[WikiEN-l] iCorrect

[Andrew Gray]

On 28 March 2011 16:55, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:

> A personal note from the subject needs to be added, and accepted, as
> reference. It is by most authors and editors, for appropriate matters.

Mmm. But those authors and editors usually have the personal note
sitting in their files, and are entirely confident that it's
verifiable - because it is, for them. But on a collaborative project,
this doesn't scale; we can't have the "personal communication" copied
to a thousand editors. So we fall back on services like this
"iCorrect", or encouraging people to post things on their own
websites, etc etc.

The issue of whether or not we'd accept a personal note is less
critical - I think most reasonable editors are willing to accept
first-hand commentary as valid for uncontroversial points, and are
capable of weighing it accordingly (or ignoring it, where appropriate)
for controversial ones. There's no danger that we'd feel obligated to
change articles purely on the subject's say-so if it didn't seem a
good idea from an editorial perspective - we're good at handling that
sort of concern!.

Mainly, we need to worry about the best way of getting first-hand
commentary out there for us to use it, and of doing so in a manner
appropriate to a collaborative project. So something which can
validate ID, and do so with appropriate reliability and privacy, in a
manner that makes it trustworthy, but then makes the correction (or
rebuttal, or what have you) public. iConnect seems to do this, but has
the undesirable aspect of charging a high fee to do so - thus severely
limiting its practicality.

So, how can we square the circle of making the correction public,
whilst keeping the information which verifies the identity of the
author private, in a trustable fashion - and do this all in a way that
works for *us*. Are there existing services out there which *do*
undertake to verify the identity of their users which we could work
off, or are we going to have to create one - at suitable arms length
from WMF?

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk