[WikiEN-l] Trust vs. Credentials (was Re: Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made nearly 2 years ago)

[Slim Virgin]

On 3/11/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 3/11/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I worry that the formal verification thing will take us down the
> > Citizendium road.
>
> Let's think about expressing trust in different ways, of which
> recognizing a person's credentials is just one. We could build a
> voluntary "web of trust" where editors recognize others as:
> - being the person they claim to be, including but not limited to
> claims they make about themselves, such as credentials (identity)
> - being knowledgeable in a particular subject area or possessing a
> particular skill (ability)
> - acting in good faith, in recognition of their limitations, and in
> awareness of Wikipedia's policies and practices (reliability) ...
>
> Such a web of trust model does not require technical changes. It could
> be built using user subpages, similar to the German
> "Vertrauensnetzwerk":
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vertrauen

Editors who've been around for a while do this already. I know which
editors I can trust; what their strengths and weaknesses are; who
tends to engage in OR; who's great at citing sources; whose edits
never need to be checked.

Formalizing this wouldn't work, because you'd get a ton of editors
adding others to their "web of trust" on the basis of agreeing with
their POV alone. Who's going to decide whose "web of trust" can be
trusted? Which gets me back to the original question: who is going to
do the verifying?

I don't know much about the German Wikipedia but from everything I've
heard it's overly expert-dominated; this shows in the reaction of
German Wikipedians when they arrive here and are suddenly expected to
cite their sources no matter how much they think they know about a
topic. I would hate to see the English Wikipedia head in the direction
of taking people's word for things just because they're part of
someone's "web of trust."

Sarah