[WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made nearly 2 years ago

Conrad Dunkerson conrad.dunkerson at att.net
Mon Mar 5 10:04:41 UTC 2007


I see at least two potential problems, which were addressed to some extent 
in your original note;

1: Having these 'verified credentials' visible will INEVITABLY lead to 
incidents of 'I am a verified expert and you are not'. Frankly, I have as 
much problem with Essjay saying, 'we should do it this way because I am an 
expert on theology' AT ALL as with it not being true. We just should not 
be giving greater weight to 'experts' (verified or not). That encourages 
'original research' and 'POV pushing' on the esoterica of their fields. 
Experts should work by providing relevant citations and establishing 
consensus around text which presents all relevant views... just like 
everyone else. If you give them a special status that inherently becomes 
less likely and there aren't enough admins to patrol every edit against it.

2: This would be establishing a form of 'academic status' within Wikipedia 
that has nothing to do with contributions TO Wikipedia. There will be 
countless disputes about what constitutes validation and what sort of 
credentials 'count'. There will be a change in culture from this and 
people with accepted credentials will feel pressured to reveal them while 
people without will resent the hell out of it.

I'd suggest going in a somewhat different direction. I think it makes 
sense for the foundation to REQUIRE verification of identities for some 
positions, but to not make them public. Board members already have to 
publicly identify themselves. It wouldn't be unreasonable to require that 
OTRS responders or Checkusers verify their identities privately with the 
foundation. You suggested discouraging people from claiming unverified 
credentials... I'd instead discourage people from claiming credentials at 
all. Their arguments should stand or fall on their merits and citations, 
not outside titles and recognitions.


* Jimmy Wales wrote:
> In response to the EssJay scandal, I want to bring back an old proposal 
> of mine from 2 years ago for greater accountability around credentials:
> 
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-May/022085.html
> 
> At the time, this seemed like a plausibly decent idea to me, and the 
> reaction at the time was mostly positive, with some reasonable caveats 
> and improvements:
> 
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-May/thread.html
> to read the entire thread of "An idea".
> 
> Nowadays, I bring back the proposal for further consideration in light 
> of the EssJay scandal.  I think it imperative that we make some positive 
> moves here... we have a real opportunity here to move the quality of 
> Wikipedia forward by doing something that many have vaguely thought to 
> be a reasonably good idea if worked out carefully.
> 
> For anyone who is reading but not online, I will sum it up.  I made a 
> proposal that we have a system whereby people who are willing to verify 
> their real name and credentials are allowed a special notification. 
> "Verified Credentials".  This could be a rather open ended system, and 
> optional.
> 
> The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with 
> the general public.  If you don't care to tell us that you are a PhD (or 
> that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or falls on its 
> own merit.  But if you do care to represent yourself as something, you 
> have to be able to prove it.
> 
> This policy will be coupled with a policy of gentle (or firm) 
> discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made, 
> unless they are willing to back them up.
> 
> How to confirm? What counts as confirmation?  What sorts of things need 
> confirmation? These are very interesting questions, as there are many 
> types of situations.  But one thing that we have always been very very 
> good at is taking the time to develop a nuanced policy.
> 
> Just to take a simple example: how to verify a professor?  This strikes 
> me as being quite simple in most cases.  The professor gives a link to 
> his or her faculty page at the college or university, including the 
> email there, and someone emails that address to say "are you really 
> EssJay?"  If the answer is yes, then that's a reasonable confirmation.
> 
> We can imagine some wild ways that someone might crack that process 
> (stealing a professor's email account, etc.) but I think we need not 
> design around the worst case scenario, but rather design around the 
> reasonable case of a reasonable person who is happy to confirm 
> credentials to us.
> 
> (This is a lower level of confirmation than we might expect an employer 
> to take, of course.)
> 
> For someone like me, well, I have an M.A. in finance.  I could fax a 
> copy of the degree to the office.  Again, someone could fake their 
> credentials, but I don't think we need to design against some mad worst 
> case scenario but just to have a basic level of confirmation.
> 
> --Jimbo




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