Josh Gordon wrote:
On 3/1/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)earthlink.net>
wrote:
My hypothesis is that it depends on whether the
information influences
other people in course of our work.
That's a good way of framing it. I'm sure some obsessive or extremely
curious person will go and pick through all of Essjay's interactions
on talk pages on Catholic-related articles, and edits there, looking
for evidence of negative effect.
That's definitely happening. This is the latest from the trawl, found by
user Rcade:
"This is a text I often require for my students, and I would hang my own
Ph.D. on it's credibility."
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Imprimatur&diff=prev&…
This was 12 April 2005, so per Geni's dates, it's well before Brant
turned up, and a month before he claimed the identity on his user page.
It was his fourth edit, and backing up his very first edit. That pokes a
pretty big hole in the just-throwing-the-stalkers-off claim.
This has to be very hard for somebody who has put so much into
Wikipedia. I hope he takes this chance to own up to this and any other
mistakes like this he's made on the project.
William
--
William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri