[WikiEN-l] Correction to New Yorker Article

[Rob Smith]

On 3/1/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > On 3/1/07, fangaili at gmail.com <fangaili at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I consider it a big deal. If Essjay had only misrepresented himself
> within
> >> Wikimedia, that would be one thing. But he also went outside the
> Wikimedia
> >> community and presented himself (several times) as someone he is not,
> with
> >> credentials he does not have.
> >>
> > ...
> >
> >> I have great respect for the work Essjay has done. However,
> misrepresenting
> >> himself to outside entities is simply unacceptable.
> >>
> >
> > I agree. I find Ryan's behavior unacceptable and unconscionable.
> >
> I find myself looking on it as "foolish" rather than "unacceptable".
> There *are* stalkers and freaks who go after WP editors, and our
> attitude has generally been that if it's not happening on WP itself,
> it's not our problem. So I can understand why Essjay thought of the
> false identity idea as a way to protect himself, and I might well have
> done it myself when I was his age, not thinking through all the possible
> ramifications. And he's not violating any WP policy, right?
>
> I'm not even sure we *could* write a policy requiring truthfulness on WP
> user pages. What if I said I worked at a job until 1993, and somebody
> out to get me calls the company and they report my last day as 4 Jan
> 1994? Should that be a bannable offense? Do we want to get into whether
> my intent was to misrepresent, or simply a faulty memory? In any case,
> somewhere we should counsel that deliberately providing false personal
> info on oneself is a Very Bad Idea, with all sorts of possible
> consequences, and that it's better to not say anything at all.
>
> Stan


What about the perception he was rewarded for doing so?