[WikiEN-l] Proposal for simplified credentials model

[William Pietri]

Florence Devouard wrote:
> Many editors of huge quality are not willing to provide their real name.
> Why would they consider sending this information to a totally anonymous 
> email address handled by volunteers, who are not necessarily identified 
> under their real name and have signed no confidentiality agreement them ?
>   


Is there possible compromise between your position and Eric's?

There are plenty of companies in the credential validation business. 
Most of them are set up for slightly different uses, but I'm sure there 
are some creative ones we could work with.

The notion is that for anybody who would like their credentials 
validated, they can pay a third party to do the work. The Foundation 
would only get involved to select trusted vendors and verify the vendor 
accounts on Wikipedia. In addition to verifying credentials, they could 
perhaps verify real names, or that the user has only one verified 
Wikipedia account. For the limited cases where the Foundation wanted 
things verified, they could cover the cost of the verification; 
otherwise, people would be on their own.



Personally, I don't have much of an opinion on this topic, but I thought 
I'd suggest the possibility.

William


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