[WikiEN-l] Citizendium

[Sage Ross]

On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 5:05 AM,  <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:

> When I signed up for Knol, one thing they did was allow verification.
> So one way to verify you was that you gave them a phone number and your
> name as it was listed in the phone book.  They check that it's really
> there, they CALL you and give you a code.  You have to type that code
> back in.
>
> So what that verifies is that whoever answered the phone at that number
> was the same person who asked them to call that name and number (listed
> in the phone book) in the first place.  I'd call that *fairly good*
> verification.  Not perfect, but at least it pins the typist down to a
> particular phone number and phone book listing.
>
> At any rate, I don't see how a 50-word biography which could be
> anything I choose to make up, would satisfy any kind of identify
> verification.  To be an *Editor* that ask that you submit a CV which I
> suppose if you were so inclined you could check against some college
> database or whatever.
>

They've had some discussion on the CZ forum about the onerousness of
the sign-up process before, and in addition to rejections, they have
quite a few where they basically write back, "we need more
information, because we don't have enough to verify your identity".
Most of those people never get back to them, from what I gather.

CZ sign-up is slightly problematic for people without institutional
email addresses, but they place a high premium on better verification
than just 'fairly good'.  In part, I think this is because they
really, really want to avoid letting any vandals through; the lack of
that particular aspect of Wikipedia is a major selling point for many
of their users and potential users.

A related observation: presumably because of the delayed sign-up
process, only about half of new users ever make a first edit on CZ:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Image:New_users.png

-Sage
(User:Ragesoss)