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

[Sheldon Rampton]

Marc Riddell wrote:

> David isn't the only one having a problem with this. Are you  
> talking about a
> "policy" that would be suggested be followed - or a "rule" that, if  
> broken,
> would carry punitive consequences?

Wikipedia makes a distinction between "guidelines" and "policies,"  
but I'm not aware of a distinction between "rules" and "policies." In  
any case, I think honesty should be a policy, and yes, policies on  
Wikipedia carry possible punitive consequences. Someone who  
repeatedly plagiarizes or is insulting and abusive to others gets  
blocked. I don't see why it should be any more controversial to think  
Wikipedia should have an explicit honesty policy than to think it  
should have a civility policy.

In practice, of course, punitive consequences only kick in when  
someone flagrantly violates the policy. Newbie acts of vandalism or  
garden-variety sarcasm such as the type that David enjoys don't bring  
punitive consequences. I would expect an honesty policy to be handled  
in similar fashion. If it is noticed that someone is in minor  
violation of the policy, an officious Wikipedian might remind them of  
the rule, but actual blocking or other punishment of a user would  
only occur in cases where the deception was deemed serious enough to  
warrant such action.

Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

>> The question now is, how should we
>> deal with that? By bashing Jimbo? Or by fixing the policy?
>
> I don't think policy is broken just because it doesn't explicitly
> state that users should be honest on their user pages.  Mentioning
> "oh, by the way, don't lie about credentials on your user page"
> wouldn't hurt, but I think it goes without saying.

The contrast between Marc's comment and Anthony's demonstrates the  
need for an honesty policy. Marc seems to think that requiring users  
to be honest on their user pages is so onerous that we have to fear  
the punitive consequences. Anthony, by contrast, thinks the rule is  
so obvious that it "goes without saying."

In fact, it *doesn't* go without saying. In the absence of a  
generally agreed-upon policy, it *isn't* self-evident that users need  
to be honest on their user pages. Jimbo's original statement in which  
he equated deception about academic credentials with having a  
pseudonym shows that even he was confused on this point. Many of the  
comments that other Wikipedians have made during the Essjay incident  
show that they also regard "disinformation" as acceptable.

There's a reason for this confusion: The internet is different from  
the real world, and it operates according to different rules that  
make deception both easier and more socially acceptable. In the real  
world, 14-year-old boys do not pretend to be 24-year-old lingerie  
models. By contrast, many places on the internet -- Second Life, for  
example -- not only tolerate but encourage living a fantasy life with  
an elaborately falsified biography. There is a natural tendency for  
this sort of behavior to bleed over into Wikipedia and for people to  
therefore think that it's okay for them to live out their fantasy  
lives here as well. I've seen a number of cases in which people have  
done this. It's not just Essjay, but as the Essjay incident  
illustrates, it's not harmless, which is why a policy ought to  
clarify that Wikipedia is not Second Life and honesty is expected here.

As I've stated previously, this does not have to eliminate humor or  
creativity on user pages. A bright line can be drawn between those  
practices and deliberate deception.

--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans
|     The Best War Ever
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