On 3/8/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@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?