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Wikipedia's Wales Reverses Decision on Problem Admin
ToiletDuck writes "Wikipedia co-founder Jimbo Wales appears to have changed his mind concerning Essjay, the administrator who was caught lying about his academic credentials. Wales issued a statement today on his User Talk page requesting that EssJay voluntarily step down. Wales defended his earlier comment about EssJay, claiming 'I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false credentials in content disputes ... I want to make it perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.' Wales did not comment on whether EssJay would continue to serve in his paid position at Wikia, the for-profit cousin of Wikipedia."
Who really cares.
Who gives a *&@# department.
What difference does it make? A nobody fakes his way into a coveted spot, only to get busted in the future. History is full of such low-lifes.
Wales did not comment on whether EssJay would continue to serve in his paid position at Wikia, the for-profit cousin of Wikipedia."
Ulp.
Jimmy has more questions to answer. He makes no attempt to explain several fundamental points that got people worked up in the first place. What did he mean in telling The New Yorker "I have no problem with" Essjay's duplicity? When did he learn of that duplicity? (I think it was last January, since that's when Essjay got on the Wikia payroll.) And then why did he ignore the obvious moral implications of that duplicity--to the point of giving him a job and even appointing him to Arbitration Committee--until now? Jimmy needs to answer these questions convincingly, if he can.
He simply edited it with updated information.
"Fully based on a lack of knowledge", indeed. But what kind of fool conflates the use of a pseudonym with claiming credentials one never earned? So much for the vaunted Objectivist reputation for truth and integrity.
Fuck Slashdot
When has lack of knowledge about a subject ever stopped anyone on wikipedia? If it's good enough for ordinary users, it's good enough for Jimbo!
Jimbo may have questions to answer, but -- since you're so concerned with factual accuracy -- you might want to get your facts straight before making any more accusations or indictments. To wit, Essjay was hired by Wikia *this* January (i.e., about 60 days ago) not *last* January. And now that Jimbo has found out the extent of Essjay's deception -- i.e., not a simple case of pseudonymity -- Jimbo has asked Essjay to resign from his positions of trust at Wikipedia. For a longer tome on my views, please see my blog post: http://blog.xodp.org/2007/03/credentialists-and-im postors.html
He didn't deliberately flood wikipedia with false information to mislead. He didn't offer false medical advice deliberately while claiming to be a doctor.
.. I ask .. so what? I trust people based on whether i think they'll screw me over. And nothing else.
What about all the good he has done? Are we to flush it down the toilet.
Ben Franklin aka Silence Dogood "lied" about his identity too
Even before this there were serious doubts as to the accuracy and credibility of the information on Wikipedia. That a top administrator and contributor to Wikipedia has faked his academic credentials and used them to influence Wikipedia content will only make this worse.
I can't think of a more damaging relevation to the Wikipedian ideal than this one, and even if it isn't a death blow to Wikipedia, scholars and researchers EVERYWHERE will have a field day with this; college professors will point to this as an example of why they don't accept citations from Wikipedia. In general, Wikipedia may be totally discredited by this scandal.
One nagging question that I have is why there is no push to validate academic credentials on Wikipedia. Ordinary users that do not claim to have any academic credentials beyond their own knowledge are fine, ones that claim to have advanced degrees in such-and-such should be required to prove this, or at least be able to validate their credentials when asked. I have no idea how this would be done, only that it SHOULD be done.. Essjay is an excellent example as to why.
I shudder to think how many more Essjays are out there right now, editing articles and claiming expertise, when in fact they have none.
-PxB
Wait a second here. Of course Jimbo knew that "Essjay" was not Essjay's real name, since "Essjay" isn't a person's name. The point is that, if Jimmy's company, Wikia, hired Essjay last December or January, then Essjay had to come clean then about the fact that he wasn't a tenured Ph.D. theologian guy after all. That's heavy-duty deception that Jimmy presumably had to have learned about then. Indeed, Jimmy admitted that he knew as much The New Yorker: what else was "I don't have a problem with it" refer to? All that Jimmy says he learned this morning is that Essjay used his false credentials to win debates on Wikipedia. And he couldn't be bothered to check whether his employee had done this? And isn't it obvious, in any case, that Essjay must have risen through the Wikipedia ranks faster partly on the strength of his credentials?
These are legitimate questions, not "cheap shots."
People just make shit up and other people believe it without checking. You'd expect the guy who founded Wikipedia to be aware of the problem and of how important checking facts are, but there you go.
Is Dave Grohl still dead this week?
"my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on."
Well, that's what happens when you get all your info from Wikipedia.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Check out Hillary Clinton's padded educational credentials. (for the last 2 years)_ Rodham_Clinton&diff=18494301&oldid=18493966
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hillary
Once exposed (yesterday),
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17388372/page/3/
the author updated his own profile, 'best known for his work on the Hillary Rodham Clinton article'.........indeed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LukeTH
Ben Franklin used pseudonyms in the traditional sense, to hide his identity. He did not present himself as someone with qualifications he did not have or earn.
Umm, he claimed to be a widow with kids. If I say that I'm black and that I think blacks are no longer suffering discrimination in society that carries more weight than if I was perceived as a white guy saying "blacks are not discriminated against". Now you may say that it shouldn't. And I agree it shouldn't carry more weight. But the fact is that it does.
Ben Franklin said he was a old widow with kids because saying his real identity would have distorted what he was trying to say. And I am sure he felt that way, otherwise he would have described himself at least as a man.
I know this is Slashdot, but you guys are overreacting on this whole matter. Imagine it was not Wikipedia, but any other company, let's say, Canonical. Imagine there is this guy whose online curriculum says is a M.S. in Computer Science, Java Certified and whatnot. He finds and files a lot of bugs on Ubuntu, helps to create packages, contribute with code, and do such a great job that Canonical decides to hire him, just to discover that he is really only an undergraduated in C.S. Canonical hires him anyway.
Three questions: 1) Would it be the wrong decision? 2) Would your confidence on their product (Ubuntu) be diminished? 3) Would it make front page on Slashdot?
I really must be new here (I'm not), because this sounds more like British sensationalist tabloid-like journalism, that likes to blow things out of proportion. That, or there is some "vast conspiracy" involving other players that aims to take the place now occupied by Wikipedia. (Citizendium, maybe, who knows. Every article mentioning some wikipedia flaw is automatically followed by comments praising the virtues of Citizendium.)
Essjay has faith in the idea that he holds a PhD. Doesn't that qualify him in the field of theology? ;)
What Jimbo did or did not know in the past, or when he did or did not know it, is irrelevant and (at best) conjecture. What is relevant is the fact that Essjay used false credentials to win debates, and Jimbo's position on that issue is now very clear. To wit, it's a BadThing(TM). However, this raises yet another important point: Using *REAL* credentials to win a debate is a VeryBadThing(TM).
He only supported the guy because he didn't know the circumstances? Shouldn't you learn the circumstances before you publicly voice your support of something? That's kind of like commenting on an article without reading it...oh wait.
I admit that I am intrigued by Jimbo's failure to properly vet Essjay before hiring him at Wikia and/or appointing him to ArbCom. However, credentials are supposed to be irrelevant on Wikipedia, and they mean less than nothing to me, so I could easily see how someone could overlook inflated credentials on a resume. In sum, if there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that credentials (whether real or fabricated) really are meaningless.
I think Wikipedia should have another fundraiser so he can think about things some more. He'll be jet-setting from India to Japan tomorrow... c'mon, that takes money people!
"...was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on." I think that statement can go with most of the decisions the heads of Wikipedia make concerning their admins.
Some of us have known for a long time that Wikipedia administrators are evil. See what the highly reliable Conservapedia has to say about them:
As everyone knows, Conservapedia editors are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
Last January? Do you mean this last January, or this January of last year?
I'm sure there's something I'm missing here, I'll confess right out that I knew nothing about this until 5 minutes ago and I haven't bothered to try and look into it much further, but how are the credentials of a poster or an administrator relevant to WP?
Surely the entire point of WP is that it's an encyclopedia, therefore it contains no original research meaning that (in theory at least) any and every point of contention in each article can and should be backed up by a reference, meaning that no poster should need to provide any credentials. Even if Stephen Hawking provided content for the Hawking Radiation article it shouldn't be included unless referenced.
I'm sure I'm probably wrong. Now, anyone care to explain why?
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Jimmy Wales shows us the qualities of a good Wikipedia administrator:
1. Doesn't know what he's talking about, yet talks anyways.
2. Soft on folks who deliberately falsify information.
What more could you ask for? Er, wait...
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Maybe we can't get it on Wikipedia, but at least here on Slashdot we can get neutral-point-of-view commentary from well-credentialed, unbiased parties!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Wikipedia today is as accurate or inaccurate as it was two weeks ago. If it was appropriate to use two weeks ago, it's still appropriate now, and likewise in the negative case.
In any case, I'm in academia myself, and plenty of people here use it. You just have to, like any other source, use it appropriately. I wouldn't cite Wikipedia as an authoritative source for scientific facts, but then I wouldn't cite Britannica as an authoritative source for scientific facts, either. What I (and most people I know) mainly use it for is exploratory research---getting an idea of what's out there on a topic, how it relates, where to look for more information, etc..
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If Wikipedia getting duped, and as a result having inaccurate content it has to retract, is a "death-knell" for Wikipedia, then wouldn't The New Yorker getting duped, and as a result having inaccurate content it has to retract, also be a "death-knell" for The New Yorker? Here's a professional organization, with paid staff to check these things, and their article still got it every bit as wrong as Wikipedia did.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I don't really see what the problem is. If he really was a tenured professor and was going around telling people he was a high school dropout, would anyone care? His edits need to be factual and sourced just like anyone else's. This is Wikipedia's biggest strength. Larry Sangar is starting a Wikipedia fork where the biggest difference is that it will still let 12 year old kids edit, but it will prevent the 12 year old kid from editing the work of a PhD prof. The thing is, if the work of a PhD can't stand up to the criticisms of a 12 year old then that certainly says something. The only reason you would take someone with a PhD more seriously is if you are unable to think for yourself.
Any system where a certain class of people are given a free pass and aren't forced to defend their ideas can only result in intellectual bankruptcy.
The fact that the Wikipedia community is up in arms about this suggests to me that some of the core ideals may be going by the wayside.
In fact that was one of Larry Sanger's main complaints leading him to start Citizendium: that Wikipedians don't generally let people wave around credentials and end discussions thereby. People presenting expert credentials also get subject to scrutiny, sometimes to more scrutiny just on principle.
So now apparently Wikipedia is unreliable because it: 1) defers too much to experts; and also 2) doesn't defer enough to experts.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Wikipedia — Serious business.
Speaking of serious, I seriously can't believe someone would lie about themselves on the Internet, of all places (and on Wikipedia too!), for their own benefit!
But everyone else seems to; that's the Slashdotter's constant lament. And Wikipedia isn't just "Wikipedians", but lots of regular people who have something to add to an article or two. A jaded editor isn't likely to be bullied around, but that's not the kind of person this hurts most.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Not quite, because The New Yorker apologized for the error when it was revealed, and it's not like this is the first time a source has deceived a journalist. But the management of Wikipedia rewarded the liar by giving him a job and putting him on the highest judicial body on the project--and continues to show little understanding of the seriousness of the problem.
If any academic institutions allow citations from encyclopedias in student's papers, then we have bigger problems than a few editors with inflated credentials. Encyclopedias are for getting a quick overview BEFORE doing real work. And for settling bar bets.
...the "The Almighty Buck" icon.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
The point is that Essjay wasn't an expert, he merely claimed that he was. He then bragged about fooling the New Yorker, but in fact had fooled everyone and was able to exercise arbitrary authority while doing so - usinbg his faux expertise as a weapon. There is a difference between working anonymously and working deceitfully.
Can Citzendium be abused? Almost certainly, because any system can be abused by anybody determined enough. But the cancer at the heart of Wikipedia is that it not only took NO precautions at all to prevent the abuse, and then practically celebrated it (the sympathy this liar and fraud is getting after spinning a sob-story about how he only did it to keep stalkers off his back is simply breathtaking).
"I want to make it perfectly clear that my [previous decision] was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on" Jimbo making decisions and statements when he has no clue what's really happening? Who would've thunk it?
EssJay altered his userpage to indicate that he has quit Wikipedia. His account still has all its user rights, though.
The way Larry wrote it, it sounded like he was talking about an event that happened sometime last year -- i.e., last January. Of course, Larry's credentials are in philosophy, not linguistics, so the concept of ambiguity may mean something different to him than it does to me.
This is the crux of the issue. It's very disappointing that so many Wikipedians accepted Essjay's rationalizations for his deception and defended him on some sort of twisted utilitarian grounds because of his contributions to Wikipedia. What Essjay did was wrong, and if he was truly contrite, he would have resigned from his positions of trust at Wikipedia before Jimbo asked him to do so.
...on a number of issues. He may not have known precisely to what extent Essjay was using his falsified credentials to gain the upper hand in a multitude of content disputes, but Wales was fully aware that Essjay had created a persona based on fictitious credentials.
I concur with your position on the irrelevance of credentials to Wikipedia; I was very impressed with your early call for Essjay's voluntary resignation from his positions of trust at Wikipedia; and I have faith that people such as you will take great care to see that anyone seeking such a position at Wikipedia in the future will be properly vetted. That having been said, even more disappointing than Essjay's deception and subsequent rationalizations were the number of Wikipedians who accepted his rationalizations at face value and defended him on utilitarian grounds. Would you care to comment on how that issue should be addressed?
The claim was that this sort of gross error in reliability on Wikipedia's part sounds its death-knell, and I would argue that if true, that the similar gross error in reliability on The New Yorker's part does similarly---retracting an incorrect article after the fact is just as "reliable" as fixing an incorrect Wikipedia article after the fact is.
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My point is that on Wikipedia, nobody gives a damn if you have credentials or not. That's why Sanger forked his project in the first place. Ergo, the damage of faking credentials is fairly minimal, because unlike at Citizendium, at Wikipedia they don't give you any authority in the first place. Hell, I scrutinize people with credentials in my area of expertise twice as much as I scrutinize the contributions of random amateurs, because it's the guys with PhDs who are more likely to make biased edits to push their view of how the field ought to be (as opposed to non-experts, who are more likely to make uninformed---but not malicious---edits).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I've noticed that in certain controversial topics, edits favouring one side will be deleted instantly, while edits favouring the other (even if they are totally loopy) will stay around for a long time.
So evil people can have a lot of fun filling up these articles with loopy claptrap. Try it!!!!
I've seen dozens of posts where people say everyone is overreacting. I think a lot of those people are losing sight of the core of the issue.
This isn't a simple case of "He wasn't who he said he was." If it were just a matter of hiding his name, age, or location, that would be fine. It's a matter of falsifying credentials, namely, having a doctorate and being a tenured professor. People work years to achieve both of those, he just sits down at his computer and decides "I got those."
It's all part of this "Generation Me" syndrome. They think they deserve anything they desire, without working for it. Honorific titles, titles of achievement, tenure, knighthood, a million dollars, whatever, they deserve it because they're so fucking special. They were breastfed self-esteem, they jerk off to pictures of themselves, and they think the whole world should appreciate their blessed presence.
I have an AAS in Software Applications and Programming. I don't care what anyone says about my degree or where I went to school (ITT Tech), it doesn't matter, because I earned it, and that's more than this wanker can ever say for himself.
Out of Essjay's 20,000 edits there were about a dozen where he effectively said "I'm a professor with a PHD, STFU users and do what I say!".
i ffs
It's not shocking that Jimbo did not know about these edits considering how few there were out of so many. Many people on wikipedia have known that Essjay's prior identity was fake for the last two months (since it's been public since he started at wikia), but it's only since this hit the press that people have found the really disgraceful edits.
This is what changed Jimbo's position. No one sane at wikipedia has a problem with the made up identity, we have a problem with using a made up identity to influence discussion, even though people should be smart enough to know better.
You can see a few of these bad edits here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Doc_glasgow/d
I guess the question if EssJay would leave Wikia (his paying job) has been answered: "Essjay was a member of the Wikia staff from January to March 2007." (http://www.wikia.com/wiki/User:Essjay).
I don't think there was another option for him. Apparently he had possitively contributed to Wikipedia, but there was not much to discuss after his claim to have so many degrees was found to be a lie.
Esta es una firma en Espanol.
Why is Jimbo making decisions on what happens on Wikipedia anyhow? Hasn't he stepped down both from Wikipedia and Wikimedia foundation?
Larry, your comments would carry a lot more weight if they didn't reek so strongly of sour grapes. It seems like you're trashing Wikipedia in an effort to prevent Citizendium from going the way of Nupedia.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Essjay says he left. Do we believe him? Do we believe Jimbo if he says new hires are not him again?
Dude, are you retarded?
.. We know the answer to that one. Thanks.
.. if anything. Does the fact that a lie was said even matter, and if so how much?
.. and that's what we're discussing here.
The question is not "did he lie or not"
The question is, what should be done about it
Most people I know have said a lie at some point in their life (news flash not everyone was born a prude like you), the DEGREE and the level of malicious intent DOES MATTER
Not everything is as simple as it looks, especially justice. But yeah i suppose there's people like you always eager for a witch hunt and will do the necessary mental contortions to avoid having to do an in depth analysis of the situation.
I don't think you understand where Larry is coming from. People on Wikipedia didn't give Larry the suck-up action he felt he deserved; you can read about it in his Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism essay over at The Other Site. Despite Larry's previous position that authorities must be kowtowed to, he's now complaining that Wikipedia provided too much deference to a self-proclaimed elite (though I'm unaware of Essjay actually bludgeoning anyone with his credentials, it's quite legitimate to presume that his claims influenced how his edits were received).
Jimbo has GodKing powers over all of Wikipedia, and the people there regard his word as law. People don't trash-talk Jimbo, because they might find themselves unexpectedly WP:OFFICE'd or somesuch. Well, gosh-darn-it, Larry wants some of that sweet dictatorship action. But he can't get it on Wikipedia, because he stomped off and missed the gravy boat. Whoopsie. His k5 essay should have been titled "Why Wikipedia Must Defer To Larry Sanger's Genius".
It's not until we see projects like Citizendium or Conservapedia that we can truly appreciate how much worse Wikipedia could have been. There's a million things they've done wrong, but these attempts to one-up them show how much they've done right.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Essjay has plenty of contributions. If he's been removing "information pointing out the hypocrisy that permeates the project", I'd like to know about it. Please provide an example of such conduct.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
That was said far better than I could have. (Though I don't think you meant to say that featured articles can have hundreds of cites for each fact.) And, indeed, you make a very good point about Citizendium--if someone manages to pull one over on Larry, considerable damage can be done because authority carries more weight there than actually being able to back up one's statements. (If it didn't, what would be the point of all this real-name, real-experts stuff?) He certainly shouldn't be dancing about all the damage Essjay was able to do.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Or, in a less tendencious construction, since you have no basis for that claim: "are in a better position to make evidence-based contributions".
But anyway, his arbitrary authority came from being and admin, arbitrator (gosh, look at that word), checkuser and oversight (this last allowing him to remove evidence of his wrong doing with impunity). And he lied his way to that authority by asserting false credentials and then using them as a weapon.
I find it fascinating that the qualities needed to prosper on Wikipedia seem to be identical to those to making it as an uber-troll on Usenet. Lie, exploit the few rules there are and never give up. The main difference is that on Usenet it is a reputation only thing: Jimbo *promoted* this guy.
"Essjay was a member of the Wikia staff from January to March 2007."
quote from the Wikia page linked in the submission.
How a serious encyclopedist may not reveal his (real-life) identity is beyond me.
We should not believe all we read in the web. We should not believe all we read in books either. Some stuff is accurate, some is mistaken, some is made up. Unless it is all chaos, and will always be chaos, we believe that in time the errors should be found and be corrected. Sometimes people come across a large chunk of fakery. The discrediting of the work of Dr. V.J. Gupta cast doubt on much of the geolegy of the Himalayas for the last 20 years ( see http://www.scientificvalues.org/newsnovember2002.h tml ). Nevertheless, we sift through the rubble, and find out what can be kept, and what can't. Or we sit in the chaos.
Wikipaedia relies on voluntary contributions. Take a cross-section of the internet who will do somethig for nothing, and you will always get a generous helping of dross - spammers, trolls, phishers, fundamentalists, vandals, and general nutbars - with, maybe, a tiny fraction of people who have understood a subject, and simply want to share that understanding with others. I admire the spirit that believes that this tiny fraction may prevail. The fact that someone with suspect credentials is found out, and their work is given a second look, shows that the thing is working. You see this when newspapers have to print a retraction, or TV programs broadcast a correction. If you didn't see this, then you should worry.
It seems there are a lot of people out there with heart and spleen problems. Good lord, but there is some serious vitriol there. Who are all these people without fault, jostling to get their stone in first? What makes them think Jimbo Wales owes them a personal apology? Who elected you lot the Guardians of Truth, eh? Sheesh...
So, my grateful thanks, Jimbo and all Wikipaedians, for a most useful and valuable webpage.
Okay - I have probably earned myself a good flaming in Internet Hell for that heresy. Might as well do a proper sheep-for-a-lamb job. This next bit goes out to EssJay...
Hi, EssJay. I am not in your field, so I can't read what you wrote, but your friends seem to like you and speak well of you. Cheer up. You don't need a doctorate. I have got one, and it's not a lot of use. Dr. V.J. Gupta had a doctorate. If your contributions are good - and I do hope they are - then pick another name, and come back a bit later when the legions of shit-throwing monkeys have found something else to amuse them. Do no harm, do a bit of good when you can, and we'll all get there in the end.
In other words, he thinks WikiPedia is great because he does not know (or is in denial) about the problems within it.
Deleting pages in one's userspace, as Essjay did, is normal for Wikipedia. It's certainly within policy to have control over one's own userspace, including the ability to delete pages there.
I was able to find some examples on one of those enormously long "Requests for comment" pages, especially this one, detailing a series of instances wherein Essjay did indeed use his fake credentials to win arguments with people who accepted that kind of thing. ("I'm right because I'm a ThD!" Or whatever it was.) However, I'm not seeing the part where he "use[d] his powers of deletion to remove unflattering edits from page history", as Jimbo did in your example.
The Jimbo example is... confusing. I can't think of a reason why someone would do that. Maybe someone should bring embarassing signs with the deleted quote on it to the next Wikimania.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The only person who needed to learn a lesson about not lying was Essjay, and the crux of the matter is what he lied about and why. To wit, he lied about having credentials, and he did so to bolster his credibility. Had Essjay relied upon his actual expertise rather than buying into the lie that is credentialism, the respect that he garnered through his hard work at Wikipedia would still be intact.
Jimbo is listed on his Wikipedia article as "President of Wikia, Inc.; Board member and Chairman Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation".
He's nominally no longer involved in day-to-day editing, because he's an eight hundred pound elephant. (Revert Jimbo and you might wake up with your account banned...) However, he still sticks his nose in every so often, which causes great confusion. Also, he's semi-officially the GodKing of Wikipedia, and acts like it, too. He may blather on about the virtues of openness and accountability (virtues which I happen to believe in), but seems to think that they only apply to lesser folk. (He had no problem keeping his knowledge of Essjay's fraud to himself, for instance. No need for the plebs to trouble their little minds.) Also, he writes hilarious edit summaries like "voting as regular editor".
The upshot of all this is that Jimbo exercises dictatorial authority (though I would argue he doesn't exercise enough to be truly disruptive), but pretends that he doesn't, and in deference to said authority, the community plays along. It's depressing, which is why I keep my edits far away from anything the cabal touches.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The more Jimmy Wales is in the news, the more he sounds like Krueger from Seinfeld. "Whatever." He probably nicknamed essjay "Coco the Monkey."
I just heard some sad news on talk radio... the tenured professor and Wikipedia editor known as EssJay was found dead in his home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Wikipedia community will miss him. Even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Truly an American icon.
--
* * * * EXCLUSIVE * * * MUST CREDIT WEDGE * * * DEVELOPING... * * * *
So now apparently Wikipedia is unreliable because it: 1) defers too much to experts; and also 2) doesn't defer enough to experts.
Maybe it's my dialectical nature that wants to find a bigger picture in everything, but I don't see any real inconsistency in this. Wikipedia's slipshod handwavey approach to the matter of expertise has resulted in the problems of both extremes. The glut of sloppy amateur editing results in an automatic deference to the rare appearance of presumed expertise, verifiable or not.
Tangentially, there's a reason professors need to publish: it puts them on record. So when you have real verified experts putting their imprimatur on articles, you don't get as much runaway bullshit (it happens, but it's generally news when it does).
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
But as someone deeply involved in it, I'd say at least 75% of public academic articles fit into the "runaway bullshit" category. Granted, it's much worse in some fields than others.
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This, above all else, demonstrates that Wikia is a failing organisation, which is run by incompetents and staffed by wannabes.
That anyone ever gave him deference because of this alleged authority is an indication of how well Wikipedia follows its own rules.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
This is very selectively enforced in business. My former boss at MS, still a high-level manager in the marketing field organization in the southern US, lied for years and communicated that he was a long-time manager at IBM. Sometime after similar revelations about Lotus' arketing president, MS reassigned him to make the story go away locally. Low and behold, after all those expected to be aware of this elaborate deception were gone fromt the district, he was brought back as the "Surveillance Czar" for this southern region organization.
Are you serious? Who is this?
I can easily see how a young, gay [Citation Needed] Wikipedian found it "funny" to create a fake persona diametrically opposed to their real lifestyle ("All my students must read ''Catholicism for Dummies''", paraphrased, was one of his earlier comments), and then (getting increasingly addicted to the project) becoming trapped in their deception and rationalizing it.
http://arestudentsmiddleclasswankers.org.uk/#19nov 99b says"
... that the skills that employers are actually using and looking for are indeed the ones gained late in the day. The most valuable could have been acquired much earlier - by age fourteen, sixteen or eighteen - and we have seen strong suggestions that this may indeed be the case."
'I have always had a very strong work ethic, but have been disinterested in the academic and I firmly believe that educational qualifications should not be the main yardstick by which people are measured. If you can cut corners academically to reach the same goal this should always be done. I also believe that academic cheating is a good thing ( if you can get away with it) because it gets you through the educational process to areas of life and work where you can really prove your worth to an employer having overcome the "academic results" stumbling block.'
And later...
In Evidence and Education in our Education and Training Section there is a quote from Alison Wolf's book "Does Education Matter"
"...we cannot conclude
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Essjay was the reason I quit Wikipedia, after he suspended a user for just asking a question that had been previously asked. When I called him on his overreaching and ignorant behaviour, he refused to participate in the very processes he helped put in place to deal with dispute resolution on Wikipedia.
Being that he was so high up in the admin ranks, there was no way to argue against his wrong actions.
I feel completely elated that one of the biggest jerk admins on Wikipedia got caught being a fraud. Now, I only hope that those others who have been claiming false credentials will either disappear or get similarly nailed. And then hopefully Jimmy Wales will put some real teeth into controlling rogue admins. Maybe then I'll come back and enjoy editing there.