[Wikipedia-l] An idea

[Guillaume Blanchard]

Hi,
Sometime ago, I created on French Wikipedia a "wikipedians per expertise 
domain" page (Wikipédiens par domaine de compétence [1]) that may fit 
your idea (actually 55 users listed). Personally I prefer this kind of 
community pages to list this information rather than icon stick near 
some user names.
 
Aoineko
 
[1] 
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikip%C3%A9diens_par_domaine_de_comp%C3%A9tence

> I had an idea the other day while I was on a radio interview.
>
> Someone was making the usual (uninformed) complaint about Wikipedia that
> we "pretend to have no authors" -- which is nonsense of course -- but
> the undertone (in my opinion) of the criticism was that Wikipedia is
> written by a bunch of random morons on the Internet rather than Real
> Professionals. As such, it is argued, it's a perfectly fun forum for
> people to post their stupid rants, but it is not an encyclopedia.
>
> However, I travel all over the world meeting Wikipedians, and surprise
> surprise, most of them are Real Professionals of some sort. And of
> course, Wikipedia *is* an encyclopedia.
>
> Now, here's the idea that I had, and there are perhaps some reasons it
> is a bad idea, but I think it has more merit than not, so I wanted to
> bring it up for feedback and see if it is something we want to start
> thinking about and discussing more generally.
>
> Some years ago, Amazon.com instituted a system that they were calling
> something like "Real Names intitiative" for user reviews. In order to
> increase the public perception of trust in those reviews, they made it
> possible (but optional!) for people to go through a process to identify
> themselves by their Real Names.
>
> We could do something similar, but also allow for the inclusion of
> credentials. People could *optionally* go through a process to confirm
> their credentials. When you do this, a small icon appears by your name
> in the edit history, and when you click on it, you get to a new tab of
> the user page, which contains a list of the confirmed credentials.
>
> What kinds of credentials would be acceptable? This could be totally
> open to a community process. Clearly, all sorts of college degrees make
> sense, but the wide kinds of expertise that are involved in writing
> Wikipedia might call for useful credentials of many kinds.
>
> Examples would include computer certifications such as MSCE or LPI or
> Redhat. Our article on [[Amateur Radio]] has surely been edited by
> people who have advanced licenses. Published books might count as a
> credential. Magazine articles. Awards, recognitions of all kinds.
> Positions held in relevant organizations.
>
> Have you won a prize at a dog show? Then this is a credential which
> testifies to the public about your expertise in that area.
>
> Such an initiative would have to be done carefully in order to respect
> our (fairly anti-credentialist) culture. First, anyone who ever
> suggests that a credential gives one precedence in editing gets a bonk
> in the head with a WikiClueStick. Second, it should be made clear at
> every point of contact with a credential system that it is fully and
> completely optional.
>
> The idea is this: people wonder, and not unreasonably, who we all are.
> Why should the world listen to us about anything? People think, and not
> unreasonably, that credentials say something helpful about that. As it
> turns out, we mostly do know something about what we edit, and although
> we never want Wikipedia to be about a closed club of credential
> fetishists, there's nothing particularly wrong with advertising that,
> hey, we are *random* people on the Internet *g*, but not random *morons*
> after all.
>
> --Jimbo