Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia May Require Proof of Credentials
narramissic writes "According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, a new policy is currently under discussion by the community of users who regularly write and maintain Wikipedia that would require contributors to the site who claim certain credentials to prove they really have them. The new policy comes after one of Wikipedia's most prolific and respected editors, who went by the pseudonym 'Essjay,' was found not to be the 'tenured professor of theology' he claimed to be but a run-of-the-mill 24 year-old from Kentucky. Said Wales, 'To discover that someone had been deceiving the community for a long time really was a bit of a blow to our trust. Wikipedia is built on the idea of trusting other people and people being honest and we find that in the most part everyone is, so it was a real disappointment.'"
People on Slashdot should also have to prove that they are "Professor Know-it-alls, PHD" that they claim to be.
Wonder how many of them will turn out to be just some 24 year old from Kentucky.
Help! I've fallen in a karma hole and I can't get up!
You mean someone might try to pretend to be something other than they actually are on the Internet?!
Credentials?!?! We don't need no stinkin' credentials!!!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Why would it matter if "credentials" were accurate, if the information provided by said person(s) was accurate and worthwhile?
As a frequent editor on Wikipedia (I can indulge my need to correct grammar and spelling), I think that this is a good idea. It's ok to have the average user contribute, but people who claim academic credentials should be able to, and be required to, back them up.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Citizendium is essentially a Wikipedia fork that requires you prove that you are who you say you are. (Even though they've elected to rewrite articles now...)
If this gets adopted by Wikipedia, then I predict Citizendium will die, but many people will remember it for its influence on Wikipedia.
Hurray! This can only be a good thing. (Ok, I'm a Ph.D. candidate so I'm biased.)
I don't know what everyone was so upset about in the first place. Why would anyone trust unverified claims in the first place? His claimed to be a tenured professor "at a private university." If you won't name your university, my bullshit detector goes off, and I assume you're from either a po-dunk univeristy that isn't accredited or is just completely made up.
If it's not verifiable or reproducable, any scholar should automatically distrust it. Let people claim what they want.
Honestly, I think I'd value/trust what the 24 y/o said more. The fact he lied about it ruins this of course, but I'm much more likely to listen to Dan Everyman than I am someone who spent a good chunk of their life working towards a useless degree.
I saw this story on my Wii last night, and read the story here. But what I'm still not clear on is how Essajays "credentials" helped him? AFAIK, the current policy of Wikipedia is to cite an authoritive source for every bit of information added. Even if an MIT professor of Physics comes in and writes an article on Relativity, he's still required to cite some sort of professionally published and/or peer reviewed document to back up the claims he makes in the article. This is to protect against the possibility of original research. (A major no-no on Wikipedia.)
Was this a breakdown in that process? Were other users trusting him "just because" he claimed these credentials?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
If I was a controlfreak I would use vandalism to get control over Wikipedia.
...will not have to prove anything.
Seems like perfectly sensible policy.
I swear, I really do have those mail order degrees in Murderology AND Murderonomy.
This would have more credence had jimmy wales not offered the guy a job and didn't stand down when shown the evidence of the kid's deception.
Wikipedia has lost all credibility due to this incident. Not sure how they'll be able to restore it.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
If they start requiring "proof", where will it end? Are we going to start requiring that degrees come from accredited institutions? If so, accedited by whom?
For instance, years ago I received a PhD in Ufology from a Raelian institute. Does this "count"? Well, mine may be a bad example, as the Raelian Institute of Ufology is has a first rate Ufology degree, but what about someone with a degree in Computer Science from DeVry? Should that count?
Wales' proposal is at [[User:Jimbo Wales/Credential Verification]].
But I just revised my profile in line with Jimbo's decision that it didn't matter to lie about credentials! Now all my work inventing a fake history for myself is going to be useless?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Well... there is your problem...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Don't allow people to list credentials at all. Wikipedia content (like all content) should be just on its consistency and verifiability, not on some letters attached to someone's name.
1. no anon edits. They're almost always just vandalism and frankly how can you trust information supplied without credentials?
2. Lock articles once they're solid. I watch about 20 pages and almost all of them have dozens of revisions a day, all of which is to undue vandalism. People like Jim Carrey (for instance) are not making news daily. Just lock the damn article, then when someone proposes something new to add in the discussion page, unlock it and add it. That is, discussion pages should be unlocked, and stable articles should be locked.
3. community == good, disorder == bad. We can't have an orderly encyclopedia if anyone and everyone can edit the content. Sorry, them's the facts.
4. Derive clear policies concerning articles about commercial entities. Often, an article about a company amounts to nothing more than a single paragraph and a link to their products/homepage. When you try to confront them about spammin wiki they counter with all sorts of allegations of bias, double standards, etc.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Lying is one thing... but... if somebody is posting stuff that isn't true, isn't the nature/purpose of wikipedia for somebody to come along and edit it? If somebody is posting something that isn't referenced, isn't it correct to reference it for them?
If somebody is correctly referencing their truthful edits it doesn't really matter what their credentials are.
sig.
Or why does anyone need credentials? If you read something (either on the Internet, in a book, or even see something on TV), take it with a grain of salt. Find other sources that back it up that you know yourself are valid.
--Thomas J. Owens
- Used to run a porn site?
- Deleted from the records his own statement that his birth certificate was incorrect, two years later, and then got pissy about people who were quoting that statement?
- Encourages wikipedia admins to ban anyone who disagrees with them on content as a "troll"?
- Called one of his detractors a "disease" in your IRC channels, then denied he said it (even though it was logged) and created an entire "biography" on the person devoted solely to libeling them, in violation of publication laws and wikipedia's own "standards" for biographical entries?
- Suggested in logged, publicly available email lists for the project that "lone wolves" should start filing dishonest "complaints" with the hosting ISP against a site critical of wikipedia admins' behavior?
- Does nothing when false reports are filed by admins using the "advanced" tools like CheckUser, or when admins engage in stalking behavior or worse?
- Claims now to be the "sole founder" of Wikipedia, even though years of Wikipedia's own press releases show otherwise, since they credited Larry Sanger as "co-founder" or "one of the founders" for years prior to his creating Citizendium out of disgust for the cronyism and corruption in Wikipedia?
- Makes tons of money "sharing" Wikipedia's content to sites like Answer.com for a cut of the advertising revenue, then fraudulently claims that the site needs more money to run?
Sorry. Wikipedia's doomed. Doesn't matter what kind of damage control Jimbo tries now, he's corrupt, the admins are corrupt, the system is corrupt, and that's that.
Maybe those Britannica folks had this stuff figured out after all.... Then again, Wikipedia also has at least Five Things you're not allowed to discuss...
Three Squirrels
to support using other sources, to claim that other sources were not proper, and to push his own (anti-Catholic biased) agenda in editing.
That's why this is such a big deal.
He also claimed the credentials as "proof" of his maturity and trustworthiness to handle a lot of the business that went on. This despite his being one of Wikipedia's very corrupt administrators' circle and routinely granting support to obviously corrupt behavior by others.
Wikipedia:Credentials outlines the proposal. It comes from an idea suggested by Jimbo in 2005 and again in 2007, after the Essjay controversy. The proposal is that "Wikipedia develops a system for verifying editors' credentials, so as to encourage greater accountability for users who claim expertise in certain fields".
The only difference between "run-of-the-mill 24 year-old from Kentucky" and a "tenured professor of theology", is one wasted a butload of money on school.
Was any of the data he provided wrong? If it wasn't it reveals how unnecessary it is to hold "credentials." If his data was wrong it reveals how foolishly trusting we are of those with "credentials." Especially when you consider that all it takes to hold a degree in theology is a church meeting voting you to have them.
I wont post a link, but what about those degrees for money? I could be a doctor for just $29.95!
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
that Wikipedia is flawed because of a lack of editorial value. That's what I've said all along...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Of the many experts of all things Sonic the Hedgehog?
How am I supposed to know for sure if Knuckles really is a "big fag with a boner for tails", or if Big the Cat is "totally awesome".
Wikipedia is a joke. Look up Knuckles the Echidna, then look up William Shakespeare, and see where our society ranks on an intellectual level of 1-10.
I used to think it was a great idea. At this point, I wouldn't trust anything I read in there to be true. I was looking up some stuff about hydrocarbons, alternate fuels, etc, out of pure curiosity w.r.t the science behind some of it, and found nothing but moronic defacement and rants about Bush, kyoto, etc.
Require credentials and end Wikipedia. I sincerely doubt that any of the editors or contributors have any credentials. Those types of folks tend to get published in real world journals, magazines and books.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If someone says they have a degree from a specific school or from a school accredited by a particular agency, that could be libel if it's false. Don't allow it without a check.
If someone says they have "an accredited Ph.D. in Microbiology" well Online Diploma Mill U is accredited by Online Diploma Mills Of The Southwest and they issue Ph.D.s in Microbiology for only $19.95.
Now we do need a way to let "real" professors prove who they are if they want to. Those that want to keep a separate identity should still be allowed to make generic claims. Caveat reader.
As for new administrators, lack of willingness or ability to authenticate should be a consideration but not a blackball. Some people who got degrees in now-closed institutions in war-torn countries may not be able to easily prove they are who they say they are.
BTW, that actually happens in real life sometimes. Back in the '80s or '90s a student applied to a US graduate school. His country was in the middle of a civil war and his undergrad school campus was in the middle of the war zone and shut down. He had to dodge bullets to get into the building to get a transcript to send to the American school. They let him in. His story made the papers. I don't think anyone would do that just to prove their credentials to Wikipedia, and I don't think Wikipedia should ask them to put their life at risk to do so.
One of the great fallacies: the idea that "Dan Everyman", as you put it, knows just as much as someone who has a doctorate.
Now, let it not be said that all professors are geniuses. There are a good many who are incredibly fucking brilliant in their area of research, but it's a wonder they can tie their shoes in the morning and I'm pretty sure couldn't figure out how to change a light bulb.
I'd trust Dan Everyman to work on my car's engine at a mechanic's shop, if that was his job. I wouldn't trust him to build a supercollider.
By loading up on official sounding degrees, titles, etc, he could just bully the system.
What you end up with is people siding with him for no other reason that he "has credentials" regardless of what he does. He could post the most inane shit somewhere else but the majority of people wouldn't go so far as to look.
wikipedia has no place for anonyminity. There should be no "may do it", if someone is an adminstrator then they must prove their credentials.
Hell, the bias of some admins on wikipedia is beyond belief. You have to love some of the articles tagged as incomplete, not up to standards, or whatnot. You can tell some are pushing agendas and I would not doubt there are many more "pretenders" about that they want to admit to.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Here is what Jimbo wrote:
2 005-May/022085.html
2 005-May/thread.html
---------
In response to the EssJay scandal, I want to bring back an old proposal
of mine from 2 years ago for greater accountability around credentials:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/
At the time, this seemed like a plausibly decent idea to me, and the
reaction at the time was mostly positive, with some reasonable caveats
and improvements:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/
to read the entire thread of "An idea".
Nowadays, I bring back the proposal for further consideration in light
of the EssJay scandal. I think it imperative that we make some positive
moves here... we have a real opportunity here to move the quality of
Wikipedia forward by doing something that many have vaguely thought to
be a reasonably good idea if worked out carefully.
For anyone who is reading but not online, I will sum it up. I made a
proposal that we have a system whereby people who are willing to verify
their real name and credentials are allowed a special notification.
"Verified Credentials". This could be a rather open ended system, and
optional.
The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with
the general public. If you don't care to tell us that you are a PhD (or
that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or falls on its
own merit. But if you do care to represent yourself as something, you
have to be able to prove it.
This policy will be coupled with a policy of gentle (or firm)
discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made,
unless they are willing to back them up.
How to confirm? What counts as confirmation? What sorts of things need
confirmation? These are very interesting questions, as there are many
types of situations. But one thing that we have always been very very
good at is taking the time to develop a nuanced policy.
Just to take a simple example: how to verify a professor? This strikes
me as being quite simple in most cases. The professor gives a link to
his or her faculty page at the college or university, including the
email there, and someone emails that address to say "are you really
EssJay?" If the answer is yes, then that's a reasonable confirmation.
We can imagine some wild ways that someone might crack that process
(stealing a professor's email account, etc.) but I think we need not
design around the worst case scenario, but rather design around the
reasonable case of a reasonable person who is happy to confirm
credentials to us.
(This is a lower level of confirmation than we might expect an employer
to take, of course.)
For someone like me, well, I have an M.A. in finance. I could fax a
copy of the degree to the office. Again, someone could fake their
credentials, but I don't think we need to design against some mad worst
case scenario but just to have a basic level of confirmation.
--Jimbo
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
If I understand the philosophy underlying Wikipedia is that it's SUPPOSED to be an encyclopedia everybody can change. Admittedly this is an inherently flawed belief since it does require you trust people not to lie, slander, and vandalize it.
This change, whereas it will make Wikipedia a far more reliable tool for information, would also as I see it destroy a fundamental principle on which it was founded.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
The discovery of this deceit implies how difficult theology in reality is.
"male-oriented search engine."
Heh.
Fuck credentials. If he did a good job I don't see what his credentials were. I suspect he was pressured to put fake credentials in because people were requesting that editors have credentials.
Judge by the quality of work, credentials mean nothing more than that you've paid someone enough money to gain them.
Devoting so much of one's personal time to add high-quality content to Wikipedia, essentially a charitable cause, does not strike me as "run-of-the-mill". He was respected for a reason. Credentials only go so far. I'd rather have the grassroots underling before a tired ol' theologist that probably doesn't have nearly as much time or willpower to contribute like this supposed country bumpkin and/or plebeian.
Wikipedia is getting stuffier and stuffier. A compromise may be to allow two versions of a topic: the formal, hyperverified one, and a more "web-like" version that gives more freedom, along with a big disclaimer at top.
Much new info doesn't come from formal sources anymore. Flattened, bleached, dead trees are shrinking in influence.
Table-ized A.I.
How can I prove IANAL? Is there some sort of anti-law degree I need to get? From an anti-law school?
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
The more people know about Wikipedia, the more things like this are going to be exposed.
Eventually, the corruption will be too much, and Wikipedia as it now exists will cease to be. There may be something called wikipedia down the road, but the grand scheme - the idea of an encyclopedia in which errors are corrected by a horde of readers who see something wrong and fix it - can't function as long as those who have true editorial control, the administrators, are a hopelessly corrupt group of individuals led by another hopelessly corrupt individual.
Wikipedia's hordes of corrupt administrators already make more enemies than friends every day for the project. Actions they take like banning their critics, making the appeals processes that are supposed to hold the administrators a non-public affair (they recently "closed" membership of their unblock-en-l list for one example), and rigidly enforcing a group of shibboleths which if a user does not speak, they will not be given the time of day? Not going to work.
It is in the nature of power to corrupt; wikipedia's problem is that they gave power to already-corrupt people, and all the power has done is just made them even worse.
You mean some dude was publishing/editting/commenting on stuff on the internet despite having no verifiable credentials or specific expertise in the area? Inconceivable!
Life needs more saving throws.
The funny thing is that EssJay is now notable enough to have his own Wikipedia entry.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Which is more important after all Truthiness or Wikiality?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
... down in Kentucky you're viewed as a professor in theology if you go to church on both Saturdays AND Sundays.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I want to know where you got those mail-order Ph.D.s so I can decorate my wall too!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Now before Jimbo starts using his expertise in porn-site management to claim expertise as a web-site manager, I want to see some proof!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There are two kinds of "credentials" in today's world.
The first kind is what most people are talking about and consist of some kind of degree or certification. This proves nothing and is destructive to society and education in general.
The second kind is conveyed by intelligent people being able to look at a body of work and being able to say someone actually knows what they are talking about. You get this from being published and your work reviewed. You get this by having the respect of coworkers that know you are more right than wrong.
The second kind is hard to get whereas the first is easy for some to get. It used to be that you didn't get the second kind without the first kind. That changed when universities churned out people with degrees that knew nothing. A problem in the education system today is mistaking that the first kind has meaning and the second does not. It's not an uncommon mistake to be made.
Today it is difficult prove that you have the second kind. Proving you have the first kind is easy and meaningless.
Wikipedia would like to have people with the second sort of credentials contributing. Figuring out to prove that is going to be a real challange. Allowing people to contribute their opinions, no matter how well backed up by other people with the same opinion does not result in truth or correctness.
This is not a problem when you can go to http://conservapedia.com/. Who needs credentials when you can have all of the content of wikipedia without those pesky facts that require checking etc.
"Wikipedia is built on the idea of trusting other people and people being honest"
This is the biggest fundamental flaw in the entire project.
I like the idea that anyone can still contribute, but people with credentials get that noted so people can use that info if they feel it's relevant.
However, not all credentials are academic. Let's say you looked up the history of a large company and I was an employee of that company for 30 years. I probably have insights into the company that can't readily be backed up by a diploma, but in fact I'm the best source. And that's probably true for anything historic. To use an exact example, if you're writing about the 9/11 attack in NYC, an eyewitness to the account carries as much (if not more) weight than someone who has an academic credential.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Too lazy to implement a collaborative filtering / reputation management system.
This is an old problem - Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who would guard your guards and ensure they were metamoderating properly? As the grandparent suggested, the best overseer is the reading public themselves - if all actions are public and easily searchable, and this leads to accountability, that's a good brake against anti-social admins. However all systems can be subverted, as we've seen in this case ; the culture all comes down to the people with power - if they're trustworthy, the people they give power to will be and the site will be. If they're not, well...
How's that wikipedia koolaid taste?
Seriously, theology is a useful subject. You may believe that religion is bunk (and if you really are a professor of theology, you probably know WHY you believe it) but millions of people do not, and understanding the background to their beliefs and probable behavioural patterns can be very useful. It's just like a marketing man for a burger chain might believe the product is horrible and never want to eat there, but can influence people's behaviour by making use of knowledge about their psychology and beliefs, and so get more footfall.
You only have to look around at things like abortion laws, education, attitudes to other cultures etc. to see that an understanding of the belief patterns of many Americans is an important subject. Why do so many Americans believe garbage like Creationism despite the sheer hugeness of the knowledge base of modern science, and the way that all the different disciplines (astronomy, geology, biology) reinforce one another? If any Government decided to try and find out, instead of kowtowing to the idiots, I would expect them to have a few liberal theologians as well as psychologists and sociologists on the panel.
And no, Bible study is not theology and more than playing stone,paper,scissors is experimental psychology.
Pining for the fjords
Or does that translate as "Who janitors the janitors?" I forget ;)
Regardless, the overarching problem is just that: there is no "metamoderation." The same people who are the admins, are the people who an appeal has to go to, are the same people who are supposed to watch the actions of other admins. It's subverted from the get-go, and there is nothing to stop the abusive behavior; for even suggesting that an admin has misused their powers, you're likely to get slapped down as a "troll" by another administrator.
The arbitration committee - supposedly the "last resort" - is impossible to get to in practice, because to file a complaint you have to do one of two things:
- File a certified complaint signed by TWO users.
- Get the arbcom to agree to hear it (they're all admins themselves)
If you're blocked/banned by an admin abusing THAT particular power, you have the technical "right" to appeal to arbcom by email - because creating a new account/going to a new computer to file the complaint is "block avoidance" - but never in history have they ever even admitted to receiving emails from users trying to appeal in this manner.
The system is designed, not to be fair and open, but to be as closed and corrupt as possible.
Are you telling me Essjay claimed to be a theologian, but all he really did was peddle bullshit?
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
At Metafilter, I suggested the following sometime back. I think the basic idea is sound.
---
On the general topic of open source knowledge as far as the academic subjects go, how's this for a partial solution: oversight by credentialed experts who may be anonymous if they wish?
Here's how it would work -
1)For each of the broad science fields (physics, biology..), the WP admins make a request for participation by credentialed experts. Users submit their information confidentially and have their identity and information verified by some official channel of communication. All the verified become members of a college, say, Wikipedia College of Physics. A select number of those verified become members of an interim subject oversight committee. This is the bootstrapping phase.
2)The selected committee, once in place, assumes charge of admitting new experts and assigning nuanced declarations of expertise onto members of that college.
3)So, let's say now that you have a contentious chemistry article. All the basic aspects remain the same as before. Anyone can edit, even anonymous users. Should there be a dispute which remains unresolved after a couple of to-and-fros, then the college is approached to have the final say on the matter. Its decision is final and binding.
4)This system also allows legitimate experts to assert their expertise anonymously. Admitted members can put up a banner/icon/whatever on their user page and committee-restricted pages can list member-rolls for sake of verification. Only the college committee personnel responsible for expertise verification know of identities. For sake of accountability, these personnel may be required to have their identities be public.
5)In addition to dispute resolution, maybe the relevant members can assume charge of specific topics and pages. They then periodically review high-traffic articles within their domain.
6)In order to prevent ideological bias within a college, requirement should be essential but minimal i.e. a graduate or greater degree in that field, or current full-time pursuit of such qualification at an accredited institution.
---
I can attest that YOU are the one full of shit.
Enjoy your kool-aid.
I don't understand the problem here. Wikipedia is like Unix. Since the last ten percent (verifying credentials) requires massive effort compared to the status quo, don't worry about it. What you're already doing works in the majority of cases.
Yes, because grandparent said getting your MD is a worthless pursuit.
I read on Wikipedia that the population of elephants has tripled is the last six years. The credentials supplied were by a well-known news personality, so I would guess that this is true.
THAT FUCKER WAS PRETENDING TO BE ME! I'LL SUE!
And the reason for the caps is that I'm yelling. It's the appropriate response to a person who not only lied about being a tenured professor of theology, but stole my name.
It's been a long time.
The Wikipedia community is NOT having a serious discussion about requiring credential verification. This is an idea that is being pushed by Jimmy Wales himself. The community has no real ability or desire to perform credential verification. It's way outside of the scope of the kinds of things that the community does.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
who's done more on exposing this than I could.
You might start at his blog: http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com/
There are a number of "usual suspects" administrators, but one of the latest trends is administrators randomly renaming themselves, and leaving a less-than-adequate trail to show what the old administrator name was (such as user:Gaillimh); this is a ploy to make it harder for old abusive actions to be followed up on.
CheckUser, despite policy being that a user accused has the right to request the data be made public, has never ONCE seen this happen; on the contrary, requests to make the data public are usually beaten down, talkpages locked by other admins.
Talk pages of blocked users are routinely locked by the blocking admin, requests for administrator intervention against corrupt admins doing blocking are routinely removed without comment or with insults by 3-4 users like Ryulong and Yamla.
In Wikipedia, remember, you're guilty until proven innocent, and even if proven innocent you're "guilty of wikilawyering" for trying to prove your innocence as long as some admin somewhere wants to say so and block you. Nobody's going to stand up against them, least of all the only ones with the power to do something about it, the other administrators.
There's something amusing about saying "I just made a fool out of you, and I'm a 20-year-old web developer from Iowa!"
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Some sites are actually fairly artistic and tastefully done.
Some sites are pure smut, but are at least honest -- you know up front how much it'll cost you, and what you'll be getting.
And some sites are pure crap -- typosquatters, thumbnail galleries, nothing but piles of ads and spyware.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
this is what that lump with lots of urls in was meant to say:
l aki-Vlachou <-- no citations, two external links only one of which is in english. The english one doesn't look very authoritive the greek one looks like some kind of newspaper but a local expert would be needed to determine its quality.
e ction%2C_2006 <-- no citations and no print references, looks like it may have some decent links to official sites but again only someone familiar with the locality could tell for sure.
i m_Al_Nukhaylan <-- essentially a duplicate of information from US government websites and more general information about gitmo (whose citation if any belongs in the articles about that in general which i have not checked). Overall pretty bare bones but what is said about this particular person is adequately cited.
s <-- no citations or external links whatsoever, use of the term queen elizibeth looks rather dubious, the would tend to reffer to a ship but the link points to a person whos life is in totally the wrong timeframe.
e lo <-- once again no citations or external links
2 _Summer_Olympics <-- once again no citations or external links
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terpsichori_Chryssou
2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Route_11 <-- no citations, one external link to a cite that directly claims to be unofficial.
3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%93len <-- no citations, one external link to a person who claims to be the creator, no way of validating that claim.
4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dixon_Murray <-- we actually have what appears to be an authoritive source mentioned (not cited but the article is so short thats forgivable). I can't check the book itself without quite some effort and there is no talk page or other indication that anyone else has done so.
5: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruvian_national_el
6: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayif_Abdallah_Ibrah
7: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Muti <-- no citations or external links or assertions of notablity whatsoever!
8: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenson_and_Higgin
9: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Est%C3%A1dio_do_Rest
10: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrestling_at_the_195
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I'm not disagreeing with you (I don't really know anything about Wales, so I'm in no position to), however, while Wikipedia as an organization might be doomed, there's nothing that says that the content can't be scraped from it and used to seed some new project down the road.
Has anyone ever managed to get a full database dump of WP? Not just of the articles as they are right now -- although that would be better than nothing -- but the whole thing, including all the edit histories and talk pages and stuff? It's all GFDL, so there's nothing stopping someone from taking it and restarting the project elsewhere, if WP collapsed under its own weight.
The problem that I see, based on several other OSS/"community" projects that I've watched implode, is that generally when things start to go really badly for the people in control, eventually someone will decide to try and pull a scorched earth and will start destroying or deleting content. Sometimes this has been truly disastrous; they'll delete the only copy of the source, or the forum's database, or something like that, and attempt to hold it hostage, and sometimes in the scuffle things really do get deleted forever.
So if WP as an organization looks like it's going downhill, I wonder if there's some way that other, external, interested parties could get in there and make sure that the content -- all of it -- is protected and doesn't get destroyed during the inevitable Terminal Pissing Contest.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
From Essjay's 4th edit ever:
"This is a text I often require for my students, and I would hang my own Ph.D. on it's credibility."
Original link.
As it turns out... he had no such Ph.D.
roflmao
Trust, but verify.
was run-off-the-mill, Alexander Graham Bell was run-off-the-mill .... Should i continue and bore you out with hundreds of more ? I guess not.
What is wrong with a run-off-the-mill 24 year old from kentucky ? Is his approaches, philosophical ponderings LESS valuable than run-off-the-mill degree bitches who have gone through the scholastic academic mill ?
Ill tell you something about scholastic academic lumber mill - it KILLS THE MIND and INSPIRATION. Its just makes one a paper guzzler to take in and 'et al' hundreds of valueless academic publications each year. fuck it.
S/he who thinks, is who is valuable in my eyes. So should be in yours too.
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Credentials are a lot less relevant than good references. But there should be some checking for those who claim credentials, since there are still folk who trust that, failing to appreciate just how many people with credentials are out to lunch. When academics cite references, it can be very interesting to actually follow them up.
Loose lips lose spit.
Jean-Pierre Petit is a French scientist, retired member of the CNRS, which have been banned because he ask for truth : his detractors only wants to be anonymous. He found who they were, and for that get banned for life by kiddy-know-everything-admins. Go see for yourselfs how a little group of admin can change the neutrality of the site.
That may be, but I think the real problem is, nobody cared to check his references. As he stated:
"and I offer as my reference the text "Catholicism for Dummies" by Trigilio (Ph.D./Th.D.) and Brighenti (Ph.D.)."
Now, did *anyone* ever do the trouble of finding out if this is correct? Because, if it is, whether he's Phd or not doesn't matter; he has a basis for his claim. If it doesn't turn out to be true, then it's an inherent problem of wikipedia, where people can get their opinion voiced by citing non-existant sources.
This won't be dealt with by requiring 'proof' of ones' credentials, however. In fact, people with 'high credentials' often have quite a big ego, which add to the problem when they think *they* are right and the others aren't. (Well, it's a common human thing, after all).
On the other hand, I've experienced the same kind of 'argument' being used against me too, when giving some commonly known criticism of the Freenet project, for instance. I had to 'prove' and 'cite sources' untill I dropped dead, but they still didn't allow that criticism, because it came from me. In fact, it was just to get rid of the criticism by fanboys, disguised as being 'not according to the rules'. It boiled down to a variant of an ad hominem attack, really; it wasn't about what I said, but about who said it. Proof of the matter: someone else made similar criticism as I did, and that was kept, because ultimatly, they couldn't hide behind 'the rules' indefinately.
It's difficult to see how one could resolve the first problem, without falling in the pitfall of the second. Any such system is bound to be abused, if it wants to be 'open' to everyone. When you try to deal with one thing, you automatically restrict the other aspect. There is no bullitproof solution for it, though they might refine the system, not by requiring credentials (btw, wasn't there an article on slashdot where it was shown mixed groups work better then groups only existing of lay peopla AND better then groups solely existing of experts?), but by a constant evaluation of the 'worth' a certain wikipediamoderator has. That worth should be determined by the content/edits he made by peer-moderators and normal wikipedians (as endusers).
Thus, it would be a system like it's sometimes used by progressive governmental offices and even companies, where your superior gives a recurrent evaluation of you, but you also (well, all the ones working for the superior) give a grade to the superior. Or where teachers evaluate students, but the students may evaluate teachers too. I know this system is often criticised because of a perceived lack of quality (for instance; the teacher will let students pass if he really gets graded by students, and therefor, we can't really let his job be depended on it - which is why students only have some meaningless say in the matter), but all in all, that system really does provide an extra layer of quality, because the really bad apples *do* get to be removed faster, or at least, they are spotted easier.
If they would implement such a system in wikipedia (and I mean, a real bottom-up evaluation-system, not the poor substitute they have now), it would do a lot better then asking for credentials.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I generally don't trust any of the "Idiot's guide to X" books... they're precisely that, subject matter dumbed down enough to make people think they know something, while missing a great deal of information that is important. This is even worse when the subject matter is something like religion, rather than something concrete that one can point to (like plumbing or automobile engines).
"The Idiot's Guide to Islam" is particularly poorly written in that regard.
Wales, for all the good he has done in bringing us Wikipedia, is incredibly naive to put so much trust in people.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Successful collectives that last all have three things in common, as shown in a study of communes, collectives and cooperatives done in the late 70s. First, they are not based around a charismatic leader. This guarantees failure in the long term. Second, they have a written set of rules that outline actual consequences, that all collective members agree to. Third, those consequences are actually applied in a fair and just manner through collective decisions.
Wikipedia fails points one and three. It won't be around long in its present form.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Not that it is any kind of credible science anyway.
The problem of admins pushing their own agenda should be tackled by other admins.
No, other admins are precisely who shouldn't be judging this, because other admins are as likely as not to be doing the same thing. Admins by their nature are the powerful, and power corrupts. In the case of wikipedia, the "good" administrators are silent for fear of causing a "wheel war" or provoking the naughtier admins into a flamefest; the bad admins, meanwhile, stand up for each other when their abuses are caught, claim they are not really abuses, claim the abusing admin has a "right" to do so, attack anyone who points out their abuses as a "troll", and quickly ban or eliminate that person from wikipedia.
It's very similar to trying to suggest publicly that the Communist system didn't work in 1980 East Germany. You know what the result would have been for anyone saying so: they'd be dragged off to prison, their written works banned, their communication with the outside world stopped.
Wikipedia's administrators, as a whole, behave in a manner entirely similar to how "the Party" quashed dissent there and still does in places like China and Cuba. Anyone who catches an administrator engaging in untoward behavior, and reports it, is blocked/abused/banned from the site.
Just because someone is bright, or intelligent, or cunning, or well-read, or has a doctorate, or works on a supercollider, or knows the difference between an intron and an exon, or what-have-you does not mean they are not independent, able to cook, able to change a lightbulb, able to pick up girls, able to pick up guys, or work on an engine. As a point of fact - one that stands up to far more generalization than the ones you posit - each human has a different set of knowledge; rather as the result of being different humans.
Any sort of objective view of the whole of human 'knowledge' - necessarily an experience-based pool - is going to run across an innumerable number of conflicts. It is possible that there is objective truth, but no one individual, and indeed no non-astronomically large number of individuals will achieve it. So instead, there are things like encyclopedias, books and wikipedia.
No one made the claim wikipedia was Truth, whole and clear. But nothing like wikipedia has had such a large and wide array of people contributing to it (save maybe World War II), and it is very worthwhile in that it is - whether anyone likes it or not - a pool of human contributions, which is a great jumping off point for human knowledge. I have no objection to requiring claims of credentials being backed up - much like one has to cite claims made in articles. It allows for a layer of transparency that lets individuals judge whether there is a factual contradiction. But I hope that anonymous contribution remains there as well, because I do think the knowledge collection is more important than filtering out the noise, at present. Maybe in twenty years, when it's growth has slowed to a relative crawl we can rethink that.
But, you know, in the mean time lay off the smart people. Lots of smart people - really smart people - are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. Look at Feynman.
[Ego]out
Then again, despite my own issue with the younger generation's seeming inability to use its/it's, their/there/they're, and effect/affect correctly, I'm becoming too lazy to point it out any more.
Blind trust is rarely deserved... and I think it odd that their is the assumption on wiki* that people will be honest. Much psychological testing of humans reveals with the opportunity for gain, many will cheat (e.g., the prisoner's dilemma).
I believe that wiki* works not because of TRUST but because they system is Open, Accountable, and Transparent. Lies and other such things get found out and groups are able to form; they can work cooperatively and adversarially within the wiki* system.
http://www.hawknest.com/
Well, at least we know that most /.-ers aren't lawyers...
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
I am posting this from behind Tor due to a concern for my life. The truth is that I am a member of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America. This is both a religion and a lifestyle for me, and I was working my way up to the top of Wikipedia as a sleeper agent to be used in a time of need.
My role for the GNAA was to rig the structure of Wikipedia like a chain of dominoes, so that when the time was right our leader could push over the first one of sorts, in whichever form it might take, merely by erecting his black member; we would replace every article with an icon, and make national news in the process.
I tell all of you this as my failure has re-inspired my belief in god, and in the idea that one day that white men such as many of us might not all end up as dead, uprooted links in the ultimate evolution of the human race. Thank you and god bless.
What I think they really need is a "Web of Credibility" in the same form as PGP and Thawte have a "Web of Trust". People on the net could rate your comments/diatribes/rants on how factual they seem to be. How each person's rating of you figures into your overall credibility score would depend upon their credibility score. So, some 1337-dUdE who just flames everyone can go ahead and claim that you don't know what you're talking about, but it'll hardly affect your score. Meanwhile, if Stephen Hawking rates you as highly-credible, that would count much more.
Also, knowing that everything you put out there on the net, potentially, can affect your score (or "go onto your permanent record", as our high-school teachers used to threaten), it could make people a little more careful
We already have (or are on the cusp of having) all of the pieces necessary for this. Slashdot is only one of many sites that have things like karma, so we're already used to the paradigm of critiquing other people's comments. We also need a way of having universal identities so that people can't just create new ones after they burn one up by making asinine comments everywhere. Things like OpenID provide an entry into this... but we probably, ultimately, need something like Thawte's web-of-trust personal certificates.
Finally, there has to be a perceived need. I've been waiting over a decade for a web-of-credibility. Now, maybe this latest Wikipedia thing will provide the impetus to get it rolling. They're probably big enough to make it actually catch on.
Superficially, the Essjay case was about falsified credentials; at its core, it was about an elaborate deception that Essjay rationalized as being necessary because he held positions of trust at Wikipedia. Verifying credentials will not address the core issue of deception by Wikipedia administrators. For a longer tome on my views, please see my recent blog post.
So, what kind of credentials will you have to show to prove you are an asshat?
you're going to try to sell me some oceanfront property in Kansas?
Really, now. There are ways to put those protections in place, without making everything a behind-closed-doors proceeding. The only reason to close that list down as tightly as they did is to ensure that administrators cannot be held accountable for their behavior.
I wanted to take you seriously, but misspelling a two letter word not once, not twice, but three times destroyed your credibility.
It's been a long time.
and that should be so too - a two letter word misspelled three times should invalidate any and all ideas proposed in any given length of text.
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