[Wikipedia-l] An idea

[Delirium]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>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.
>  
>
This sounds intriguing, but when you say "a process to confirm their 
credentials", do you mean we're actually going to verify them, e.g. by 
requesting official copies of diplomas from university registrars, 
copies of IDs so we know someone is who they claim they are, and so on?  
In the general case, confirming credentials is a *huge* hassle, even for 
organizations who exist largely to confirm credentials, like university 
admissions departments.

An even bigger problem is that it's unclear which credentials we should 
care about.  Is a purported physics degree from a mail-order university 
a legitimate "degree in physics" credential?  Etc.

Not to say it's necessarily a better approach, but it's interesting that 
we're not the first organization to sell ourselves mainly on the 
strength of our organization as a whole rather than advertising the 
credentials of our individual contributors.  As [[en:The Economist]] 
points out, the well-respected _Economist_ newsmagazine goes one step 
further than us and doesn't credit authors at all---it almost never has 
bylines for its articles, and the name of its editor isn't mentioned 
anywhere in the magazine (not even on the copyright page).  It seems to 
work well enough for them, although in many ways their situation is 
dissimilar...

-Mark