[WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

[Stephen Park]

On 3/3/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:  >
> Wikipedia is built on (among other things) twin pillars of trust and
> tolerance.  The integrity of the project depends on the core community
> being passionate about quality and integrity, so that we can trust each
> other.  The harmony of our work depends on human understanding and
> forgiveness of errors.

The problem isn't that Essjay created a false biography in order to
protect himself from real life harrassment. I don't think anyone would
have a problem if all he did was say he lives in a different state
etc. The problem is he lied about his credentials and used those false
credentials in order to give himself a false authority in a certain
field (religion and theology) and used that false authority to his
advantage when editing articles in that field. Indeed, claiming you
have a PhD when you are not gives you a certain credibility even
outside the field your PhD is supposedly in.

If Essjay just didn't want people to know who and where he was he
could have said he works as a cashier in Seattle or a farmhand in
Wisconsin. Instead he chose to give himself a PhD in Theology and make
himself a professor. In the real world of research and writing if
someone were to fake their credentials in such a way they'd be fired.
In the world of Wikipedia you're elevated to the highest echelons and
given a full time paid job.

Jimbo, when did you know about this deception and why did you minimize
it when you talked to the New Yorker?

Those comments to the New Yorker have done much more to harm
Wikipedia's reputation than Essjay's original offence. It's good that
Essjay has apologized to  you. When is he going to apologize to ther
est of the wikipedia community and when, for that matter, are YOU
going to apologize. You must have known the truth when you hired him
at Wikia. Why did it take bad press to make you realize there was a
problem with this?