Erik Moeller wrote:
On 3/1/07, fangaili(a)gmail.com
<fangaili(a)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