m →Essjay scandal: typo |
Jokestress (talk | contribs) →Responses: accountability vs. credentialism |
||
Line 129: | Line 129: | ||
**Most importantly, ''why'' should an editor want to go through that hassle? What benefits would the editor see? Would there be any reprisals for lack of revealing information? |
**Most importantly, ''why'' should an editor want to go through that hassle? What benefits would the editor see? Would there be any reprisals for lack of revealing information? |
||
* The idea may have merit, but it is half-cooked as of now. But I guess since this is the drawing board, there's no need to go back to it. Any suggestions? Answers? [[User:Titoxd|Tito<span style="color:#008000;">xd</span>]]<sup>([[User talk:Titoxd|?!?]] - [[WP:FAC|cool stuff]])</sup> 10:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC) |
* The idea may have merit, but it is half-cooked as of now. But I guess since this is the drawing board, there's no need to go back to it. Any suggestions? Answers? [[User:Titoxd|Tito<span style="color:#008000;">xd</span>]]<sup>([[User talk:Titoxd|?!?]] - [[WP:FAC|cool stuff]])</sup> 10:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC) |
||
*I would want to ensure that we find a balance between accountability and credentialsm. In my opinion, anything that increases accountability is good. Anything that increases credentialism is bad. I feel we are at the point where if you want to be an administrator, you need to submit the kind of information one would submit for any kind of sensitive volunteer work. I believe this should be retroactive for all admins, and the information should '''not''' be made public, though disclosure should be strongly encouraged. Anyone speaking to the media as a representative or having responsibilities above normal admin levels needs to have a background check and must use their real name. That may sound draconian, and we may lose some good admins, but this episode demonstrates that the project has reached a level where the more informal arrangements of the past are no longer acceptable. Now, as far as credentialism, I am very much opposed to anything that makes some rank-and-file editors "more equal than others." It's antithetical to core principles of the project. A good edit is a good edit, and I would hate to see anyone fail to question an edit or get backed down in a dispute just because it's made by some editor with letters after their name vs. some homeschooled kid or some day laborer. Edit counts and other forms of heirarchical ranking should never be invoked in content disputes. Fallacies like appeals to authority are moot if the edit is based on [[WP:ATT]]. Degrees and other personal information are interesting but irrelevant to edits. They are, however, entirely relevant to accountability. I would be very sad if this incident led to a move toward elitism, since the egalitarian ethos is part of what makes this such a grand human experiment. [[User:Jokestress|Jokestress]] 10:38, 5 March 2007 (UTC) |
|||
== Essjay scandal == |
== Essjay scandal == |
Revision as of 10:38, 5 March 2007
On 3 March 2007, this talk page was linked from slashdot.org, a high-traffic website. (Traffic) All prior and subsequent edits to the article are noted in its revision history. |
"Verified credentials"
(Again with the bad archiving practice, but I want us to take this opportunity to talk about ways that Wikipedia might be improved after this incident. I posted this to wikien-l, and am posting here to generate an on-wiki discussion here. Please stay on topic, and please feel free to delete random trolling comments (personal attacks) that do not contribute to a positive discussion of how we might grow. Not everyone will agree with this proposal, and that is fine of course, we need a healthy dialogue around the verifiability of credentials. But random accusations of conspiracy and corruption are just boring personal attacks. Let's keep this productive and positive.--Jimbo Wales 09:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
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/2005-May/022085.html
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/2005-May/thread.html 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.
added at 09:06, 5 March 2007 by Jimbo Wales
Responses
- Yes. Perhaps it doesn't go far enough, and probably it has its own problems; but it certainly seems a move in the right direction. -- Hoary 09:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- This feels to me like a bit of a distraction, so I have a different proposal to make. Could you just not appoint people to the ArbCom anymore? If a vacancy appears, we can automatically fill it with the person who got the next highest number of votes in the last election. At the very least, could you not appoint people who didn't even run in the last election? Also, could you not appoint people with a history of massive lies if you're aware of those lies? Everyking 09:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, this is a helpful start. Gwen Gale 09:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- WP:V > Someone with a Ph.D claiming that their edits are more worthy than others; what other purpose will it serve? Credential verification is nothing more than a tool for people to claim that their edits are more worthy, regardless of NPOV/V/OR, than someone elses. Not a very Wiki thing, in my opinion. Daniel Bryant 09:26, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- He addresses those worries. Working out an implementation could take some thought and time though and I do agree editors should be under no pressure to disclose credentials or that they should have sway in edits, only that those who do assert credentials should somehow make them verifiable. Gwen Gale 09:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Consensus > (A General Editor = A General Editor with a Ph.D). But, paramount to everything, is WP:V. No matter who you are, what titles you hold, anything that is contested on Wikipedia requires a reliable, third party, independant source. Having a new status of editors would blur this requirement, which undercuts on of the key foundations upon which this encyclopaedia is built. Daniel Bryant 09:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Agreed, a "new status" of editors would be way unhelpful. A citation from a reliable secondary source trumps any academic qualification. So why not ban assertions of credentials altogether? I don't think it's needed but I'd support that too. Gwen Gale 09:40, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- In theory, using credentials in a content dispute to hang the applicability of your edits on is wrong. Practise may be different; I don't know. Regardless, I would/will frown upon anyone who does what I mentioned to aid themselves or their POV in a content dispute. I can't see any reason to banning their mention, only their use as before - we've always allowed userpages to "run free" like that. Daniel Bryant 09:42, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Maybe the assertion of credentials in an edit dispute could be made a blockable thing (like legal threats), but allow CVs on user pages if they've been verified somehow. Gwen Gale 09:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- In theory, using credentials in a content dispute to hang the applicability of your edits on is wrong. Practise may be different; I don't know. Regardless, I would/will frown upon anyone who does what I mentioned to aid themselves or their POV in a content dispute. I can't see any reason to banning their mention, only their use as before - we've always allowed userpages to "run free" like that. Daniel Bryant 09:42, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Agreed, a "new status" of editors would be way unhelpful. A citation from a reliable secondary source trumps any academic qualification. So why not ban assertions of credentials altogether? I don't think it's needed but I'd support that too. Gwen Gale 09:40, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Consensus > (A General Editor = A General Editor with a Ph.D). But, paramount to everything, is WP:V. No matter who you are, what titles you hold, anything that is contested on Wikipedia requires a reliable, third party, independant source. Having a new status of editors would blur this requirement, which undercuts on of the key foundations upon which this encyclopaedia is built. Daniel Bryant 09:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- He addresses those worries. Working out an implementation could take some thought and time though and I do agree editors should be under no pressure to disclose credentials or that they should have sway in edits, only that those who do assert credentials should somehow make them verifiable. Gwen Gale 09:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- This is a very good idea in princible, but I think you highlight some major concerns yourself, mainly, that it is very easy to simple fake a college certificate, especially with the ammount of knowledge users on this encyclopedia. I'm interested as to how this would work, would it be on wiki? with a new subgroup of people created - The verifiers! My concern with this would be privacy if the verifiers had to give out personal addresses to receive documents. Also, if documents were sent to wikia, surely that would be costly to implement, with a probable large number of documents to go through and verify? RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 09:26, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- similar reservation to Daniel Bryant. My personal approach has been different- I've never claimed any credentials on wikipedia, because I think they should ideally be irrelevant. Your work should depend on its own quality and the quality of its sources, and your reputation should depend on your work. we've got everything from preteens to retirees, and I don't think a credential makes a bit of difference, it all comes down to what can be cited. Basically, verification of credentials is irrelevant if they're ignored as they should be. Essjay never should have been treated any different because of what he claimed. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:29, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Truth be told I'd also be happy with a total ban on credential citing here but if some folks want to put them on user pages, they should be verifiable. Gwen Gale 09:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Another idea similar to Jimbo's: I have an idea but I don't know whether it can be done or not. The idea is to give sensitive positions like check user and oversight etc only to people who are willing to reveal their real identity to the Wikimedia Foundation so that the Foundation is sure that these people are (in real life) as they say about themselves. --Meno25 09:36, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- I agree fully to that - to ensure that no deceit is occuring on Wikipedia for users with these sensitive permissions. Hell, I'd email Jimbo with everything he wants to know about me if he wanted it; given someone already gave away basically all my personal information in #-en-admins a couple of months ago, it's not like I care. Daniel Bryant 09:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I would be reluctant to give any clue to my RL identity, for my own personal reasons. To be frank people don't need qualifications to regurgitate fact which is all we do here. Remember "own research" is not permitted. Even if it were announced at the top of the page that it had been written by the world's most eminent professor, there is nothing to stop another less exalted editor another paragraph - that is how wikipedia works. People using bogus credentials happens all the time in real life in hospitals, schools and multi-national companies. Sooner or later Citizendum and other similar projects will have their own identical scandals - the very nature of the internet and human behaviour creates them, and unless people are going to post their passports, identity papers and utility bills on their user pages (which will never happen) - these things will be repeated. So like it or lump it we have to get real and get over it. Posting or having qualifications in itself is a minefield? - which university granted the degree, which country was the university in? Can we rely on the student from The University of Ruritania? Whatever we decide, the dedicated imposter will always find a way in. We could demand however as Daniel Bryant suggests known true identity for checkusers and those who publicly represent and speak for wikipedia - sort of give certain editors an accredited press badge. Giano 09:48, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Which is why a total ban on credential waving would be ok by me. If an editor is asked to fill a position of trust, so long as Wales has a way of doing some due diligence on the person's RL background, there are few worries. Gwen Gale 09:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- It's the right sentiment, but I don't like the solution. Too much instruction creep, to much potential for badge wearing. It's also questionable if there's any value in revealing someone's degrees without knowing who they are in real life. It's not as if a degree by itself means anything.
- What we could do as an alternative is to discourage people from claiming academic credentials, unless they're willing to provide a link to an outside website that reasonably proves that they're really who they claim to be. If somebody's a professor at some university and wishes it to be known on Wikipedia, they can simply interlink their university home page and their user page here. Zocky | picture popups 09:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- To clarify, per Giano, my suggestion is that anyone who acts in a role as an ArbCom member, B'crat, Checkuser, Oversight, Steward, Office (der), OTRS, and anything similar, should have to verify to WMF that what they claim is true. Daniel Bryant 09:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
What Daniel.Bryant said is what I meant exactly. --Meno25 10:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Privately with Wales or whomever, yes. Also make posting credentials on a user page so onerous or whatever in terms of verification, few want to do it. Gwen Gale 09:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm with Daniel Bryant and Giano on this one. If anyone is in a higher position above editor (admin and up), they should be expected to provide (privately) their credentials (if they choose to post them on their userpages) to Jimbo or the foundation. I believe it is important that editors do all they can to not post their personal information anywhere on the web. As Giano has stated, we simply use referenced work anyway, so our expertise is defined by our ability to research and cite our references.--MONGO 10:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- "...we simply use referenced work anyway, so our expertise is defined by our ability to research and cite our references"...and not our credentials. OR becomes blurred, V becomes blurred, and that comprimises our foundation principles. Anyone who holds any "positions of trust" on Wikipedia is seen by the press as representing it; whether this is desirable or not, is irrelevant - it is the current situation. Daniel Bryant 10:09, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
And what happens if they don't claim anything. People who respect their privacy and refused to reveal anything? Will they be able to have higher positions, Checkuser, Oversight, on Wiki? (Sorry if I sound harsh) --K.Z Talk • Vandal • Contrib 10:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- The fact is people claim credentials now anyway, as Essjay did. In less than 5 minutes effort, I found 50 Wikipedia Ph.D's today, and I can name another 15 off the top of my head. That was before I found Category:Wikipedians_by_degree. I once had a list of hundreds of Ph.D's here. The fact is also that people pay some attention to these, and it would be silly not too. That's not to say that any of the standard policies shouldn't apply, but every article here requires the application of judgement. Credentials are at least some indicator that judgement is well-informed, though not infallible. So, the right solution is to make credentials verifiable. In short, they're already here. They can serve a very valuable role here, just as in the real world, without changing policy at all. So, it's very sensible to provide a verification mechanism. Fear of a 'class' system are unfounded, since credentials are already out there and widely believed anyway. By the way, banning the mention of credentials is utterly unworkable, and frankly silly. Derex 10:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- I don't think it would be silly, although I have no worries about CVs posted under a verification scheme, especially if asserting them in an edit dispute is deprecated: A strong citation has sway over any academic degree and people with academic degrees are trained in using them. Gwen Gale 10:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- What are you going to do, block a professor — who has spent his entire adult life studying an issue and is struggling for days with some noob hasn't the slightest clue what he's talking about — for mentioning he's a professor? I guarantee you won't see that professor back again if you do. On the very rare occasions I edit economics articles, I avoid mentioning it because it generally puts people off if you try to pull rank. But, sometimes, it just cuts through the bullshit, and I'm not going to accept being blocked for simply stating that I do know what the hell I'm talking about. Derex 10:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- From the technical standpoint, there are significant hurdles to overcome here.
- Essentially, you would be building a database with private, personal information - who would be able to access that information? Any user groups in particular? Anyone? No one? Would the Privacy policy be the only document governing the handling of that information?
- Where would that information be stored? Which steps are going to be taken to protect that information from outside attacks? How would the end users know that a certain editor verified his credentials? Will real names be visible anywhere?
- Who would process those credentials vouchers? Would someone be paid to do so? Would current staff do so? Would more staff at St. Petersburg be required to do so? Would that place a financial burden on the Foundation?
- Most importantly, why should an editor want to go through that hassle? What benefits would the editor see? Would there be any reprisals for lack of revealing information?
- The idea may have merit, but it is half-cooked as of now. But I guess since this is the drawing board, there's no need to go back to it. Any suggestions? Answers? Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 10:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- I would want to ensure that we find a balance between accountability and credentialsm. In my opinion, anything that increases accountability is good. Anything that increases credentialism is bad. I feel we are at the point where if you want to be an administrator, you need to submit the kind of information one would submit for any kind of sensitive volunteer work. I believe this should be retroactive for all admins, and the information should not be made public, though disclosure should be strongly encouraged. Anyone speaking to the media as a representative or having responsibilities above normal admin levels needs to have a background check and must use their real name. That may sound draconian, and we may lose some good admins, but this episode demonstrates that the project has reached a level where the more informal arrangements of the past are no longer acceptable. Now, as far as credentialism, I am very much opposed to anything that makes some rank-and-file editors "more equal than others." It's antithetical to core principles of the project. A good edit is a good edit, and I would hate to see anyone fail to question an edit or get backed down in a dispute just because it's made by some editor with letters after their name vs. some homeschooled kid or some day laborer. Edit counts and other forms of heirarchical ranking should never be invoked in content disputes. Fallacies like appeals to authority are moot if the edit is based on WP:ATT. Degrees and other personal information are interesting but irrelevant to edits. They are, however, entirely relevant to accountability. I would be very sad if this incident led to a move toward elitism, since the egalitarian ethos is part of what makes this such a grand human experiment. Jokestress 10:38, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Essjay scandal
I think it's a positive step to have you acknowledged in direct terms that this was a scandal. Thank you. —Doug Bell talk 09:24, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Doug, no offence, but this isn't helpful at this moment. If Jimbo didn't think it was a scandal, my guess is that he wouldn't have acted as he did in the end. If what you really want is a sort of apology for Jimbo's initial reaction, then please consider that apologies can only be given freely, and demanding them doesn't do anybody any good. Zocky | picture popups 10:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- You're misinterpretting my comment. I not asking for an apology, I simply view his direct acknowledgement of what seems to be the community consensus as a positive step in moving forward on this issue. This comment here is complimentary, and not intended to be sarcastic, inflamatory, insulting or any other negative interpretation. —Doug Bell talk 10:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)