[WikiEN-l] Trust vs. Credentials (was Re: Accountability:

[Anthony]

On 3/11/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/12/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > Indeed, we should caution against a positive/negative system with
> > visible metrics. What I propose is structured, positive-only social
> > commentary that is not transaction-driven but relationship-driven and
> > is not evaluated numerically.
>
> What problem are we trying to solve exactly?
>
> Problem: Magazine interviews Wikipedia editor and believes his falsely
> claimed credentials.
> Solution: Caution media to check any credentials claimed by Wikipedia editors.
>
That's a good question.  I regard someone lying about their
credentials on their userpage to be a bad thing, but I wouldn't go so
far as to call it a problem.  The fact that people apparently knew
about this and did nothing about it might be a problem, but I'm not
sure it's something that would happen again, and isn't really
something that can be solved anyway.

I regard lots of other things as problems, but none of them are
sufficiently related to this incident except as an "I told you so".

Anthony