On 3/8/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
William Pietri wrote:
As the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote,
"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."
The best counter for this perception problem, IMO, is not to convince
people to trust Wikipedia's content because the people working on it are
certified in some way - "expert" contributors is no guarantee of a good
product. Rather, we should simply try to show that Wikipedia's _content_
is objectively good. The Nature study comparing article quality to
Britannica is a good example, credentials and authorship never entered
into it.
Except for the subtext of being amazed that non-experts could write an
accurate encyclopedia :) Re: the Chronicle quote, I think there's possibly a
certain personal level of discreditation, or guilt-by-association that goes
beyond content accuracy, going on as well -- if I really am a professor, why
state that when anyone else can as well (and clearly get away with it pretty
easily)? Why be associated with that kind of nonsense? Why be subject to
possible distrust in the future (are you *really* a professor, or do you
just say you are?) Professorship is hard-won in most cases, and most people
don't take kindly to impersonation.
Credentials might help with this. However, KP's point about not all areas of
expertise being subject to black & white credentialing is well taken. I can
verify certain points of my education pretty easily, but those aren't
necessarily the areas I edit in. And none of my prior degrees or hobbies
cover "wikipedia editing and policies" which, let's face it, is really what
Essjay was an expert in. There's no credentialing needed for that except a
strong edit history.
As I see it, the question is what credentialing would help with, and what
its main goal would be. Questions to ask include:
* is or should honesty about yourself, on general principle (i.e., outside
of content disputes etc) be:
a) not necessary, just nice if it happens
b) a necessary thing in order to contribute
c) helpful in making *you* more trustworthy for any job, i.e. positions of
trust on the wiki
* is or should stating verified credentials about yourself (whether they're
"I'm an academic librarian" or "I'm a world-renowned didgeridoo
player"):
a) helpful in making your edits more trustworthy, in general
b) helpful in making your edits more trustworthy, in specific (i.e. on the
didgeridoo articles)
c) helpful in making *you* more trustworthy in general, i.e. for positions
of trust
d) none of these, it's just a nice social convention, helpful for finding
like-minded friends
Again, I can prove I'm an expert in some content areas, but not in others.
Whether I should do so depends entirely, in my opinion, on what the goal of
attempting to garner more trust is. Bear in mind, beyond knowing and having
met many Wikipedians personally, I do state my real name on my userpage, and
a quick search will tell you where I work and what I do for a living. All of
this was done deliberately: I believe in making editing Wikipedia a
professional-level endeavor that I am happy to associate my name with.
However, I'm aware that I seem to be in the minority among contributors with
this, and indeed it took a long time before I started using my real name on
my userpage. The prevailing culture on en:wp is very much one of
pseudonymity and anonymity; this is the much larger hurdle to change if more
real-life trustworthiness is needed from contributors.
-- phoebe
p.s. like essjay, I have an OTRS account. Does that mean that I could verify
my own credentials under Erik's plan?