[Wikipedia-l] An idea

[Chad Perrin]

On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 08:04:02PM +0200, Angela wrote:
> On 5/24/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I think this is going to give the idea that the community is *less*
> credentialed that it actually is, since many people are not going to
> bother going through any complicated process of finding old
> certificates and proof of their qualifications and sending them to
> whoever is suppose to validate that these are real. Therefore, the
> credentials pages would show very few credentialed users, surely
> leading to more criticism of Wikipedia rather than less. I certainly
> don't intend to go looking through my parents' attic for old
> certificates (I assume that's where they probably ended up) just to
> make my edits on Wikipedia look more impressive. It's fairly easy for
> people to write on their user pages what they are qualified or
> experienced in, but it's a lot harder for them to actually prove that.

I see two ways in particular in which the idea can backfire pretty
badly.  One is, as Angela pointed out, we will likely have a lot of
"credentialed experts" unwilling to give up the goods on their offline
personae.

The other is simply that Wikipedia, among other things, is a fantastic
demonstration of a particular model of aggregate authorship (the wiki);
it is, in fact, sort of the perfect poster-boy for that model, and its
reputation depends to a large extent on the public perception of that
model's strengths and legitimacy.  There's a very symbiotic relationship
between Wikipedia's reputation and the reputation of the wiki in
general.  If one falters significantly, the other can as well.

To begin making concessions to standards unassociated with the wiki
model, as if only those carrying credentials are worth public notice, is
to undermine the credibility of the wiki model, or so it seems to me.
It seems likely that putting such a weight of import behind the
credentials of our experts would make Wikipedia more of a wanna-be for
"real" encyclopedias, and less of a revolutionary new type of
encyclopedia, in the eyes of many.

Of course, I could be wrong.

--
Chad Perrin
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