In the recent dustup over a Wikipedia administrator dubbed Essjay who lied about his academic credentials in a New Yorker profile, here’s how Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales responded when The New Yorker recently ran a correction:
Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay’s invented persona, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”
It is unclear from this quote whether Wales was responding generally to Essjay’s use of a pseudonym or the fact that Essjay lied about his credentials. Regardless, Wales’s response struck me, and many others, as stoutly tone deaf.
Here, now, is Wales’s current thinking on the subject, posted on Wikipedia. An excerpt:
I understood this to be primarily the matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and not a matter of violation of people’s trust. I want to make it perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on. Even now, I have not been able to check diffs, etc. I have asked EssJay to resign his positions of trust within the community.
Hmm. Did Wales really not know the scope of Essjay’s deception when he gave the quote to The New Yorker? Did The New Yorker contextually make Wales look more unbothered than he actually was in order to punish him for the original deception? Or has Wales simply seen that the blowback to Wikipedia was greater than he imagined it would be, and decided to reverse course?
(Hat tip: Amit Orit)
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I wrote something about this last time you linked the story:
http://phineasgage.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/the-good-the-bad-and-the-wikipedia/
To summarise: not caring about deceptive identities is entirely in line with the Wikipedia credo that it is the content, not the signature that matters. As the New Yorker article you linked previously pointed out, Wikipedia puts the well-read 15-year-old on the same level as the Ph.D.
So by that logic, you could argue that it doesn’t really matter if EssJay has tenure at a fancy university or not, as long as his contributions are on the mark. He’s met with the same trust (or distrust) as any other contributor on Wikipedia, presumably.
As for EssJay’s admin positions at Wikipedia, that side of things may be more problematic. You can’t check sources on administrative decisions.
I wrote something about this last time you linked the story:
http://phineasgage.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/the-good-the-bad-and-the-wikipedia/
To summarise: not caring about deceptive identities is entirely in line with the Wikipedia credo that it is the content, not the signature that matters. As the New Yorker article you linked previously pointed out, Wikipedia puts the well-read 15-year-old on the same level as the Ph.D.
So by that logic, you could argue that it doesn’t really matter if EssJay has tenure at a fancy university or not, as long as his contributions are on the mark. He’s met with the same trust (or distrust) as any other contributor on Wikipedia, presumably.
As for EssJay’s admin positions at Wikipedia, that side of things may be more problematic. You can’t check sources on administrative decisions.
Wow talk about dragging a story on ..
1st off honestly what percentage of information on the internet is 100% accurate ? Remember someone must type it in or feed the computor the information .
Secondly and most important who does OVER Value their worth to a successful company ? Even if it means fudging credentials ?
As for the New Yorker all they want is to try to create a “buzz” until the the next ANNA N Smith story comes along
Wow talk about dragging a story on ..
1st off honestly what percentage of information on the internet is 100% accurate ? Remember someone must type it in or feed the computor the information .
Secondly and most important who does OVER Value their worth to a successful company ? Even if it means fudging credentials ?
As for the New Yorker all they want is to try to create a “buzz” until the the next ANNA N Smith story comes along
For Wales to have known at the time of the New Yorker piece is small. Chances are, Wales wasn’t even consulted to talk to Jordan when the New Yorker decided to do their piece.
Wales should have known the depths of it when he promoted him to run Wikia things, and later as an arbitrator (one of the most trusted positions) on the English Wikipedia. He had met Jordan at that point and knew that the credentials were false. Wales certainly didn’t see the fact that Jordan lied about his PhD and tenureship as a problem, and it only came out in the last week that Jordan was using those falsified positions as leverage in discussions and in letters to off-wiki academics.
So that’s where the line is, I think.
For Wales to have known at the time of the New Yorker piece is small. Chances are, Wales wasn’t even consulted to talk to Jordan when the New Yorker decided to do their piece.
Wales should have known the depths of it when he promoted him to run Wikia things, and later as an arbitrator (one of the most trusted positions) on the English Wikipedia. He had met Jordan at that point and knew that the credentials were false. Wales certainly didn’t see the fact that Jordan lied about his PhD and tenureship as a problem, and it only came out in the last week that Jordan was using those falsified positions as leverage in discussions and in letters to off-wiki academics.
So that’s where the line is, I think.
The last paragraph is generating much debate. The critic’s theory is that Jimmy Wales regarded lying about credentials to the New Yorker as no big deal, but lying in the Wikipedia community was unacceptable. Thus he keeps saying that until this weekend, he didn’t realize how much Essjay was lying in Wikipedia, which is probably true, and deliberately passing over the charge that he did know for weeks that Essjay had lied to the New Yorker, but his attitude was “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”.
I had earlier sent Jimmy Wales some email to check the accuracy of the quote. He replied last night, but his reply didn’t help much in disambiguation.
It’s hard to pin him down, since he’s not stupid, and it’s very understandable that given the firestorm, he’d never want to come out and blatantly admit he didn’t care about fraud to the New Yorker.
You might enjoy these posts:
Wikipedia’s Value System
Wikipedia’s values
The last paragraph is generating much debate. The critic’s theory is that Jimmy Wales regarded lying about credentials to the New Yorker as no big deal, but lying in the Wikipedia community was unacceptable. Thus he keeps saying that until this weekend, he didn’t realize how much Essjay was lying in Wikipedia, which is probably true, and deliberately passing over the charge that he did know for weeks that Essjay had lied to the New Yorker, but his attitude was “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”.
I had earlier sent Jimmy Wales some email to check the accuracy of the quote. He replied last night, but his reply didn’t help much in disambiguation.
It’s hard to pin him down, since he’s not stupid, and it’s very understandable that given the firestorm, he’d never want to come out and blatantly admit he didn’t care about fraud to the New Yorker.
You might enjoy these posts:
Wikipedia’s Value System
Wikipedia’s values