[Wikipedia-l] An idea

[Jimmy Wales]

Delirium wrote:
> 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.

Yes, it would be a big job.

Now, our standards for confirmation would not need to be as rigorous as
those for a university admissions department, since someone who somehow
fools us with fake credentials isn't really doing a lot of damage.
Obviously if we let anyone make up any credential at all, with no
process of verification at all, then the whole thing would be a joke.

> 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.

I would imagine that community standards could be created to resolve
this sort of trouble.  It is a complicated matter but we are pretty good
at detailed analysis of complicated matters.

> 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...

I agree with you on every aspect of this.

--Jimbo