[WikiEN-l] Correction to New Yorker Article

[Stan Shebs]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> 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?
>>     
>
> While that is all absolutely true, it doesn't explain why he chose a
> fake identity with a PhD and a tenured professorship. I can't see any
> reason for that other than to get people to respect him more, which is
> rather disappointing, to say the least. I take anything someone says
> about themselves under a pseudonym with a pinch of salt, but I still
> wouldn't expect that kind of deception.
>   
He made a comment at one point referring to would-be stalkers trying to 
find a professor matching the description, but not being able to pin 
down an actual person to go after, which suggests that maybe his 
strategy was accomplishing its intended purpose.

One of the interesting aspects of this is that there are hundreds of 
user pages with obviously-ridiculous claims, purported English 
professors that can't speel and the like, and yet nobody cares about 
those. It's like there is some line past which the person's 
self-description matters - it's not just admin status, because I think 
we would be just as troubled if we were to discover that a non-admin 
editor with 40K edits and 20 featured articles was not the person we 
thought. I've noticed that when I see an editor doing lots and lots of 
good work, but the user page is blank, I'm intensely curious to know 
more about the editor personally.

Stan