Academic Credentials and Wikiality

An anonymous reader writes "A prominent Wikipedia administrator and Wikia employee has been caught lying to the media and 'other' professors about his academic credentials. Wikipedia's Essjay has been representing himself as 'a tenured professor of theology at a private university in the eastern United States; I teach both undergraduate and graduate theology. My Academic Degrees: Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies (B.A.), Master of Arts in Religion (M.A.R.), Doctorate of Philosophy in Theology (Ph.D.), Doctorate in Canon Law (JCD).' His real identity came to light after Wikia offered him a job: It turns out that he is really 24 years old with no degree living in Louisville, KY. Wikipedia's co-founder, Jimbo Wales, says 'I regard it as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it.' How will this affect Wikipedia's already shaky reputation with the academic world?"

Comments

A pseudonym?

[Bieeanda]

No. Sorry, but no. This is nothing more or less than a profound appeal to improper authority, the authority being the editor in question. I'd like to know how many times his 'credentials' have been called upon as proof in Wiki arguments, or the number of times that people have agreed with him on the false assumption that he was playing things straight.

His username is a pseudonym. His claimed credentials are a fraud.

Re:He should be deadminned

[anthony_dipierro]

Since there is supposed to be no original research on Wikipedia and articles are only supposed to include facts cited from verifiable primary sources, it doesn't matter whether the editors of Wikipedia are Nobel-prize-winning physicists, illegal aliens, or baby killers.

Nope, you forgot to carry that word "supposed" all the way through. Maybe it is supposed to not matter whether the editors of Wikipedia, but when the admins are the ones these rules in the first place, it does matter who the admins are.

The person's arguments don't enter into it, because those arguments aren't filtered through the person's credentials, but through Wikipedia policy.

This might be true if a computer were implementing Wikipedia "policy", but Wikipedia "policy" is implemented by humans. These policies (which are really very sparse, most of them are non-binding "guidelines") are not enforced systematically and consistently, so of course a person's credentials come into play.

Anyway, if a person's credentials don't matter, then why not let everyone be an admin? If a person's credentials don't matter, then surely this particular admin will have no problem being re-granted adminship after a new review.

If you see a situation where this isn't true, be bold and make an effort to correct the problem.

I've tried that many times in the past. It doesn't work.

Now, if this guy is using his fake credentials to get a job, money, media attention, or whatever else, then there's a problem, but I agree with Jimbo in the context of Wikipedia on this one - as long as his adminship was based on his activity on Wikipedia and his efforts to uphold Wikipedia's policies, Wikipedia should be blind to his real-world foibles.

Personally I think the dichotomy between Wikipedia and the real world is a false one. Wikipedia is not a MMORPG. It's a real effort to make a real encyclopedia for the real world.

Stil Full of Shit?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

His claimed credentials are a fraud.

Not only that, his revised Wiki bio now says he was an account manager for Fortune 20 company and a licensed paralegal for 5 years before that. The guy is 24. Let's assume he was this account manager for maybe a year? So he must have started the 2 year paralegal school at what? 16 or so? Yeah.

Some background on the controversy

[Everyman]

Some screen-shot links for those who want more information. (Wikipedia sometimes makes controversial pages disappear):

Essjay's user page at Wikia, where he "outed" himself:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/wmessjay.png

Previous details from an old user page at Wikipedia:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/essjay5.png

Essjay brags about how he fooled The New Yorker:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/essjay.html

Re:Leave him alone!

[Stewie241]

The thing that worries me is that Essjay might have been editing an article on theocracy and then when it was challenged in the discussion, he could refer other editors to his credentials. And even if he wasn't doing that, users could be considering everything he says being golden because of his claimed credentials.

Which is why when you're doing research and moderating such a tool source is so important. There are doctors who write garbage diet books - it doesn't mean they are good. Sources need to be cited. You can't really on a 'mine is bigger than yours' attitude to claim informational integrity. Sources should be peer reviewed articles or studies. Sure, it is fine to present reasoned arguments as to why something is or is not true, but "because I said so" is not an argument.

The Wikipedia Cabal

[br00tus]

If Wikipedia was interested in being a reliable encyclopedia, we would know who the top people are (Arbitration Committee etc.), a lot of them would have PHD's, and there would also be a place up there for techies and so forth.

So when the Arbitration Committee had elections (which Jimbo didn't want), who did he appoint that did not get the most votes? JayJG, who had 98 people oppose him going onto ArbCom, which was a hell of a lot for the position (it was over 100, but they attacked people's votes, cajoled people into changing their votes, erased questions and comments about his misconduct etc.) Filiocht had the same number of votes for him as did JayJG, yet only 18 opposing him. Filiocht is someone almost everyone can agree is fair, a lot of people have problems with JayJG and his biases. A number of people met the vote threshold and got a higher percentage than JayJG, so we thought we finally won and got him off the committee, which he had never been elected to. But Jimbo appointed him again, just like he did the first time.

Why? Because he agrees with him politically. Jimbo ran the Ayn Rand mailing list for years and is one of those Randroid nuts. He appoints people like Fred Bauder, a lawyer who was disbarred for telling one of his woman clients to pay him in sex. Larry Sanger is who built Wikipedia anyway, but Jimbo was his boss so he not only wanted to grab the glory, he denies Sanger any credit.

The problems at the top are massive, and I don't think Wikipedia will survive it. I see a split happening, and competitors, and the first real competitor will win and Wikipedia will disappear. I saw Gopher and Archie and Veronica be overtaken by Opentext on the web (anyone remember them?) and then Webcrawler and then Alta Vista and finally Google. Larry Sanger's creation is too good to not get competition. Of course, Jimbo pushed Larry aside and is ruining things. The next Wikipedia competitor will make Wikipedia history, just like Opentext is more or less history nowadays.

Re:Leave him alone!

[doctorcisco]

It doesn't matter what degrees you have under your belt, it's what you DO that matters.

I agree. It's what you do that matters. This guy lies.

If anyone thinks lying about credentials doesn't matter, you're wrong. My Master of Divinity degree required learning to read Latin, German, Koine Greek, and Biblical Hebrew, then basing research conclusions on the linguistic and historical setting of documents written in those languages.

If we're talking theology, or you read something I've written, you need to be able to trust that I do indeed have those skills, and have used them honestly. Like any other kind of specialized knowledge, it's rather easy to put one over on the non-specialist.

Come to think of it, that's been the problem in the theological world for a very long time.

doc