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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?"
Maybe they will open a Politics section like Slashdot did before it lost all reputation in the nerd world.
its already shaky at best!
For me this is just more proof that it doesn't matter what degrees you have under your belt, it's what you DO that matters. This guy is obviously intelligent and motivated. He has helped to produce one of the best information sites in the world. If he wants to have an alter web identity, more power to him. Just leave him alone.
Lying about having a Liberal Arts degree.... that's a new level of desperation. ;)
I see no problem with this current situation.
Dr. Anonymous Coward
Harvard Law
Wait, Wikipedia had a reputation as a believable source at one time?
If he had been working at Encyclopedia Brittanica as an editor, sure, worry about his work. But at wikipedia is rather duplicitous to criticize it for *both* it's egalitarian editing policy and the character flaws of its administrators. The former mitigates the latter.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Credentials are great if you need to develop a specific complex skill set for your job and need to think in a certain way using a certain set domains they teach you when you go through the academic obstacle course in the academic system (Set domains as in a set domain in set theory of math, except, vis, not with decimal symbols but with accrued experiential data patterns).
The truth is credentials and experience for many jobs are purely manufactured to keep the economy going, that is the big secret of government schools and market economies. The school-market caste system within certain job classifications. You need to divide people into functionaries in order to maintain society.
Most people who graduated high school with fairly decent marks could easily teach the first 3-4 grades in public school, and hell probably more, with a few 6 month course in teaching, public speaking and presentation, they could teach most of what is taught in public school with the exception of perhaps science.
Sincerely,
Herb Atological, CEO of Accenture
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
As long as he only addding content about Kentucky's cash crop. Maybe he's a first hand taste tester, just as long as he doesn't inhale.
His username is a pseudonym. His claimed credentials are a fraud.
Speaking as a top award-winning particle physicist, race car driver, neurosurgeon, and rock star, I feel that this is absolutely terrible.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Its an Encyclopedia - an Encyclopedia does not have any standing in the academic community in the first place (beyond 6th grade, anyway). No one, ever, should consider Wikipedia to be an authoritative source - it isn't intended to be one. It is just a repository of common knowledge.
That's the only part that really concerns me. If any editor, let alone an administrator, is using fake credentials to try to bolster support for his arguments, that should be a serious concern. This seems to be the essence of the rule against sockpuppetry, though that particular rule probably doesn't handle a case where the user has only one account.
Now that this is out in the open, I think this person should be deadminned and asked to re-apply for adminship without lying.
They could host a second wikipedia site, edu.wikipedia.org or some such, using all the same software started with an empty database. In order to get an editors account you'd have to provide credentials from an upstanding college or university. Then see if it ever gets used.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Any scandal that erupts out of this is largely Ad Hominem. That doesn't mean it's hostile, but it is flawed.
If a known insane blatering fool comes up to you and says the sky is blue, does that mean it's automatically not blue? Of course not, you have to verify the information yourself.
This is at the heart of Wikipedia. You judge it by its content, not by its contributors, who are often anonymous anyway. There are still legitimate complaints about the potential for the abuse, but in the end, the abuse itself is what marks it as suspect, not the possibility of an abuser.
In soviet slashdot, politics section YOU!!
This teacher training course could be expanded by testing the participants to make sure no bad ones slip through. Then for more complex teaching requirements there could be longer training courses which also is examined to maintain a level of quality. Each of these exams could have a certificate to show to others that the person who took it is competent in this area. Then we wouldn't need those useless credentials.
Wikipedia admin access isn't particularly valuable. People are granted admin accounts by votes from other editors at the moment, but el Jimbo has spoken in the past about simply giving away administrator access to a few users at random to see what happens. However this guy represented himself, aside from a few administrative abilities (banning/unbanning users, undeleting and locking articles) the use of which is prescribed by Wikipedia policy, he's just another editor when it comes to adding or removing content. And as we all know, qualifications (real or imagined) don't mean a lot to the Wikipedia posse. I think the article creator is confusing administrators with Stewards, select members of MediaWiki with project-wide authority.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You can pick out almost any organization the size of Wikipedia and I bet I can find at least one person fudging their resume, or completely faking it and probably more than one if your company has more than 50 people. All that kid would have needed was to be a few years older and he could have diploma-milled his credentials. Not much different.
Want to go through the faculty of any small or medium size community college and see how many diploma mill teachers they have on staff? Or how many people took graduate classes but never actually completed that degree they're claiming.
Buying credentials is easy, the good ones will even verify them for employment checks. Sure, sooner or later the diploma mill will be found out, but who goes back to validate credentials periodically? A few companies but not very many.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Incidentally, this is why Wikipedia frequently gets in trouble with "experts" who think they can just waltz into an article and say that it should be one way because they're an expert in their field and they know best.
... how do we know you're really an expert in the field? Essjay claimed to be, and threw that weight around in a lot of arguments over articles, but he wasn't ...
Well
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
.400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me
fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.
I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.
I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.
I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college.
It would be nice if the submitter actually gave a source for that quote; I couldn't find it in any of the articles. He might have been referring to the premise that an admin might not give their real name, rather than presenting fake credentials. It's impossible to tell without context.
If its what you do that's so important, why lie?
How about a lie like this (minor edit to story) ...?
This doesn't affect W's rep in the academic world because it has none and should have none. It's helluva useful (for just about everybody there) but it cannot be depended on like a work with established procedures and responsible editors -- it cannot have and need not have that sort of authority (to be a small miracle of a tool). Who cares about a co-founder, it could be Dubya and still not affect the almighty community process one bit.
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.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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
If the "people that agreed with him" did so just on the basis of his "credentials," then maybe they should question the value people place on education - particularly the Liberal Arts (even moreso for fuzzy crap like religious studies). It's not like he was claiming to be a doctor, biologist or engineer. Now, if the "people that agreed with him" did so on the basis of his convincing arguments, then maybe the guy was smart and learned enough to make convincing arguements. In this case, maybe this proves that "credentials" don't mean as much as the weight that society tends to place on them. Maybe people tend to attribute value to "credentials" if they have some too? Maybe it is a way to validate their own schooling?
Jochen
RealName[tm]
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/004628.php
So what if he lacks credentials? It's not like theology ever had anything to do with real facts anyway!
Circumcision is child abuse.
In the last steward Election the Wikimedia lawyer insisted that all stewards be at least 18 and disclose their real name to the foundation offices. (http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/foundati on-l/2006-November/024896.html) Essjay refused to do this, so he couldn't be a steward. Some of the Wikimedia board members opposed (http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/foundati on-l/2006-November/024902.html) but didn't block it.
Looks like the Wikimedia office made the right idea for once.
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.
Commerical pilots require credentials, engineers require them, as do physicians. And, I'm damn glad they do.
I'm up two, it's your turn to list occupations where they "shouldn't" be needed. And, that's assuming I even agree about the elementary teaching thing.
"with a few 6 month course in teaching, public speaking and presentation, they could teach most of what is taught in public school with the exception of perhaps science"
Which would be... credentials.
There are a bunch of other users on Wikipedia who say that they are professors. But, many of them are hyper-active. No one can edit Wikipedia that much and still have even a job. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angr -- who also has pages on Commons, Wikisource, a dozen other languages, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mel_Etitis is another one. Same for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Future_Perfect_a t_Sunrise. I have nothing against these guys -- they're pretty civil -- but I must say that I have my doubts now!
Very smart move to pass this off as a pseudonymn because it will make it less likely that the next contributor will feel a need to assert fake credentials. If it doesn't matter to Jimmy Wales and if you will eventually get found out then there is no reason at all to take the risk of lying.
Whoa, hold on. Who says teachers don't need a "specific, complex skill set" to do their job? I think you're forgetting that being able to teach is more than just knowing the content. We hear so much complaining about our education system, and it doesn't suck because there isn't enough funding, or the state curriculums are horrid. The logical reason for poor education is poor teaching.
My wife is an 8th grade teacher in literature, and from what I hear from her, her school is just amazing, and all the teacher's there are brilliant, etc., etc. It is no surprise that her district is the #1 district in our state. I've also heard from her in schools past about poor teachers who just don't care anymore and who hate their job and don't put any effort into their work. She replaced one of those teachers once and found that the kids had no knowledge of the content at all, and she had to teach a whole year's curriculum in one semester.
My wife's education has been invaluable to her career, and to this day she still finds new ways to use things she learned in college. My point is that though your post has some points I agree with, the example was baseless and probably offensive to any teachers reading it (including my wife). If you're going to illustrate a point with an example, please use something with substance and validity as opposed to just assumption.
I figure my job (software developer) would be one of those examples to be honest. I've got a bachelors in Information Systems, but I quite honestly could have done my job a year out of high school.
If any old schlub can successfully masquerade as a holder of multiple degrees in God-ology, well... let's just say that no matter what the titles-- B.A., M.A., Ph.D. or anything else-- a degree in theology is B.S.
Helpful hint: This may, in fact, apply to many other degrees as well.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
U of Me.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Or not.
Honestly. You don't use Wikipedia directly for academic stuff. You use it as a starting point, but you never reference it. Any college student can tell you this.
'Shaky reputation in the Academic world.' Hah. It's got a great rep - as a starting point.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
...by testing the participants to make sure no bad ones slip through. A college degree isn't enough to teach. You have to take certification exams separate from any university (e.g. Praxis) to be able to teach.Then for more complex teaching requirements there could be longer training courses Yeah, its called more college classes and more Praxis exams.
What these "training classes" amount to is just a shorter version of a university degree without all those general requirements and less training. So, basically, by using this new system, we'd be producing teachers who are less rounded and have less qualifications going into the schools?
Since when has wikipedia's credibility rested on the academic credentials of its employees? It never even occurred to me to look up who they are, much less their credentials. For me, wikipedia's credibility is based on the quality of the information. In the areas where I have knowledge, I've always found it to be pretty good. I only use it as a starting point for serious research anyway, particularly if it's a topic on which there might be controversy.
... for employers: Always run background checks before offering the person a job!
If a 24-year-old without any degree can write perfectly good articles on Wikipedia, where will this leave all the guys and girls with the degrees?
Stop worrying about Wikipedia. All those "What will happen to Wikipedia if" and "Where will it leave Wikipedia when" articles haven't stopped me from looking up stuff on Wikipedia first. And the number of degress somebody has or has not surely isn't a good indicator of trustworthy information.
I didn't think I needed a tag... seems I was wrong.
I see no problem. As long as the risk of exposure is high enough and not too many people are not they claim to be, it is just like the rest of the world, including universities.
Come on now, he said he had a degree in theology. If there is any degree which claiming you have and not having is a rather moot point it is theology. Just accept his degree on faith. It'll be fine.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Did they want to hire him because he did quality work or just because he went to college? I understand the business world takes that sheet of paper almost too serious, but this is ridiculous.
If the kid knows his stuff or knows how to get it, isn't that more valuable than what he wrote for his educational background?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Too true. Using Wikipedia for research is always a smart move. Citing it for research clearly indicates you were too lazy to follow up.
I don't really see how this affects the whole problem academia has with Wikipedia, for that has to do with the factual validity of the writing itself, rather than the people that made it. Even if Wiki was made by a couple of homeless people on the street with a Commodore 64, people would still use it and angry professors would still degrade it. The claims of the individual; however would usually be considered bad for business from a corporate/publicity standpoint ...
cha-ching. money baby... money
He should be writing for http//www.conservapedia.com
Honestly, I was conflicted about half and half as to whether you were serious, but just in case... :)
I wouldn't be surprised to find, however, that many are unaware of the process required.
With all those degrees, choosing to work at Wikipedia should have been the first red flag.
As much as I love the Wikipedia model of allowing everyone to contribute to the content, there are some specialist fields of knowledge that need to be protected from unknown sources. Since the person in question claimed to be an expert in that field, as most others here have stated as well, this undermined the structure of the Wikipedia model in that the current administrators of the Wikipedia will listen to him more so than user134121 simply because of the plead to credentials. Now, that all being said, I do think this person ought to be banned from contribution to any part of the Wikipedia simply because he presented himself as something he was not that was pertanent[sp?] than anything else. We're not talking about someone who hides his/her age, or sex, or religion. We're talking about someone who set himself as a valid authority on a subject, which he was not by all reckoning as the article states. All in all, credentials sometimes do matter, but only if you check them to make sure. And sometimes the Wikipedia model does fail, only if those adhering to the model don't check sources, credentials, and articles.
[Murdock]MacGyver!!!!![/Murdock]
Perception is the thin dividing line between reality and fiction.
"Whoa, hold on. Who says teachers don't need a "specific, complex skill set" to do their job?"
They do at the higher levels, but most of public school and high school is taught in only ONE WAY, kids brains are specialized to interpret certain data much faster and much more easily. I will give you one example:
The decimal base 10 number system that is taught in schools, that is only ONE WAY of many ways to express numbers. Next is they never teach you early on that numbers are nothing more then SHAPES of binary bit pattern's 1 and 0, with a boundary. Boolean logic (do you exist, or do you not?), it is so frigging elementary even a child can understand it. Yes I want this toy, no I dont want this toy. Very basic electronics could be taught early on without the math from geometric/conceptual angle using animations made in 3D studio, etc. So that the could see the little dots (elecrons) or "pulses" of electricity travelling (jumping) along opaque spaces along the wire.
I know how screwed up school is because my mind is specialized visual geometric math (shapes and their transformations) to word metaphors that is my primary vector of mathematical computation and data translation -- Visual geometric shape (data shape, strings of 0's and 1's) converted to word metaphors. If we had technology that could see what was going on in my minds eye and render it in 3D, scientists would be floored at the complex calculations we do without using decimal symbols or any kind of 'decimal-symbolic' number system at all.
Human beings DO mathematics (data operations) in their heads, but the way the data is presented, its notation and symbolic form is in fact a SEVERE barrier to many children actually LEARNING in a symbolic space they find the easiest and best fit for their mind.
Numbers are DATA-SHAPES, numbers are just abstract symbolic representations of: Light, sound, shapes, colors, data. Imagine teaching how prime numbers are related, and factors in terms of GEOMETRIC SHAPES, instead of juggling around decimal symbolic jargon... Imagine having a triangle split equilateral into 3, with one of the perfect reflections faded out and doing 2+3 in terms of shape notation, and kids being able to SEE how the "shapes" fit together without "juggling" an inferior (to their minds) decimal symbol notation.
I'll give you another example of just how bad children are taught...
ONE.. the concept of 1, is the most simple and basic element that we are all naturally born with, we use to bind (create a boundary around) and define objects or groups.
When we say 5x3, we are really saying there are 5 reflections, of 3 reflections of 1. But we express it in jargon like: 5 groups of (1) objectX, times 3 groups of (1) objectY.
Next is geometric series, a very easy concept to understand with two mirrors reflecting back at one another, instead of seeing decimal symbolic jargon on a line, give the kids a mirror and have on big mirror and at the same time you can teach them: Geometric series, infinity, and in later grades: How art works by seeing how things fade or blur as they get father away into the distance of the mirror.
If you think this problem is unique to documents generated by the public, rather than by experts, you are quite wrong.
In my field (computational mechanics) there have been numerous papers published, and text books written in the last 5 year which explicitly state that a computational technique developed by a colleague of mine is incapable of performing a certain task. There has been documentation of this task being performed using the technique in question in journals since the early 80's (cited 100's of times I might add). Many of the authors of these papers/books have had personal demonstrations of the technique being used to solve the problem in question, yet they continue to publish blatant falsehoods.
I would be willing to bet that there are many cases, in many fields where data that is demonstrably false is continually published, despite numerous attempts to correct it.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
How will this affect Wikipedia's already shaky reputation with the academic world?
Not at all. Acadamia can edit Wikipedia to say that an $80K per semester degree in Ancient Babylonian Astrology is worth the money and needed to pay starving tenured professors. Wikipedia rocks for them.
Of course, the same goes for a conventional encyclopedia, especially when you get to the graduate level.
If I based my final paper for a course on what I found when I looked up, say, neural networks in Britannica, believe me, I wouldn't get that far.
Thank you for this post. If I had mod points I would mod you up.
I'm having a really hard time understanding some of the vitriol about this. Not only is it an encyclopedia, it's an encyclopedia on the web. Which means you should suspect all the information you find in it, regardless of the author's credentials.
Wikipedia's appeal is quick and easy access to generally accurate information. Want to know, generally, the population of the capital of Uganda? It's just a mouse-click away. But that number, just like anything on the web, could be completely bogus. Since the person who contributed that piece of information is essentially anonymous, I can't ever be sure. If it was important to me that I get the actual population of Uganda, I would go to a more authoritative source.
Essjay lying about his credentials, while pointless, does not impugn his authorship any more than using "Essjay" as his name on the wikipedia does. And being credentialed is not useful in itself. I have a bachelors degree from a prestigious university (you'll have to trust me), but I wouldn't be able to do one-tenth of what Essjay does for the wikipedia.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Why does this kind of attack on the reputation of persons or organizations seem to be EVERYWHERE in our lives?
They attack indivisuals, they attack Wikimedia, they attack the opensource community, they attack charity organizations, they attack the history of Jesus's life, they attack religious believes, and they attack your past -- they attack everything!!!
Don't they ever get bored of it? Why do they insist on making something bad instead of making something good? Why do they HAVE to attack people?
I'm beginning to doubt whether there's a point in questioning some poeple's point of view while still keeping a faint hope that they can be reasonable -- as if ATTACKING is the only hopeful way of life.
This story has very little to say about the credibility of Wikipedia as a useful source of information.
It's no big shocker that people will lie when they have no oversight and effectively no chance of getting called on it. It happens everywhere, in government, industry, and private relationship. Wikipedia is probably full of liars. That's not to say that getting caught in a lie shouldn't come with a price, and I hope Essjay at the least loses some credibility with Wikipedians!
But Wikipedia's utility as an information source comes from the verifiable facts submitted by contributers. It is these facts, and not contributors' credentials, that are submitted to the rigorous scrutiny, the thousands of eyeballs, the selective forces, that have made Wikipedia as useful as it is now.
If anything, this whole business demonstrates why Wikipedia's lack of official recognition of credentials is a good idea, and why any sort of credential-based system like Larry Sanger's Citizendium had better have some awfully reliable connections to the real world for verifying credentials.
Frustrating though it may be, Wikipedia is for entertainment purposes only. That is obviously the intent of its creators or there would have been some sort of reaction to this. What I'm worried about is that this seems like a disturbing relapse to the days of, " Well, what did you expect? you read that on the internet..."
Look, your honor, our editors lie about their credentials, and we edit the articles about ourselves so we look good.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061127-8296 .html
Experts rate Wikipedia's accuracy higher than non-experts
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
For some reason, this reminded me of the Timecube.
Can Be Wrong. How simple is that?
Actually, not every college student can. Undergrads at even the very highly-respected university in my area will cite Wikipedia all the time.
What's worse is their professors don't mark them down for it.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
I just tell everyone I dropped out in the 10th grade.
Nobody ever believes me though.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I mean, please, "Professor" of theology? That makes no sense anywhere. Professor of the history or psychology (or even philsophy, at a stretch) of religion, possibly. Theology? C'mon do us a favour. Anyone who took him more seriously because of that claimed title deserves everything they get.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
You're really a dog. Or a cat. Or a parrot. Or whatever. Or even a university professor.
As some people have correctly pointed out, having academic degrees isn't a guarantee of proficiency, and not having academic degrees does not mean you aren't proficient. People who study a subject and work hard at it on their own can learn a great deal. They don't have to be formally trained. Training helps (I think of it like a fast-track), but never underestimate the power of self-motivation in learning. People can be wonderfully skilled without formal training, and I'm sure that there are plenty of people that fall in that category that contribute to wikipedia. I'm sure that this person's contributions were as good as is claimed, and they not having formal degrees doesn't change that.
On the other hand, *lying* about having academic degrees or other qualifications. Well, that's different. It negates trust.
The bottom line is, do a good job, and nobody will care whether or not you have formal degrees. Perform at the level of someone who does, and it's the output that really matters. I judge wikipedia's content by what is there, not by who wrote it or their claimed degrees. I don't care. So why lie about them? That's stupid.
Lie about having formal degrees, and, I'm sorry, but you just shot yourself in the foot, and I won't trust your submissions anymore. Using false credentials to pump up the trust people might place in your (otherwise good or bad) comments is wrong. It doesn't lower my perception of wikipedia, though, because I've never evaluated it on the basis of credentials or lack anyway.
As it turns out, I am a university professor (which is unverifiable, of course), and I have contributed to wikipedia (albeit in very minor ways). I've never logged in or indicated my credentials, and I'm post here as AC. Why should you care? If my words are any good, you'll read what's here and ponder them. If I still make spelling and grammatical errors, as I often do, people will still point them out and perhaps laugh a little more, I hope. Tacking some letters at the end of my signature shouldn't change whether my words were any good or not, but if I lied about them, obviously, you should not trust what I say anymore.
... is say that it was just a "social experiment" to see how many people he could fool.
That would make everything A-OK.
Not.
Wikipedia doesn't have a "shaky" reputation in the academic world. It has a horribly unreliably, biased, and inaccurate reputation. No responsible academic would ever quote it as a source. Sure it's good for initial overviews, but without going to more authoritative sources you can never know if it's trustworthy.
Now I have to go find a credible and legitimate source of information for fictional universes from TV shows, and video game settings!
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
>How will this affect Wikipedia's already shaky reputation with the academic world?
It doesn't. The New York Times has a journalist that pushed for war with Iraq against all available evidence. She goes to the office. She's on payroll. She prints whatever she wants under the banner of the Times.
Wikipedia is no worse than the NYT, and probably better than most.
Nor should they be paid any money. If you think really hard about it, how do we determine what is fact? For me, it is the opinion with which most people I have asked, and most references I have consulted, agree.
So then, New Yorker Columnist, who is to say what is factual? Those who seek to profit from the dissemination of their version of the truth? Or, instead, should all free people who have the ability to think (even if not for themselves) be able to contribute to this opinion?
I agree with the latter concept: all free people should contribute to the pool of knowledge. Then, all can benefit from that wealth and become the giants upon whose shoulders we stand to see the new horizon. It seems to me that the epitome of selfishness and hubris would be to charge money for, or restrict access to, a piece of knowledge which could lead to a discussion to save lives/cure the incurable/etc...
Why should only those who can afford to buy the version of True Fact(tm) agreed upon by greedy persons in closed rooms be the truth which we, well, agree upon?
Fake credentials are one kind of problem. Here's another. Check out the following articles on Taiwan and the Republic of China. In fact, check out any of the Taiwan related articles. Taiwan is a vibrant democracy with a long stable government and a strong economy. It has a military and maintains its own borders. But in the world of Wikipedia, Taiwan is just an island territory of a government in exile. The problem? There are tons of ultra-nationalistic ideological Chinese and more and more of them know enough English to edit Wikipedia. The crowd has one point of view and in Wikipedia, the crowd always wins.
I've edited Wikipedia articles for going on three years now, and have always found it an impressive accomplishment. I've done more than my share (for one who isn't a basement-dwelling 21-year old who has way, way, way too much free time; Wikipedia, like many open-source projects, relies on an army of such fanatics to do much of the day-to-day work) of editing and copyediting articles and sometimes reverting vandalism when I catch it. The bottom line is that I like Wikipedia quite a bit.
Two things bother me about Essjay's case, though:
* As others have noted here, Wales is confusing--unintentionally or intentionally--a pseudonym with a falsified CV (I remember it impressing me when I read that The New Yorker article last year). If Essjay was concerned about Internet stalkers he simply didn't have to say anything at all on his User page, or simply say that he lived in British Columbia or Japan or Oregon instead of Kentucky. Instead, he came up with an entire, completely-plausible but completely-fake academic background in theology. It'd be one thing if he had stuck to edits on astronomy or Germany or Legos but, in fact, he specialized (go way, way, way back in the history) in articles on theology. Of course people would take edits by someone with those kinds of credentials more seriously.
* Beyond the pseudonym/fake-background issue. Essjay and some other admins don't like talking about this issue in public, and almost instantly threaten to ban those who do. I don't know if Purples is a sockpuppet for some otherwise-banned Wikipedia user, but he doesn't come across that way to me, and look what he gets in response to what I thought were pretty-legitimate questions.
When my mother graduated High School, she went to Teacher's College. I think it was a year-long program. She then taught grades 3-4 while she put herself through University.
So, not only has your theory been proven correct, it was an accepted norm only 40 years ago.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
This is the sort of news bitter academics have desired ever since Wikipedia first hit the mainstream.
The well-adjusted ones are fine with Wikipedia, because they understand that it will never replace true academic research.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Commerical pilots require credentials, engineers require them, as do physicians
But I've been flying Flight Simulator on a PC of one kind of another since I was in high school! Surely I could get by with fibbing about a commercial license, 3000 hours serving as PIC, and B737/B757 ratings? I just *know* I could fly that plane!
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
This shouldn't change the perception of Wikipedia at all. The reliability of an article should not stem from the credentials of the contributors; rather, it should stem from the quality of the references provided in the article. Consider an article on special relativity. Whether Einstein himself contributed material, or an eight year old boy, as long as the source was attributable to a reliable source, the article receives the same improvement. (Then there's the problem that we'll never know that the user claiming to be Einstein isn't just an eight year old boy... but again, that shouldn't matter given that the material is attributable to a reliable source.)
When are these poeple going to figure it out? You DO NOT need a 4 year degree from some book stamp collage to succed in this world. I'm living proof, 22 years old, no collage barely have a highschool diploma, I work for a major accounting firm in the IT department makeing a really nice sallary. With the birth of the internet, the youth of america was exposed to more knowladge than any other generation EVER. I am 100% self educated, and learned 98% of that on the internet. So to the big companies and the major schools, get a grip it's almost over, and accept a canidate on there skills. Not what somone else says there skills are.
Essjay's comments on why he did it (from here):
(Emphasis mine, of course.) Sooo... yeah. An interesting excuse. The constant references to the stalkers and psychopaths sounds a little paranoid... are there really people who have been trying for two years to figure out who this guy is? I mean, come on...
I am the man with no sig!
Does anyone else feel that for technical mathematics/physics and inside-of-book-type reference, that Wikipedia excells like none other? How many people use it soley for this? For some reason, I always end up on wikipedia and not mathworld. Maybe thats because I suck :)
Actually, in British terminology, they did. Being "sectioned" in the UK means being detained under one of the relevant sections of the Mental Health Act 1983. Claiming a political enemy is mad and locking them up is a tactic used in many totalitarian states.
The comments are surprising, from comparing him to a soldier to saying that his lies is irrelevant as he contributions were good. I can guage what exactly happened. Today with google anyone can be anything you want to. I still remember I used to talk to a girl ;-) and anything she asked me i knew(I am very knowledgable without the help of the wiki :-P). Once she asked me about Existentialism(look up the wiki :-p) and i had never heard of it inspite of the fact that I believed Existentialism(which i came to know later).
back to girl when she asked me on yahoo chat i just copy pasted it into my google search bar in firefox. And in minutes i was spewing out names like Nietzsche. She was shocked and asked me how did I know this. She was very impressed I must say. Then I told her that just googled it when she was asking me. Then i gave her links to some essay and quotes. The nest thing she told me "oh so you google everything i ask you". I told her know If i googled it then i would be giving you links.
Well coming to the point this essjay started contributing to really "heavy" topics on theology and I am damn sure that he did not want to appear as the guy who googles his information. And he lied about his credentials. He is on an egomanical trip. Wiki is full of them. They take some great pleasure in becoming the "contributors'. No matter what I dont think I will every believe the wiki because many of the contributors are liars like essjay.
I do not disagree with the fact that what they contribute may very well be accurate. Seriously I would on trust an economist to do research on economics no a college dropout. Even though I know that I myself can come up with a good report on any economic trend using google but I will never be hired to write for a economic magazine.
That is why only a surgeon who has completed his M.D. is allowed to perform surgery.
A general practitioner will never be allowed to. In India there was a case of a compounder(a doctors assistant who dispense medicine) who went to a village and became a doctor there. he lied that he was a doctor. He even started performing surgery. He cured many people from malaria and small fever. It is simple we all know that you take a paracetamol for a fever and chloroquine for malaria. He performed surgery for fractures.
Once someone discovered he was not a doctor and then he was arrested and it was a big scandal.
This led a quack hunt and many quack were arrested. Even thought this doctor had not killed anyone Many of the other quacks had killed a few patients.
I would put essjay in the same league. Just because he gave good information about certain topics does not make him an expert. If you read a drug index you can start prescribing tablet for any medicine but it is a very big risk.
Just because the "doctor" "saved" so many peooples lives or rather cured so many diseases does qualify him to be glorified. He did not become a "doctor" to save people but rather to make money. Because a person who truly want to serve manking will go and do his medicine.
The same way essjay also lied about his credentials not for money but to continue "prescribing" so that he could satisfy his own egomanical desires.
Pft, that's nothing. I once took a graduate course taught by a TA whose understanding of the subject matter was barely 1/2 a chapter of the book ahead of most of the students.
Makes me embarassed to be from Louisville :(
Does that remind me so much of L Ron Hubbard? All that stuff about making up bigger and bigger stories, getting upset when people refused to believe (or at least humor) him, etc.
I just hope this one doesn't go the same way.
The reason for poor education is the NEA and their emphasis on bs "Education degrees".
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Does it matters? Its like Phd of studies of imaginary friends.
Plenty of people write and edit on the Internet, interacting with others, and do not inflate their resumes to protect themselves. Here's a recent example: Pamela Jones, who has way more to worry about than some random Wikipedia admin--but has not lied about her experience or credentials. Instead she simply chooses to not share her personal data--the ethical choice. It sounds to me like Essjay suffers from overly developed senses of importance, drama, and cleverness.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Jimbo Wales should force "Essjay" to resign and ban him from future work on Wikipedia. If Jimbo Wales had any sense of ethics. Or a soul.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
If the credentials didn't matter, he wouldn't have lied about them.
"I've also heard from her in schools past about poor teachers who just don't care anymore and who hate their job and don't put any effort into their work."
This isn't an issue with credentials. Even the most credentialed person will suck at their job if they hate it and don't put any effort into their work. A person without any credentials who loves their job will perform better, as their love for their work will likely drive them to seek the information and skills your wife learned while in college. Your wife should bemoan the fact that there are people teaching who don't care, not that there are people teaching who don't have a certain list of credentials.
"My wife's education has been invaluable to her career, and to this day she still finds new ways to use things she learned in college."
No doubt this is true, and I think it is rare to find a person who has critical thinking skills and the ability to process information effectively without having gone through a college, and teaching 8th grade literature is not a walk in the park. The parent referred to elementary school level teaching. Still, if given a choice between a highly credentialed person who didn't give a crap, and a credential-less person who cares deeply about their job, I'll take the latter.
You're absolutely right. There is no way this Essjay guy would ever have been allowed to edit Wikipedia articles if he hadn't claimed to have 18 degrees.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
A professor of theology teaches about imaginary things and pretends to know what he's talking about.
A 24-year-old liar makes things up and pretends to know what he's talking about.
I'm wondering what the difference is. Neither one would be good for a reliable reference site.
Remember "Scientific paper generators" ? That you chose a topic, chose some other crap, and instantly you had a 'paper' generated, speaking scientifically and even getting accepted and published when sent to respectable scientific publications ?
...
...
scholars read each others' and long-dead scientists' papers, quote them by 'et al'ling, pour some of their own shit, and publish papers regularly. most of the academic world is not doing anything in the name of science other than sitting in their offices and purporting out such 'papers' every now and then - only to let them gather dust in volumeful tomes of past scientific publications
this is 'office' science - you do not lift your ass up from your chair, yet confer validity/invalidity upon ANY stuff happening in the real world from within the confines of your room. no field research aptidude, no inclination to do such either
i would take on fake wikipedia 'academicians' over real ones any day. at least, fake ones produce some useful shit.
Read radical news here
My degree is from Tulane, you insensitive clod!
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
I fail to see the problem with just making that up. It's ok to believe in an invisible father figure in the sky with magic powers, but not to believe you have a "degree" in theology?
So we just learned that you cannot trust anything in Wikipedia (old news) and you also cannot trust anything written in the New Yorker. Wikipedia teaches important lessons.
On the other hand, this issue can devolve into a chicken and egg situation. Even if you are a critical thinking, intelligent individual, able to discern trash info from truth, you still need a basis for comparison. To verify the accuracy of information, you either need a knowledgable individual / expert, or a verified factual repository.
If a factual repository is built up by the contributions from knowledgable individuals, but then the credentials of those individuals are found to be fraudulent, the repository becomes useless. Not only have you lost the repository, but you've lost the knowledgable individuals to consult. Logically, you must turn elsewhere altogether for your information.
That's why it's important to protect the credibility, independently, of either (preferably both!) the factual repository, or the knowledgable individuals. If we start developing systems like wikipedia that rely on the latter to construct the former, then we're introducing a chicken-and-egg scenario where a taint on the credibility of either foundation of the system brings the entire thing down en masse. This is especially problematic when lately many have touted wikipedia as some sort of wave of the future in terms of knowledge building, and many similar entities have sprung up, perhaps slowly supplanting other types of factual repositories.
You can't advocate these types of community fact repositories without removing proven fraudulent information and people. Even wikipedia itself acknowledges the need to remove false information-- why are fraudulent individual credentials, then, less important to the authenticity of the whole? If you let people like Essjay continue to contribute and moderate and approve content under false pretenses, then wikipedia becomes a null entity.
In my head, wikipedia and similar entities then become analagous to the trivial solution to an equation.
I guess to look all sophisticated and world-weary, you have to act as though scammers don't matter. After all, smart old *you* wouldn't be taken in by them, or at any rate by anything they say or do, so who cares? Why would you trust a website that anybody could edit anyway?
The problem with that oh-so-hip stance is: scorning him is *precisely* the community process that is supposed to (somewhat) protect things like Wikipedia.
You can't have it both ways. If the magic of community is supposed to somehow overcome the rather obvious problem of letting anybody edit it, then community has to be allowed to work. World-weary cynicism that doesn't care what anybody does is not how (functional) communities work. Communities work (at least in part) by punishing (at least by shunning) lying scammers.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem of the academic world with wikipedia is 5% about quality e 95% about jealousy. In fact, the so-called academic world thinks that is outrageous that anyone can write about a topic that they studied 20 years to master, even if the final text quality (for the general public point of view) is almost the same. I'm not advocating that ANY academic person thinks like this. I'm telling that the majority of the academic people that CRITICIZE wikipedia thinks this way. They just can't bear with anyone writing about their feudal territory.
--- Illogical Spock
We've known for a while that any fool with no real credentials can contribute to Wikipedia. Are we supposed to be surprised that it actually happens?
http://outcampaign.org/
When Wikipedia/Wikimedia starts begging with an aggressive campaign for donations, people ought to keep this incident in mind. Perhaps more importantly, keep in mind Jimmy Wales response. It gives you a sense for the character of the people who will be managing the donation coffers.
Jimmy: So the money was spent to improve Wikipedia?
Senior Staff: Yes.
Jimmy: So what's with all the charges for movie tickets, popcorn, and new cars?
Senior Staff: You knew we were a bunch of liars anyway and you said you were okay with it. It was my pseudonym who took donations, the real me spent it.
I am Wikipedia administrator. Let's just put it out there. I first found out about Essjay's true identity after seeing his userpage at Wikia. I did not think it was a big deal then, but as more details started to emerge, I became very upset by Essjay's actions. Frankly, what Essjay did may have been justified in his own mind, but to me and many other people, what he did was horrible. I can understand lying about age, but lying about your credentials? Using your supposed "credentials" to give a notion of authority? Using your supposed "credentials" to disseminate your status as an academic and a respected scholar? Using your supposed "credentials" in interviews with the New Yorker and other newspapers? Most of all, using your supposed credentials to lie to everyone on Wikipedia!? I respected Essjay, but after seeing the whole situation, I'm in disgust. I never thought much of his credentials, since I was never directly involved in any article editing with him. However, I know that Essjay misled many other Wikipedians, and I'm sure his supposed status as a educated professor on canon laws and the ways of the church made him even more respected and popular on Wikipedia. I know he's done good work on Wikipedia, but the fact that he took advantage of others on Wikipedia to inflate his own reputation, is just too much for me. I respect and appreciate all your work on Wikipedia, Essjay, but frankly, what were you thinking? I can understand that you didn't want to get Wiki-stalked, but why did you have to put up false credentials? Besides using them too improperly boost your reputation, they had no real connection with Wiki-stalking. In fact, your credentials and refusal to spill out personal information made you even more mysterious to other users. You could have said you were 40, made up a name and just ignored personal details. It's as easy as that. No one asked you to do it, Essjay. You made up personal information to inflate your personal image. Even worse, you used fake credentials for negative purposes, and now you've given Wikipedia a bad rep.
They've demonstrated that honesty doesn't have a place in their value system, and that their own well-being is more important to them than integrity
Actually what your hypothetical person demonstrated is that in that particular case honesty was not the winner in their moral argument. To say that it had no place is overstepping.
This is a personal issue for me, because I work for a large corporation and I have lied and said I had completed my BA when in fact I hadn't, because otherwise I was unable to even go through the application process for an advancement.
Now sure, it was dishonest, but that doesn't mean honesty holds no place in my value system. In that case it was a silly requirement that just served to weed out applicants.
Maybe your world is black and white and you never tell a lie, but I live in the real world and I will balance issues as they present themselves. That means occasionally I break the speed limit. I sometimes say something polite to someone rather tell someone a hurtful truth. I would probably rob the pharmacy for that rare-wife-saving-drug that is the example always given on moral decision making.
I know that my decision was a lie, and I was also willing to accept the consequences had I been discovered. But at the same time, I certainly won't loose any sleep over it. I also know that I'm more than willing to sacrifice my personal well-being for my integrity on many other issues, and willing to lay my life and fortune on the line for many other anonymous people.
But then you have to start wondering about the value of that degree upon realizing they never taught him the Thou Shalt Not Lie part. Come on, isn't that first-year material? ;-)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
There's something utterly breathtaking, and ultimately tragic, about Jimmy telling The New Yorker that he doesn't have a problem with Essjay's lies, and by essentially honoring Essjay after his lies were exposed. As Blogworld quite rightly said, "By his [Jimmy's] actions or lack thereof ... and [by] his words he is endorsing fraud." I've become increasingly disillusioned with Jimmy's behavior, but this I simply wouldn't have expected. It's one thing to revise history self-servingly. But this new incident seems self-destructive on a level beyond previous incidents. Doesn't Jimmy realize that this could well blow up in his face-that it could well be picked up by the news media and severely damage not only Wikipedia's reputation, but Wikia's bottom line (since Wikia is, still, Essjay's employer)? The media is already making some noise (the story broke yesterday) and it's likely only to get hotter. The media now loves a good Wikipedia scandal. Since this one has such a compelling narrative line, and a "you can't make this stuff up" quality to it, how can tech reporters resist? And how can respected observers of the scene then fail to draw some obvious conclusions, as the blogosphere is already doing in its usual vigorous way? Doesn't Jimmy know that this has the potential to be even more damaging to Wikipedia than the Seigenthaler situation, since it reflects directly on the judgment and values of the management of Wikipedia?
(More on my blog...)
Sounds like someone got refused entry to grad skool.
L
Somebody made bullshit claims regarding religion?
Imagine that with a hat on.
I thought Wikipedia was something of a Meritocracy... therefore, shouldn't something such as credentials be completely irrelevant?
I myself, for example, have zero credentials in anything, at all, period. Even though I was accepted into Ivy League college, I shunned that route and took the direction of my own education into my own hands. I've spent the last 20 years doing anything and everything under the sun in the digital field. If I can write an authoritative article on some esoteric technical issue, what in the world does it matter who I am or by what route I came across that expert knowledge?
Not one jot. So you folks can take your fancy Masters degrees your rich dad paid for and shove them up your arse where the sun don't shine.
The major premise of wikipedia functionality is that it can be edited by anyone, yes?
By far my biggest concern about this scandal is that your premise is actually false, and the falsity of your premise is directly related to the negative consequences of this affair in a very intimate way.
I understand that in an ideal world, anything on Wikipedia can be edited by anyone with no censorship whatsoever, and in an ideal world, two conflicting edits are resolved on the basis of the actual contributions with no regard to credentials or background or the identities of the contributors involved. Unfortunately, Wikipedia falls far short of this ideal in many important instances, and (ironically) the most serious shortcomings emerge during the most serious cases.
For example, let's look at Essjay's talk page as of today, 12:40am eastern time. This is an important article for anyone wishing to voice their opinion on the very matter that we are discussing now. Yet, despite the presence of multiple commentors on that page claiming that content is king and credentials don't matter, the simple fact is you cannot edit that page at all unless you already have an account which has been active for some amount of time, because the page is protected.
This blows a big hole in your assertion that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time. I cannot edit this page at the present time, because I don't have an account, and even if I were to create an account, I would have to wait some amount of time before the account would be considered active long enough to edit that page.
Although you may like to think that an obscure user's talk page is not important enough to be considered representative of Wikipedia as a whole, the fact is that the large majority of so-called controversial pages are kept in protected status, with the result that outsiders cannot edit the page.
The sheer hypocrisy of Wikipedia's stance in this matter is astounding. It is far worse than anything I have seen in other notoriously hypocritical arenas such as presidential politics. Wikipedia is saying that, on the one hand, your (academic) credentials are actively immaterial, but on the other hand it considers your (Wikipedia account owning) credentials so essential that it won't even let you post on important matters unless you have a sufficient amount of the latter. If there is a more insidious and adversarial display of censorship to be found anywhere else in the world, I have not seen it.
Moreover, even if I were to by some stroke of fortune create an account and wait the minimum amount of waiting time necessary to post on that page, I would still be attacked on the grounds of having an account that is too new for my comments to merit consideration. See for instance the comment where Netscott dismisses the opinion of Snackycakes on this very basis. Again, it is hard for me to reconcile this blatantly hostile stance with Wikipedia's official (and largely ficticious) policy of honoring contributions based solely on content.
However, on top of this (already long) rant, the absolute worst part is that Essjay is an administrator and a member of the oversight committee, and as such, he has more power on Wikipedia than all but five other people in terms of deciding which pages to protect, which users to ban, and which comments to delete. In other words, Essjay, the very user whose integrity I feel is justifiably subject to question, is in a strong position to disproportionately influence this debate about himself, not because of the merit of his contributions to the debate in question, but because of his...
credentials.
I should close by saying that I am not by any means the anti-Wikipedia zealot that this post makes me out to be. As a matter of fact, I am a founding member of PlanetMath and a strong supp
The quote itself is a link, to another page, where he is described as this foremost expert and quoted as saying:
In this situation, someone mistakenly believes he's a "scholar", declares him an expert, an Essjay does all he can to reinforce the notion by using that as weight in later arguments. Slashdot is not blowing this out of proportion at all. This guy is on the arbitration committee for God's sake
And Jimbo thinks this is OK? Lying about fake credentials to back up your arguments on Wikipedia... and as an admin... now on the arbitration committeee. Not a big deal?
Would you please explain why you don't think this is a big deal? Who's going to know how much policy, information, and any other content this guy has influenced with his lies? I'm revolted.
actually someone got into one of the best grad schools in europe, ranking 499th among 1.5 million entrance examinees, studied there for 4 years, got disgusted what was being prepared for him at the end of it and how scholastic, church-like academic world was, and left off to seek his own way.
Read radical news here
Agreed. Jimbo really needs to be clue-smacked.
This is a different matter. Encyclopedias typically cite secondary sources. For something like graduate-level papers, you're typically expected to cite primary sources.
Primary sources aren't typically cited in encyclopedias because their context has not yet been established. When they are, it's usually with a healthy dose of that context (e.g. Special Relativity is cited by every encyclopedia, but with lots of context on how it impacted physics, and how, by whom and to what extent it was accepted).
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
You managed to get to college (I assume) without realizing that no encyclopedia should be cited in a paper?
You misunderstood. The rules for citing encyclopedias are no different than for any other source: you must cite it if you base an argument on it, or if you quote it. If you don't, you're committing academic fraud.
The reason why you don't see a lot of citations of encyclopedias is because you should be identifying, and relying on, original sources. Once you do, there is no need to cite the encyclopedia. Note that there is no guarantee that the original sources are any more accurate than the encyclopedia.
You wouldn't cite a textbook either; they're tertiary sources, and mostly useless for getting a deep, accurate view of any topic.
Many advanced textbooks are, in fact, the definitive reference on a subject, and are widely cited. In some cases, they even contain original research published nowhere else. Even when they don't, in many cases, they contain more elegant proofs, better expositions, etc. It is entirely appropriate to cite such textbooks.
Of course, you shouldn't cite first year college math or chemistry textbooks, but for the stuff they contain, you usually don't need to cite anything at all.
Trying to ascertain truth of any document based on the credentials of its authors is a losing proposition. You might use credentials as a shortcut (say, when picking a doctor), but Wikipedia entries don't need such shortcuts since there is plenty of time for their creation.
So, rather than advertising with the credentials of contributors, efforts like Wikipedia should probably discourage or forbid any mention of credentials.
I'm an undergrad and the very first thing we were told about writing assignments was to not cite wikipedia as a source. Besides what they told us it's fairly obvious not all of the information is accurate and from trusted sources.
Greek, Latin, and Hebrew I understand.
But why only German? Why not Middle English as well?
The work of John Wycliffe preceded the work of Martin Luther by over a century. And any truly educated theologian knows that there is a treasure trove of scholarly work regarding early Christianity in both Old English and Middle English.
The fact that you don't have a mastery of Middle English tells me that just because you have an M.Div. doesn't necessarily make you more qualified as a theologian than someone who has made a serious study of the old languages and Church history without possession of any degree in them to speak of. But of course you should already know this because a M.Div. is more related to Ministry than Theology.
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
The term bearing false witness doesn't equate to lying as many people would suggest rather it equates to perjury, and actually perjury under a guilty until proven innocent law system. You find a number of these requirements for very harsh punishments for falsely accusing a person of a crime, mostly because unless they could prove the allegations false they would be punished (usually death). In Hammurabi's code the punishment for accusing somebody of a crime who proved his innocence was typically death. Our modern society is much more fair in these regards and thus we don't have such strong condemnations of things which in the end are rather moot to us. Though we do have perjury and filing a false police report these are fairly minor rather than capital offenses.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.