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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!
Credentials?!?! We don't need no stinkin' credentials!!!
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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'.
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
Wales' proposal is at [[User:Jimbo Wales/Credential Verification]].
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.
- 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.
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".
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 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.
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.
... 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
To my mind, it's not so much that he didn't have any credentials, as it is that he lied and claimed that he did. If he lied about that, what else has he lied about? How can I trust the article now?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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.
Too lazy to implement a collaborative filtering / reputation management system.
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
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.
And who are you to say what is a valid field of study and what isn't. Do you think there is no place for philosophers in our world (studying theology, to me, seems very close to philosophy, please correct me if I'm wrong).
Just because engineering and science degrees will land you a career making lots of $$$ doesn't mean that all other disciplines are useless, or as you say, a group of morons.
Are History profs useless? Ancient literature profs? Art profs? Human society values all knowledge, not just scientific. To deny entire schools of thought as "moronic" is incredibly narrow thinking.
I got nothin'
The funny thing about elite, self-selected academic fields is that they tend to offer almost no opportunity for employment outside the academic realm. This does a great job of weeding out the idiots very quickly. Anyone who stays in must feel they have at least some chance of success after grad school, and since we're already calling it an elite field, that makes them pretty smart. Nice, huh?
... you'd be pretty formidable in conversation, to say the least. So let me just give a round "fuck you" to parent poster and anyone else who buys into the whole math/science/quantitative dominance complex thing, because it's crap. The smartest mathematicians and physicists I know freely admit that high-level mathematics and proofs have a whole lot more to do with creativity and expression than boring, rote, quantitative numerical ability.
But did you consider any of that? No. I guess I should expect no less than to find such arrogant left-brained snobbery on a site like this, but rarely is it made so blatant. I happen to know someone who did a PhD in theology at an elite ivy-league, met others in her department at social functions, etc. They were all incredibly smart in ways that you silly dilettantes here can barely dream of. Imagine if, instead of wasting 5-9 hours a day staring into a screen, jerking off, watching YouTube, and updating your blog, you spent all that time reading and discussing classic works of philosophy and history by some of the greatest minds in both the eastern and western tradition. For years on end. Uhh, yeah
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.
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
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.
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." ---
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.