[WikiEN-l] Correction to New Yorker Article

[William Pietri]

Hi, Ray. I enjoy your posts, so it pains me to disagree with you, but I 
can't avoid it here. Sorry for the length of this, but I couldn't find a 
way to do it and still be as clear as I wanted.

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> stvrtg wrote:
>   
>> [...] Is the credibility of the site somehow diminished due to
>> one editor's mistake in misrepresenting himself? Nonsense.
>>
>>     
> I very strongly agree with stvrtg.  This has been an incredible exercise 
> in making a mountain out of a molehill.  We have verifiability standards 
> for article pages.  We do not have them for user pages, and it does not 
> strike me as irregular that a fictitious persona would have a fictitious 
> biography.  [...]
>
> [...] Now that we see "the truth" there is a massive 
> rush to look for scapegoats for our own stupidity in taking such a claim 
> seriously.  We need a Lord of the Flies to whom we can pay homage.  
> Brilliant minds often forget how close to the surface lies the descent 
> to barbarism.
>
> Should EssJay have revealed the truth about himself?  Perhaps.  But 
> when?  And how should that transition be made?  I hardly see the need to 
> retroactively correct all the inaccuracies of the last two years.  I see 
> the real biography on Wikia as a good faith attempt to begin setting the 
> record straight.  It should be viewed in that way, and not as an excuse 
> for digging up every bit of dirt on EssJay for the last two years.
>
> Instead of making a mountain out of a molehill when such issues come up 
> we really need a mechanism to get over it.
>   

I would like to feel that way, but I can't. Looking at the root of this 
deception, among his very first edits on Wikipedia he falsely claimed 
credentials in an effort to win a content dispute. A dispute about 
which, it turns out, he was wrong. Even so, had it ended there, I think 
this would be more anthill than molehill.

Unfortunately, he continued, both expanding the deception and using it 
in other on-WP discussions. Even there, I think we get somewhere above 
the molehill size, but only modestly. Again, had he stopped here, I'd be 
in the so-what camp. For me, though, it's the next three issues that 
make it a pretty big deal.

First, he contacted real-world professors, representing himself as a 
fellow professor and Wikipedia administrator, to advocate for Wikipedia. 
He specifically suggests they look at his claimed credentials to bolster 
his standing. Committing fraud (by which I mean misrepresentation for 
gain) while citing his administrative position is to me a big violation 
of the trust that adminship represents.

Second, he appears to have actively deceived a top reporter and a fact 
checker in an on-the-record interview as a leading member of Wikipedia. 
(I'm basing that on this bit: "He often takes his laptop to class, so 
that he can be available to Wikipedians while giving a quiz [...]" The 
reporter could have made that up and tricked the fact-checker, but I'm 
going to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.) This has caused 
actual harm to Wikipedia's reputation. [1] As well, you can bet that any 
journalist who has done a Wikipedia story quoting an anonymous user 
broke out in a cold sweat when they read about this. Any future articles 
about Wikipedia will surely be much more skeptical of anything said by 
an anonymous admin, making it harder for people who are using anonymity 
legitimately to serve as sources.

Third, he tried to cover this up through further deception. From Jimbo's 
statements, it's clear that Essjay was not frank with him. Essjay was 
certainly not frank with others in his explanations of this, at least 
the ones on Wikipedia that I've read. This caused further harm to 
Wikipedia externally and internally. As the Washington mantra goes, 
"It's not the crime, it's the cover-up."


Now personally, I feel terrible for Essjay in this. I can only dimly 
imagine the awfulness of having such big portions of one's personal and 
professional lives come crashing down like this. Especially when it's 
all due to a stupid mistake that snowballed out of control. I wish him 
only the best in recovering from this. I look forward to him having a 
successful RfA in a few months and resuming his position as, by every 
account, a whirlwind of positive contribution.

I also don't think this is anywhere mountain-sized. This will pass, and 
I expect it will be much less of landmark than, say, the whole 
Seigenthaler thing was. As you point out, articles were generally not 
harmed in the making of this, and there have been no credible claims of 
abused powers. And certainly, some portion of the people talking about 
this are failing to stay cool, creating unnecessary froth.

But to my mind, it's no molehill either. The community placed a lot of 
trust in Essjay. Very regrettably, he betrayed part of that trust, and 
betrayals always hurt. Making the both project and Jimbo look bad in 
public [2] is no small thing to me. More objectively, Jimbo asking 
somebody to resign as an administrator, bureaucrat, checkuser, and 
member of ArbCom is a sign that this is not a molehill.


William

P.S. Maybe part of the difference in reactions here is that I look at a 
lot of the comments and I tend to automatically discount the very 
emotional ones? Doing that and trying to pull some consensus position 
out of the RFC gives me some comfort, as I feel like it's not far from 
what Jimbo decided to do.


[1] If you're not sure about this, see the commentary in reaction to 
this. For example, from the Chronicle of Higher Education: "But the 
incident is clearly damaging to Wikipedia's credibility -- especially 
with professors who will now note that one of the site's most visible 
academics has turned out to be a fraud."

[2] For example, this quote from Stephen Dubner, co-author of 
Freakonomics: "This is hardly a felony, but it does make you wonder 
about what else happens at Wikipedia that Jimmy Wales doesn’t have a 
problem with."

-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri