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

[The Cunctator]

On 3/5/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> 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".



Frankly, I think one of the benefits of Wikipedia is that it forces people
to become disabused of Arguments by Authority, to force people to engage in
critical thinking, etc.

Why? Because it doesn't rely on the lazy trappings of credentials and
curricula vitae and titles and celebrity endorsement, etc.

Any credentialling system can be gamed. So why encourage people to have a
false sense of security about something that isn't really needed for the
goals of the project?