would be acceptable? This could be totally open to a community process. Clearly, all sorts of college degrees make sense, but the wide kinds of expertise that are involved in writing Wikipedia might call for useful credentials of many kinds.
Examples would include computer certifications such as MSCE or LPI or Redhat. Our article on [[Amateur Radio]] has surely been edited by people who have advanced licenses. Published books might count as a credential. Magazine articles. Awards, recognitions of all kinds. Positions held in relevant organizations.
Have you won a prize at a dog show? Then this is a credential which testifies to the public about your expertise in that area.
Such an initiative would have to be done carefully in order to respect our (fairly anti-credentialist) culture. First, anyone who ever suggests that a credential gives one precedence in editing gets a bonk in the head with a WikiClueStick. Second, it should be made clear at every point of contact with a credential system that it is fully and completely optional.
The idea is this: people wonder, and not unreasonably, who we all are. Why should the world listen to us about anything? People think, and not unreasonably, that credentials say something helpful about that. As it turns out, we mostly do know something about what we edit, and although we never want Wikipedia to be about a closed club of credential fetishists, there's nothing particularly wrong with advertising that, hey, we are *random* people on the Internet *g*, but not random *morons* after all.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Being able to point to several thousand good edits on Wikipedia under your verified real name might be real handy when applying for college or for a job. Not right now, but someday when Wikipedia is even more of an institution than it is now. Of course pointing to a bunch of immature "13 year old" edits may not help.
Fred
this causes problems for younger Wikipedians in that they could never have a degree at the age of 15, or whatever.
David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:
I think that it could be a good idea, especially if stretched to crediting authors for their articles if they have a real name (via a template at the top of the talk page, or bottom of the article possibly). The problems are, obviously, that this causes problems for younger Wikipedians in that they could never have a degree at the age of 15, or whatever.
Yes, indeed. Of course we should never require credentials and we should maintain a culture of welcoming to those 15 year old contributors who are doing great work.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
We should maintain a culture of welcoming to those 15 year old contributors who are doing great work.
Speaking of which. I am wondering to what extent COPPA applies to Wikipedia, and whether there is any legal risk for Wikimedia if American children under 13 years of age use Wikipedia without their parents' consent?
LiveJournal have, for a long time, evaded the problem by simply prohibiting young children from using LiveJournal. Nowadays they allow it, but only if they receive evidence of their parents' consent.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
We should maintain a culture of welcoming to those 15 year old contributors who are doing great work.
Speaking of which. I am wondering to what extent COPPA applies to Wikipedia, and whether there is any legal risk for Wikimedia if American children under 13 years of age use Wikipedia without their parents' consent?
LiveJournal have, for a long time, evaded the problem by simply prohibiting young children from using LiveJournal. Nowadays they allow it, but only if they receive evidence of their parents' consent.
I'm not familiar with COPPA. What does it stand for? I also have no memory of evr visiting Live Journal.
Still, whether children connect to the site is a family matter. When someone says that he is not a child, who can tell the difference?
Ec
On 6/4/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I'm not familiar with COPPA. What does it stand for? I also have no memory of evr visiting Live Journal.
Still, whether children connect to the site is a family matter. When someone says that he is not a child, who can tell the difference?
You know, ... it would be really handy if we had some kin of encyclopedia, something online and free.... which we could use to find out such things.
[[COPPA]] on en. :)
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I'm not familiar with COPPA. What does it stand for? I also have no memory of evr visiting Live Journal.
If your answer is "I don't know", then why do you reply?
When someone says that he is not a child, who can tell the difference?
That is irrelevant. I am talking about cases where we do know.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I'm not familiar with COPPA. What does it stand for? I also have no memory of evr visiting Live Journal.
If your answer is "I don't know", then why do you reply?
I read that attitude as equivalent to saying that COPPA is irrelevant. We can safely bignore it.
When someone says that he is not a child, who can tell the difference?
That is irrelevant. I am talking about cases where we do know.
How do you know? You're practising age discrimination. Maybe kids are better off staying in the closet about their age.
Ec
Timwi stated for the record:
Speaking of which. I am wondering to what extent COPPA applies to Wikipedia, and whether there is any legal risk for Wikimedia if American children under 13 years of age use Wikipedia without their parents' consent?
It does not apply at all. COPPA specifies what information a site is allowed to collect about children under 13. We don't collect any applicable information about our users.
Sean Barrett wrote:
Timwi stated for the record:
I am wondering to what extent COPPA applies to Wikipedia, and whether there is any legal risk for Wikimedia if American children under 13 years of age use Wikipedia without their parents' consent?
It does not apply at all. COPPA specifies what information a site is allowed to collect about children under 13. We don't collect any applicable information about our users.
How does the law define "collect"? We do store all information that these children put on their user pages themselves, in the same way LiveJournal stores only information that was entered by the user...
On 6/4/05, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
How does the law define "collect"? We do store all information that these children put on their user pages themselves, in the same way LiveJournal stores only information that was entered by the user...
Live journal has structured fields where the user is asked for the DOB and such. I'm not aware of people offering plain email services with no metadata collection being concerned with COPPA, even though they have the same 'user leaks their own info' problems that we have.
Sean Barrett wrote:
Timwi stated for the record:
Speaking of which. I am wondering to what extent COPPA applies to Wikipedia, and whether there is any legal risk for Wikimedia if American children under 13 years of age use Wikipedia without their parents' consent?
It does not apply at all. COPPA specifies what information a site is allowed to collect about children under 13. We don't collect any applicable information about our users.
The exception being e-mail address, which is optional, but is collected as part of Wikipedia user registration.
I don't know enough details to say for sure in what ways access to the email addresses of users is restricted; this use may fit the exceptions outlined by the FTC (http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/coppa.htm), below:
*Exceptions*
The regulations include several exceptions that allow operators to collect a child's email address without getting the parent's consent in advance. These exceptions cover many popular online activities for kids, including /contests/, /online newsletters/, /homework help/ and /electronic postcards/.
Prior parental consent is not required when:
*
an operator collects a child's or parent's email address to provide notice and seek consent;
*
an operator collects an email address to respond to a /one-time/ request from a child and then deletes it;
*
an operator collects an email address to respond /more than once to a specific/ request -- say, for a subscription to a newsletter. In this case, the operator must notify the parent that it is communicating regularly with the child and give the parent the opportunity to stop the communication before sending or delivering a second communication to a child;
*
an operator collects a child's name or online contact information to protect the safety of a child who is participating on the site. In this case, the operator must notify the parent and give him or her the opportunity to prevent further use of the information;
*
an operator collects a child's name or online contact information to protect the security or liability of the site or to respond to law enforcement, if necessary, and does not use it for any other purpose.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
This sounds intriguing, but when you say "a process to confirm their credentials", do you mean we're actually going to verify them, e.g. by requesting official copies of diplomas from university registrars, copies of IDs so we know someone is who they claim they are, and so on? In the general case, confirming credentials is a *huge* hassle, even for organizations who exist largely to confirm credentials, like university admissions departments.
An even bigger problem is that it's unclear which credentials we should care about. Is a purported physics degree from a mail-order university a legitimate "degree in physics" credential? Etc.
Not to say it's necessarily a better approach, but it's interesting that we're not the first organization to sell ourselves mainly on the strength of our organization as a whole rather than advertising the credentials of our individual contributors. As [[en:The Economist]] points out, the well-respected _Economist_ newsmagazine goes one step further than us and doesn't credit authors at all---it almost never has bylines for its articles, and the name of its editor isn't mentioned anywhere in the magazine (not even on the copyright page). It seems to work well enough for them, although in many ways their situation is dissimilar...
-Mark
On Tue, 24 May 2005, Delirium wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials.
This sounds intriguing, but when you say "a process to confirm their credentials", do you mean we're actually going to verify them, e.g. by requesting official copies of diplomas from university registrars, copies of IDs so we know someone is who they claim they are, and so on?
One of the things that works so well with wikipedia is scaleability.
You can suddenly have a million of them 'things.
We have to keep it scaleable.
I think - a slashdot model. ebay ?
Cheers, Andy!
Delirium wrote:
This sounds intriguing, but when you say "a process to confirm their credentials", do you mean we're actually going to verify them, e.g. by requesting official copies of diplomas from university registrars, copies of IDs so we know someone is who they claim they are, and so on? In the general case, confirming credentials is a *huge* hassle, even for organizations who exist largely to confirm credentials, like university admissions departments.
Yes, it would be a big job.
Now, our standards for confirmation would not need to be as rigorous as those for a university admissions department, since someone who somehow fools us with fake credentials isn't really doing a lot of damage. Obviously if we let anyone make up any credential at all, with no process of verification at all, then the whole thing would be a joke.
An even bigger problem is that it's unclear which credentials we should care about. Is a purported physics degree from a mail-order university a legitimate "degree in physics" credential? Etc.
I would imagine that community standards could be created to resolve this sort of trouble. It is a complicated matter but we are pretty good at detailed analysis of complicated matters.
Not to say it's necessarily a better approach, but it's interesting that we're not the first organization to sell ourselves mainly on the strength of our organization as a whole rather than advertising the credentials of our individual contributors. As [[en:The Economist]] points out, the well-respected _Economist_ newsmagazine goes one step further than us and doesn't credit authors at all---it almost never has bylines for its articles, and the name of its editor isn't mentioned anywhere in the magazine (not even on the copyright page). It seems to work well enough for them, although in many ways their situation is dissimilar...
I agree with you on every aspect of this.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales (jwales@wikia.com) [050524 22:58]:
I had an idea the other day while I was on a radio interview. Someone was making the usual (uninformed) complaint about Wikipedia that we "pretend to have no authors" -- which is nonsense of course -- but the undertone (in my opinion) of the criticism was that Wikipedia is written by a bunch of random morons on the Internet rather than Real Professionals. As such, it is argued, it's a perfectly fun forum for people to post their stupid rants, but it is not an encyclopedia.
"How do you respond to her argument?" "I find it hard to respond to because I can't make any sense of it."
Some years ago, Amazon.com instituted a system that they were calling something like "Real Names intitiative" for user reviews. In order to increase the public perception of trust in those reviews, they made it possible (but optional!) for people to go through a process to identify themselves by their Real Names. We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
I dunno about icons in article history, but encouraging people more to list that sort of thing on user pages would be really good. There's a template for languages spoken and to what degree; that system could be extended. Put the templates in appropriate Wikipedia subcategories and you have instant handy directories of expertise in particular matters.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
I dunno about icons in article history, but encouraging people more to list that sort of thing on user pages would be really good. There's a template for languages spoken and to what degree; that system could be extended. Put the templates in appropriate Wikipedia subcategories and you have instant handy directories of expertise in particular matters.
Right, so I'll put a template on my user page saying that I have studied computer science. Then someone comes along and changes something in an article about a politician. Am I then disallowed from fixing their mistake because I am not an "expert" in the relevant field?
Timwi
Timwi (timwi@gmx.net) [050529 02:23]:
David Gerard wrote:
I dunno about icons in article history, but encouraging people more to list that sort of thing on user pages would be really good. There's a template for languages spoken and to what degree; that system could be extended. Put the templates in appropriate Wikipedia subcategories and you have instant handy directories of expertise in particular matters.
Right, so I'll put a template on my user page saying that I have studied computer science. Then someone comes along and changes something in an article about a politician. Am I then disallowed from fixing their mistake because I am not an "expert" in the relevant field?
Not at all. I was thinking more in terms of "hi, you know something about this, could you please sanity-check?" on their talk page.
- d.
On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
I think this is going to give the idea that the community is *less* credentialed that it actually is, since many people are not going to bother going through any complicated process of finding old certificates and proof of their qualifications and sending them to whoever is suppose to validate that these are real. Therefore, the credentials pages would show very few credentialed users, surely leading to more criticism of Wikipedia rather than less. I certainly don't intend to go looking through my parents' attic for old certificates (I assume that's where they probably ended up) just to make my edits on Wikipedia look more impressive. It's fairly easy for people to write on their user pages what they are qualified or experienced in, but it's a lot harder for them to actually prove that.
Angela.
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 08:04:02PM +0200, Angela wrote:
On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
I think this is going to give the idea that the community is *less* credentialed that it actually is, since many people are not going to bother going through any complicated process of finding old certificates and proof of their qualifications and sending them to whoever is suppose to validate that these are real. Therefore, the credentials pages would show very few credentialed users, surely leading to more criticism of Wikipedia rather than less. I certainly don't intend to go looking through my parents' attic for old certificates (I assume that's where they probably ended up) just to make my edits on Wikipedia look more impressive. It's fairly easy for people to write on their user pages what they are qualified or experienced in, but it's a lot harder for them to actually prove that.
I see two ways in particular in which the idea can backfire pretty badly. One is, as Angela pointed out, we will likely have a lot of "credentialed experts" unwilling to give up the goods on their offline personae.
The other is simply that Wikipedia, among other things, is a fantastic demonstration of a particular model of aggregate authorship (the wiki); it is, in fact, sort of the perfect poster-boy for that model, and its reputation depends to a large extent on the public perception of that model's strengths and legitimacy. There's a very symbiotic relationship between Wikipedia's reputation and the reputation of the wiki in general. If one falters significantly, the other can as well.
To begin making concessions to standards unassociated with the wiki model, as if only those carrying credentials are worth public notice, is to undermine the credibility of the wiki model, or so it seems to me. It seems likely that putting such a weight of import behind the credentials of our experts would make Wikipedia more of a wanna-be for "real" encyclopedias, and less of a revolutionary new type of encyclopedia, in the eyes of many.
Of course, I could be wrong.
-- Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Chad Perrin wrote:
I see two ways in particular in which the idea can backfire pretty badly. One is, as Angela pointed out, we will likely have a lot of "credentialed experts" unwilling to give up the goods on their offline personae.
The other is simply that Wikipedia, among other things, is a fantastic demonstration of a particular model of aggregate authorship (the wiki); it is, in fact, sort of the perfect poster-boy for that model, and its reputation depends to a large extent on the public perception of that model's strengths and legitimacy. There's a very symbiotic relationship between Wikipedia's reputation and the reputation of the wiki in general. If one falters significantly, the other can as well.
To begin making concessions to standards unassociated with the wiki model, as if only those carrying credentials are worth public notice, is to undermine the credibility of the wiki model, or so it seems to me. It seems likely that putting such a weight of import behind the credentials of our experts would make Wikipedia more of a wanna-be for "real" encyclopedias, and less of a revolutionary new type of encyclopedia, in the eyes of many.
Of course, I could be wrong.
A good point to which I'd like to add a few sentences. I think such a system, may it be based on verified credits or claimed ones, benefits only two groups of people: * the reader who believes more in authority than his own judgement/good arguments/etc * the mediocre persons with credits. Someone really knowledgeable in a field doesn't have to cite his credentials to gain respect in the wikipedia community, his contributions speak for him. If you have to refer to your credits in an argument instead of citing sources and use arguments, there's something wrong.
I don't see it as absolutely necessary to accomodate these two group of persons. It could even harm wikipedia if people suddenly started valueing credentials more than previous contributions or well formed arguments, based on good sources. We've achieved a lot with our current system, no reason to change or endanger it.
On a side note a little story from german wikipedia. We recently had a new user, claiming an academic degree in orientalism and islamic science on his user page giving names of his teachers and everything. While he was attacking all our old hand people in this area, challenging them to put their credentials on their user page (nobody had his degrees there), we tried to point him to a mistake he has made in writing down the root of the word Islam. ehemmm. He didn't get it.
greetings, elian
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
A good point to which I'd like to add a few sentences. I think such a system, may it be based on verified credits or claimed ones, benefits only two groups of people:
- the reader who believes more in authority than his own
judgement/good arguments/etc
This is actually our primary audience though, because most people are like that. For a certain class of not-so-bright readers, I would actually claim we do just want them to accept WP as authoritative, because their judgement is poor and their arguments are bad - they will not make anything in WP better by touching it.
On a side note a little story from german wikipedia. We recently had a new user, claiming an academic degree in orientalism and islamic science on his user page giving names of his teachers and everything. While he was attacking all our old hand people in this area, challenging them to put their credentials on their user page (nobody had his degrees there), we tried to point him to a mistake he has made in writing down the root of the word Islam. ehemmm. He didn't get it.
I was going to ask if anyone had ever seen that happen. On en, I don't think I've ever seen any actual experts (that is, someone with professional experience in addition to degrees) get caught making serious mistakes in their specialties; conversely, the experts find themselves spending much of their time fixing amateur material that nobody else even realized was mistaken.
Stan
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
- the mediocre persons with credits. Someone really knowledgeable in a
field doesn't have to cite his credentials to gain respect in the wikipedia community, his contributions speak for him. If you have to refer to your credits in an argument instead of citing sources and use arguments, there's something wrong.
Not necessarily. There are times when, apart from saying "please read the basic textbooks on this area, I can't give you 4 years of courses in an email reply", the only thing you can use are your credentials.
David Monniaux wrote:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
- the mediocre persons with credits. Someone really knowledgeable in
a field doesn't have to cite his credentials to gain respect in the wikipedia community, his contributions speak for him. If you have to refer to your credits in an argument instead of citing sources and use arguments, there's something wrong.
Not necessarily. There are times when, apart from saying "please read the basic textbooks on this area, I can't give you 4 years of courses in an email reply", the only thing you can use are your credentials.
Referring to the basic textbooks is fair enough, but shutting down the discussion based on one's credentials injects a logical fallacy. The contributor who refuses to accept the basic textbook reference does need to accept the burden of finding sources for his alternate theory. What was said in the "4 years of courses" is unverifiable if it is only a form of hearsay evidence.
Ec
On 5/24/05, Chad Perrin perrin@apotheon.com wrote:
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 08:04:02PM +0200, Angela wrote:
On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
The other is simply that Wikipedia, among other things, is a fantastic demonstration of a particular model of aggregate authorship (the wiki); it is, in fact, sort of the perfect poster-boy for that model, and its reputation depends to a large extent on the public perception of that model's strengths and legitimacy. There's a very symbiotic relationship between Wikipedia's reputation and the reputation of the wiki in general. If one falters significantly, the other can as well.
What Chad said. Wikipedia will be recognized as an unparallelled reference work soon enough, without anyone apologizing for its muddy openness. And I think that we will see small scalable gains by improving the way we recognize excellence and expertise in subject-areas -- say, by avoiding the initial stages of certain edit wars, by improving the efficiency of RC-patrol, watchlist-patrol, and article/subject reviewing. But it seems far more interesting to me to emphasize that our success emerged from the mud and with its help, than to assure everyone that the mud can be washed off.
It isn't clear to me that the project would have become such a success /without/ contributions from dedicated kooks, eccentrics, trolls, and people who are just plain misguided in their convictions. Explicitly focusing on credentials might well reduce contribution; even in its absence, the most common reason my brilliant iconoclastic US friends give me for not writing about <whatever they're reading / studying> in Wikipedia is that they are "no expert" on the subject.
--SJ
On Jun 5, 2005, at 1:31 AM, Sj wrote:
On 5/24/05, Chad Perrin perrin@apotheon.com wrote:
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 08:04:02PM +0200, Angela wrote:
On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
What Chad said. Wikipedia will be recognized as an unparallelled reference work soon enough, without anyone apologizing for its muddy openness. And I think that we will see small scalable gains by improving the way we recognize excellence and expertise in subject-areas -- say, by avoiding the initial stages of certain edit wars, by improving the efficiency of RC-patrol, watchlist-patrol, and article/subject reviewing. But it seems far more interesting to me to emphasize that our success emerged from the mud and with its help, than to assure everyone that the mud can be washed off.
It isn't clear to me that the project would have become such a success /without/ contributions from dedicated kooks, eccentrics, trolls, and people who are just plain misguided in their convictions. Explicitly focusing on credentials might well reduce contribution; even in its absence, the most common reason my brilliant iconoclastic US friends give me for not writing about <whatever they're reading / studying> in Wikipedia is that they are "no expert" on the subject.
--SJ _______________________
In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on wikipedia. Edit articles, have a thesis advisor review contributions, and score credit appropriately. Adding bibliography, annotation and other activities which "polish" wikipedia would be part of assignments.
focusing on credentials might well reduce contribution; even in its absence, the most common reason my brilliant iconoclastic US friends give me for not writing about <whatever they're reading / studying> in Wikipedia is that they are "no expert" on the subject.
--SJ
That is, my *two* brilliant iconoclastic US friends. People I would have thought would glom onto the notion of adding to Wikipedia as a natural one... but only two; your mileage may vary.
In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on wikipedia. Edit articles, have a thesis advisor review contributions, and score credit appropriately. Adding bibliography, annotation and other activities which "polish" wikipedia would be part of assignments.
Indeed. and encouraging people to write more about their interests, background, and references/sources is a very good thing in terms of transparency. But explicitly making it easy for others to judge you based on that, is a bit like making "edit count" a metric of community activity. It encourages fraud and inflation, and discourages more accurate and subtle metrics.
On Jun 5, 2005, at 11:27 AM, Timwi wrote:
Stirling Newberry wrote:
Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on wikipedia.
Once all articles relating to a particular topic are featured articles, there isn't much left to do for other prospective graduates of the same subject.
Timwi
That is a problem to be looked forward to.
Sorry, but your last sentence is a bit confusing to me.
Are you trying to say "the Polish Wikipedia would be part of assignments to add bibliographies, annotation, and various other activities"?
Mark
On 04/06/05, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Jun 5, 2005, at 1:31 AM, Sj wrote:
On 5/24/05, Chad Perrin perrin@apotheon.com wrote:
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 08:04:02PM +0200, Angela wrote:
On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
What Chad said. Wikipedia will be recognized as an unparallelled reference work soon enough, without anyone apologizing for its muddy openness. And I think that we will see small scalable gains by improving the way we recognize excellence and expertise in subject-areas -- say, by avoiding the initial stages of certain edit wars, by improving the efficiency of RC-patrol, watchlist-patrol, and article/subject reviewing. But it seems far more interesting to me to emphasize that our success emerged from the mud and with its help, than to assure everyone that the mud can be washed off.
It isn't clear to me that the project would have become such a success /without/ contributions from dedicated kooks, eccentrics, trolls, and people who are just plain misguided in their convictions. Explicitly focusing on credentials might well reduce contribution; even in its absence, the most common reason my brilliant iconoclastic US friends give me for not writing about <whatever they're reading / studying> in Wikipedia is that they are "no expert" on the subject.
--SJ _______________________
In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on wikipedia. Edit articles, have a thesis advisor review contributions, and score credit appropriately. Adding bibliography, annotation and other activities which "polish" wikipedia would be part of assignments.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Jun 6, 2005, at 6:29 AM, Mark Williamson wrote:
Sorry, but your last sentence is a bit confusing to me.
Are you trying to say "the Polish Wikipedia would be part of assignments to add bibliographies, annotation, and various other activities"?
Mark
That bit of wit is almost certainly numbered on a list of stupid puns some place or other.
Stirling Newberry wrote:
In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on wikipedia. Edit articles, have a thesis advisor review contributions, and score credit appropriately. Adding bibliography, annotation and other activities which "polish" wikipedia would be part of assignments.
Not only that. The work has meaning because it is available to everybody. Once finished, and the degree granted, it is no longer relegated to gathering dust in inaccesible library stacks where nobody ever visits.
Ec
On Jun 6, 2005, at 4:11 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Stirling Newberry wrote:
In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on wikipedia. Edit articles, have a thesis advisor review contributions, and score credit appropriately. Adding bibliography, annotation and other activities which "polish" wikipedia would be part of assignments.
Not only that. The work has meaning because it is available to everybody. Once finished, and the degree granted, it is no longer relegated to gathering dust in inaccesible library stacks where nobody ever visits.
Ec
Precisely.
On Monday 06 June 2005 16:11, Ray Saintonge wrote:
In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on wikipedia. Edit articles, have a thesis advisor review contributions, and score credit appropriately. Adding bibliography, annotation and other activities which "polish" wikipedia would be part of assignments.
Not only that. The work has meaning because it is available to everybody. Once finished, and the degree granted, it is no longer relegated to gathering dust in inaccesible library stacks where nobody ever visits.
Having just completed my 2nd year comprehensives and writing a couple of Wikipedia articles in preparation (which probably need some editing in order to make them a little more accessible) I actually think the literature reviews done by students in advance of the dissertation would be of use. Of my fellow PhD students, there are numerous "lit reviews" that don't even sit on library stacks. One couldn't plug and play them, but they might be a great resources for bibliographic information and the related summaries. Having a repository of those for mining by editors is an idea I've been turning over in my head.
In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on wikipedia.
But if you accidentally find out something that wasn't known before you'd have to erase it from Wikipedia and move it somewhere else... :/ Which also implies you could never earn a PhD by writing on Wikipedia. I hope Wikiresearch and/or Wikiversity will become a bit bigger to tackle this inconvenience. :)
Why would you have to move it somwhere else?
On 6/7/05, Guaka guaka@no-log.org wrote:
In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on wikipedia.
But if you accidentally find out something that wasn't known before you'd have to erase it from Wikipedia and move it somewhere else... :/ Which also implies you could never earn a PhD by writing on Wikipedia. I hope Wikiresearch and/or Wikiversity will become a bit bigger to tackle this inconvenience. :)
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
The prohibition on original research is essential, because Wikipedia does not have the peer review mechanisms in place to properly evaluate it.
On 6/7/05, Guaka guaka@no-log.org wrote:
But if you accidentally find out something that wasn't known before you'd have to erase it from Wikipedia and move it somewhere else... :/ Which also implies you could never earn a PhD by writing on Wikipedia. I hope Wikiresearch and/or Wikiversity will become a bit bigger to tackle this inconvenience. :)
You are misintepreting WP:NOR.
Kelly
On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 11:03 -0500, Kelly Martin wrote:
On 6/7/05, Guaka guaka@no-log.org wrote:
But if you accidentally find out something that wasn't known before you'd have to erase it from Wikipedia and move it somewhere else... :/ Which also implies you could never earn a PhD by writing on Wikipedia. I hope Wikiresearch and/or Wikiversity will become a bit bigger to tackle this inconvenience. :)
You are misintepreting WP:NOR.
As Sean wrote, "earning most advanced degrees requires original research." If you say I'm misinterpreting the "no original reserarch" rule, could you explain why?
Guaka wrote:
In a world that is moving to greater transparency, wikipedia is, in fact, a model. Consider being able to earn one's degree by writing on wikipedia.
But if you accidentally find out something that wasn't known before you'd have to erase it from Wikipedia and move it somewhere else... :/ Which also implies you could never earn a PhD by writing on Wikipedia. I hope Wikiresearch and/or Wikiversity will become a bit bigger to tackle this inconvenience. :)
How does one, in the course of documenting what is known on a topic, "accidentally find out something that wasn't known before"?
If one does indeed have brand new ideas about a subject, these ideas warrant the testing and maturation that comes with peer review and publication before they warrant being repeated in an encyclopedia.
(assuming you want the encyclopedia to develop a reputation for reliability, that is.)
How does one, in the course of documenting what is known on a topic, "accidentally find out something that wasn't known before"?
IIRC something like that happened with [[en:color blindness]]. But there are several other possibilities I guess, especially when Wikipedia articles will delve deeper and deeper into subjects.
If one does indeed have brand new ideas about a subject, these ideas warrant the testing and maturation that comes with peer review and publication before they warrant being repeated in an encyclopedia.
Yes, that's why I think Wikiresearch is a good idea. It combines peer review and publication.
On 6/7/05, Andrew Venier avenier@venier.net wrote:
How does one, in the course of documenting what is known on a topic, "accidentally find out something that wasn't known before"?
Eh, it's quite possible, .. for example in making a example for a math article you might stumble on something somewhat novel, but often in mathematics we can empirically confirm the truth of something in a way which doesn't assert POV. So you might say that NOR is less important in articles about math. ... but at the same time, it's not like placing something in an article gets people to test the proof, so NOR is still potentially valuable there because the majority of 'great new mathematical ideas' are actually wrong. :)
On 6/8/05, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Eh, it's quite possible, .. for example in making a example for a math article you might stumble on something somewhat novel, but often in mathematics we can empirically confirm the truth of something in a way which doesn't assert POV. So you might say that NOR is less important in articles about math. ... but at the same time, it's not like placing something in an article gets people to test the proof, so NOR is still potentially valuable there because the majority of 'great new mathematical ideas' are actually wrong. :)
Yes, and even when the result is true, it may not be especially new (by itself) or important. Convincing mathematical cranks that an apparently-new true result they've found is not the most sensational result of modern mathematics seems to be harder than convincing them that an false claim is false.
Determining what ought to go in a WIkipedia article about a mathematical seems to me to be as subjective as any discipline.
Steve
On Jun 8, 2005, at 8:46 PM, Stephen Forrest wrote:
On 6/8/05, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Eh, it's quite possible, .. for example in making a example for a math article you might stumble on something somewhat novel, but often in mathematics we can empirically confirm the truth of something in a way which doesn't assert POV. So you might say that NOR is less important in articles about math. ... but at the same time, it's not like placing something in an article gets people to test the proof, so NOR is still potentially valuable there because the majority of 'great new mathematical ideas' are actually wrong. :
If you do find something new, then publish. Once published it can be included.
The creative effort of wikipedia is the synthesis - it is that which is our "original research", namely, the creation of a consensus statement of the state of knowledge as it can be documented. This is original - it does not exist any place else. If working on wikipedia advances original research, then channel that into the appropriate place, namely the testing ground for knoweldge. If it then comes back, it is a success.
It might even be interesting to document cases of publishable material whose origin was on wikipedia as the author did his background work in preparation.
Angela wrote:
On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
I think this is going to give the idea that the community is *less* credentialed that it actually is, since many people are not going to bother going through any complicated process of finding old certificates and proof of their qualifications and sending them to whoever is suppose to validate that these are real. Therefore, the credentials pages would show very few credentialed users, surely leading to more criticism of Wikipedia rather than less. I certainly don't intend to go looking through my parents' attic for old certificates (I assume that's where they probably ended up) just to make my edits on Wikipedia look more impressive. It's fairly easy for people to write on their user pages what they are qualified or experienced in, but it's a lot harder for them to actually prove that.
I think, like you, that there is widespread suspicion among Wikipedians toward credentialisation. Credentialisation is a widespread problem in today's society where those credentials are more often evidence of an ability to comply than an ability to be creative.
Our community includes a wide variety of experts, many of whom have gained that expertise through avocation rather than vocation. A contributor may be unfortunate enough to be a fully licensed and accredited lawyer, but always had a secret passion for Egyptology. His father, an emminently practical man, may have threatened to cut off his inheritance if all he wanted to do was waste his life digging in the sand. There's no money in that. So while self-preservation made him into a lawyer, he still managed to become an Egyptology expert in his spare time ... all in his spare time, and all without any relevant paperwork.
Our strong anti-credentialist trend brings out the knowledge that is locked up in people's passions, and not just what is neatly gift-wrapped in a diploma. Autodidacts learn in their own idiosyncratic ways. Their knowledge may often seem rough and prone to obvious errors, but the other side of that coin is that it is also not tainted by the received wisdom of disciplines where the professor's POV was beyond question.
We do have our share of "random morons". That goes with the territory. It's obvious that Jimbo has thrown out this idea for discussion, and not as some kind of policy statemt. Yet it would not surprise me if six months hence one of our random morons cited his comments as evidence that Jimbo was advocating rigid proof of credentials for any contributor.
What keeps me here is the underlying philosophy of the project, and I often wonder whether those who feel that the goals are best achieved through a lot of detailed rules have grasped that. Then too I've always felt that, "Ignore all rules," is our most important rule. :-) If our rule makers had been able to influence Stanley Kubrick his monolith would have been mounted horizontally.
Ec
On 5/24/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think, like you, that there is widespread suspicion among Wikipedians toward credentialisation. Credentialisation is a widespread problem in today's society where those credentials are more often evidence of an ability to comply than an ability to be creative.
Our community includes a wide variety of experts, many of whom have gained that expertise through avocation rather than vocation. A contributor may be unfortunate enough to be a fully licensed and accredited lawyer, but always had a secret passion for Egyptology.
[snip good point]
Okay, so how about we have something called "Community Credentials" in addition to the more standard ones?
For example, if a community (not just wikipedia) has observed an obvious level of advanced knowledge in a field, such as Egyptology, then the community can award a community credential.
In many cases I'd be inclined to have some faith in someone who's achieved one in a field over some random degree. Perhaps j-random-wikipedia-disliker will not care for community credentials but that is their business.
I also think our credentials should show tokens for participation in professional organizations.
Does our community really think that there are a lot of people who are experts in a field but are not involved in professional orgs, do not have degrees, certifications, or awards, *and* are unable to garnish the support of other experts in their field? I call hogwash. :)
Now I a question, how do we do this without completely breaking anonymity? Or how do we deal with a great many users who've given up their anonymity? I edit under my real name and sometimes worry what people might think when I'm doing RC patrol and remove vandalism to pedophilia. :)
Ray Saintonge wrote:
It's obvious that Jimbo has thrown out this idea for discussion, and not as some kind of policy statemt. Yet it would not surprise me if six months hence one of our random morons cited his comments as evidence that Jimbo was advocating rigid proof of credentials for any contributor.
Yes. It's just an idea which I hoped would lead to interesting discussion, which it has. :-)
So far (and I'm still not finished reading the thread), I am finding Angela's objection compelling, i.e. that this would make us look a lot less credentialed than we actually are, because most people won't bother with the dreary process of proving credentials.
I still think there's something we can do in this area. But we'll have to mull it over some more.
--Jimbo
Angela wrote:
On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
I think this is going to give the idea that the community is *less* credentialed that it actually is, since many people are not going to bother going through any complicated process of finding old certificates and proof of their qualifications and sending them to whoever is suppose to validate that these are real. Therefore, the credentials pages would show very few credentialed users, surely leading to more criticism of Wikipedia rather than less. I certainly don't intend to go looking through my parents' attic for old certificates (I assume that's where they probably ended up) just to make my edits on Wikipedia look more impressive. It's fairly easy for people to write on their user pages what they are qualified or experienced in, but it's a lot harder for them to actually prove that.
I think this is an excellent objection.
Hmm....
/me thinks.
--Jimbo
To me it appears to be quite a display of cognitive dissonance.
"We (wikipedia in the aggregate) don't think that credentials carry any weight. At least, not enough to influence our content or policies in any meaningful way. However, because other people value credentials, we have trouble building credibility without them, so we would like to advertise them in order to enhance our reputation. We're happy to trumpet our contributor's qualifications, as long as it's clear that they mean nothing to us and in no way affect our process."
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Such an initiative would have to be done carefully in order to respect our (fairly anti-credentialist) culture. First, anyone who ever suggests that a credential gives one precedence in editing gets a bonk in the head with a WikiClueStick.
Andrew Venier wrote:
To me it appears to be quite a display of cognitive dissonance.
"We (wikipedia in the aggregate) don't think that credentials carry any weight. At least, not enough to influence our content or policies in any meaningful way. However, because other people value credentials, we have trouble building credibility without them, so we would like to advertise them in order to enhance our reputation. We're happy to trumpet our contributor's qualifications, as long as it's clear that they mean nothing to us and in no way affect our process."
I think that's a fairly accurate summary, but I don't know why you call it cognitive dissonance.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Andrew Venier wrote:
To me it appears to be quite a display of cognitive dissonance.
"We (wikipedia in the aggregate) don't think that credentials carry any weight. At least, not enough to influence our content or policies in any meaningful way. However, because other people value credentials, we have trouble building credibility without them, so we would like to advertise them in order to enhance our reputation. We're happy to trumpet our contributor's qualifications, as long as it's clear that they mean nothing to us and in no way affect our process."
I think that's a fairly accurate summary, but I don't know why you call it cognitive dissonance.
--Jimbo
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I say "cognitive dissonance" because it seems it is an attempt (and not a particularly successful one, in my opinion) to reconcile conflicting ideas. Wikipedia has an entrenched attitude of dismissing credentials. However, the belief that credentials are worthless is challenged. So, I'm observing the gymnastics of trying to accommodate both ideas. In this case, it seems the primary device is to impute one of the ideas (that credentials have value) to "others". This path leads to the notion that these efforts are being made only for appearance's sake. Ultimately, it seems to me that taking a position along the lines of: "We care, but then again, we don't." is too conflicted to have any sort of persuasive effect on perceptions of Wikipedia.
It still leaves the question: Why would the project expend such an effort to validate credentials, when one of its operating principles is that credentials don't count for anything?
In the end I think Wikipedia has to either continue with its current M.O. and accept the doubts that come with it, or admit that credentials can play some sort of role (however minor) in establishing the trustworthiness of information.
Knowledge and the ability to communicate it are what matter. Credentials are evidence of the possibility that the person is familiar with knowledge regarding a topic and can communicate that knowledge, but not proof in the absence of performance.
Fred
On Jun 1, 2005, at 1:44 PM, Andrew Venier wrote:
It still leaves the question: Why would the project expend such an effort to validate credentials, when one of its operating principles is that credentials don't count for anything?
Fred Bauder wrote:
Knowledge and the ability to communicate it are what matter. Credentials are evidence of the possibility that the person is familiar with knowledge regarding a topic and can communicate that knowledge, but not proof in the absence of performance.
Saying that credentials are insufficient to establish one's suitability as an editor is a very different argument from saying that credentials must not be permitted to play any role in the editing process--which was the original point I was addressing.
I don't think there is any disagreement that knowledge and the ability to communicate it are key factors. The issue seems to be how to establish expertise in a way that is widely accepted and trusted.
As someone making a living outside of the fields in which I have degrees, I am well aware that credentials are not a direct representation of a person's knowledge and abilities.
I just question the wisdom of investing the time, money, effort, attention, mindshare, etc. in a system for verifying credentials while at the same time holding that credentials are not at all meaningful to the project.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Some years ago, Amazon.com instituted a system that they were calling something like "Real Names intitiative" for user reviews. In order to increase the public perception of trust in those reviews, they made it possible (but optional!) for people to go through a process to identify themselves by their Real Names.
We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
I've been thinking off and on about something like this in connection with a review process idea.
So here's a low-key way to do this - just have standardized "CV" subpages, where [[User:CleverHandle/CV]] has CleverHandle's real name at the top, optionally address/city/country, jobs worked at, formal credentials, etc. The content should be limited to what is verifiable by third parties, so "BS UCLA 1977" and "Engineer at Fluor 1985-1989" is OK, but not "saved company a million dollars", the kind of dicey stuff that people pad their resumes with. :-) I don't think it's really necessary for anybody to prove it ahead of time, the everpresent possibility of a skeptical Wikipedian (or reporter) discovering a fabrication and telling the whole world should be sufficient disincentive.
The CV won't necessarily be reflective of one's actual activity. My only formal credentials are in computer science, and most of my WP time goes into anything but CS, but CS articles have benefited from me casting an expert eye on amateurs' efforts. Nor will it reflect self-taught areas, but that's OK; the point is to highlight the reservoir of generally-accepted expertise available. Lists linking to CV subpages could become a useful way to locate subject matter experts; oftentimes I don't see a CS-related question I can answer because I don't happen to watch the talk page where it's asked.
Stan
Cool Jimbo, An important credential is: How much do the other inhabitants of this "free and open mind-plasma-online" (or whatever better term there is) trust the person? It is not how much do wikipedians trust the person? it is not even how much do inhabitants of wikilandia (the fucking wholeness of wikis) trust the person? There are thousands and millions of possible others in blogs, podcasting, playing onlne-games, etc pp. We're "one big soup".
Maybe we need wiki-Woodstock? http://oddwiki.taoriver.net/wiki.pl/WikiWoodstock/HomePage
Or maybe we just need a voting system? Like supersimple on http://www.emacswiki.org/cw/MiniContribution
Sorry for spammin', have a nice day everybody.
mattis
Jimmy Wales schrieb:
I had an idea the other day while I was on a radio interview.
Someone was making the usual (uninformed) complaint about Wikipedia that we "pretend to have no authors" -- which is nonsense of course -- but the undertone (in my opinion) of the criticism was that Wikipedia is written by a bunch of random morons on the Internet rather than Real Professionals. As such, it is argued, it's a perfectly fun forum for people to post their stupid rants, but it is not an encyclopedia.
However, I travel all over the world meeting Wikipedians, and surprise surprise, most of them are Real Professionals of some sort. And of course, Wikipedia *is* an encyclopedia.
Now, here's the idea that I had, and there are perhaps some reasons it is a bad idea, but I think it has more merit than not, so I wanted to bring it up for feedback and see if it is something we want to start thinking about and discussing more generally.
Some years ago, Amazon.com instituted a system that they were calling something like "Real Names intitiative" for user reviews. In order to increase the public perception of trust in those reviews, they made it possible (but optional!) for people to go through a process to identify themselves by their Real Names.
We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
What kinds of credentials would be acceptable? This could be totally open to a community process. Clearly, all sorts of college degrees make sense, but the wide kinds of expertise that are involved in writing Wikipedia might call for useful credentials of many kinds.
Examples would include computer certifications such as MSCE or LPI or Redhat. Our article on [[Amateur Radio]] has surely been edited by people who have advanced licenses. Published books might count as a credential. Magazine articles. Awards, recognitions of all kinds. Positions held in relevant organizations.
Have you won a prize at a dog show? Then this is a credential which testifies to the public about your expertise in that area.
Such an initiative would have to be done carefully in order to respect our (fairly anti-credentialist) culture. First, anyone who ever suggests that a credential gives one precedence in editing gets a bonk in the head with a WikiClueStick. Second, it should be made clear at every point of contact with a credential system that it is fully and completely optional.
The idea is this: people wonder, and not unreasonably, who we all are. Why should the world listen to us about anything? People think, and not unreasonably, that credentials say something helpful about that. As it turns out, we mostly do know something about what we edit, and although we never want Wikipedia to be about a closed club of credential fetishists, there's nothing particularly wrong with advertising that, hey, we are *random* people on the Internet *g*, but not random *morons* after all.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
As I pretty much stated below, I think this process should include anything someone would put on a resume that can be independently verified... though with some standardization for format.
If we wish to be anti-intellectual-elite we should not avoid this process, but intentionally reduce the granularity with which we represent 'standard' degrees and such.. For example, when certifying a general degree we may choose to not mention the school, or we may decide to treat a minor the same as a major. We might choose to do this because it is apparent that someone who got a minor in something from a small nearly-unknown school but has a really passion for the subject and/or really works in that field, often knows more about the subject then someone who majored in it at a prestigious 4 year school but coasted through learning as little as possible.
We can't tell which a person is by looking at the paper, so perhaps we should treat the papers the same and let people show us who they are with other types of credential.
I also have an idea about how this can be implimented: There is a specially named subpage of the users page with this information. The users get it verified (by getting wikipedians of some sort to note the authenticity of the claim on the talk page), and once the information is sufficently authenticated, an admin will protect the page. If the user has a protected credentials page, then they get the icon. Admins will not be permitted to protect/unprotect their own.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
If we wish to be anti-intellectual-elite we should not avoid this process,
As for me, I am not anti-intellectual-elite at all. Indeed it is my own insufferable snobbish insistence on extreme intellectualism that causes me to be skeptical about credentialism as often practised in the world.
Let no one ever mistake me for egalitarian, please. :-)
--Jimbo
The idea certainly has its merits. On the other hand, people aren't banned from telling who or what they are on their user pages, and mentioning the sources is even encouraged. On top of that, millions of people are using our project by now, none of them worrying whether this is a real encyclopaedia. And don't we (or /you/, for that matter) receive a lot of approves by people that are struck by the quality of Wikipedia, even though it is written largely by amateurs? The people that distrust our project are rapidly becoming a small minority, even without a standard reference to who we are...
I had an idea the other day while I was on a radio interview.
Someone was making the usual (uninformed) complaint about Wikipedia that we "pretend to have no authors" -- which is nonsense of course -- but the undertone (in my opinion) of the criticism was that Wikipedia is written by a bunch of random morons on the Internet rather than Real Professionals. As such, it is argued, it's a perfectly fun forum for people to post their stupid rants, but it is not an encyclopedia.
However, I travel all over the world meeting Wikipedians, and surprise surprise, most of them are Real Professionals of some sort. And of course, Wikipedia *is* an encyclopedia.
Now, here's the idea that I had, and there are perhaps some reasons it is a bad idea, but I think it has more merit than not, so I wanted to bring it up for feedback and see if it is something we want to start thinking about and discussing more generally.
Some years ago, Amazon.com instituted a system that they were calling something like "Real Names intitiative" for user reviews. In order to increase the public perception of trust in those reviews, they made it possible (but optional!) for people to go through a process to identify themselves by their Real Names.
We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
What kinds of credentials would be acceptable? This could be totally open to a community process. Clearly, all sorts of college degrees make sense, but the wide kinds of expertise that are involved in writing Wikipedia might call for useful credentials of many kinds.
Examples would include computer certifications such as MSCE or LPI or Redhat. Our article on [[Amateur Radio]] has surely been edited by people who have advanced licenses. Published books might count as a credential. Magazine articles. Awards, recognitions of all kinds. Positions held in relevant organizations.
Have you won a prize at a dog show? Then this is a credential which testifies to the public about your expertise in that area.
Such an initiative would have to be done carefully in order to respect our (fairly anti-credentialist) culture. First, anyone who ever suggests that a credential gives one precedence in editing gets a bonk in the head with a WikiClueStick. Second, it should be made clear at every point of contact with a credential system that it is fully and completely optional.
The idea is this: people wonder, and not unreasonably, who we all are. Why should the world listen to us about anything? People think, and not unreasonably, that credentials say something helpful about that. As it turns out, we mostly do know something about what we edit, and although we never want Wikipedia to be about a closed club of credential fetishists, there's nothing particularly wrong with advertising that, hey, we are *random* people on the Internet *g*, but not random *morons* after all.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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