Academic Credentials and Wikiality 429
An anonymous reader writes "A prominent Wikipedia administrator and Wikia employee has been caught lying to the media and 'other' professors about his academic credentials. Wikipedia's Essjay has been representing himself as 'a tenured professor of theology at a private university in the eastern United States; I teach both undergraduate and graduate theology. My Academic Degrees: Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies (B.A.), Master of Arts in Religion (M.A.R.), Doctorate of Philosophy in Theology (Ph.D.), Doctorate in Canon Law (JCD).' His real identity came to light after Wikia offered him a job: It turns out that he is really 24 years old with no degree living in Louisville, KY. Wikipedia's co-founder, Jimbo Wales, says 'I regard it as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it.' How will this affect Wikipedia's already shaky reputation with the academic world?"
Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
I see no problem.. (Score:5, Funny)
Dr. Anonymous Coward
Harvard Law
Wait, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Funny)
-Eric
Experts think so (Score:4, Insightful)
Experts rate Wikipedia's accuracy higher than non-experts
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Informative)
Wiki equality applies to the higher ups too (Score:5, Insightful)
If he had been working at Encyclopedia Brittanica as an editor, sure, worry about his work. But at wikipedia is rather duplicitous to criticize it for *both* it's egalitarian editing policy and the character flaws of its administrators. The former mitigates the latter.
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"Administrator" is somewhat of a misnomer, and many people give the position far more credence than it warrants. The fact that Essjay did not tell the truth about his personal life doesn't really influence Wikipedia's credibility at all; it's the misperception that
Re:Wiki equality applies to the higher ups too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wiki equality applies to the higher ups too (Score:4, Insightful)
This is terrible publicity, and I am surprised that Wales isn't pissed off. I know I am ashamed for Wikipedia, which I hold in very high regard. This guy makes it look like Wikipedia 'community leaders' are a bunch of amateurs that have no qualms about lying or deceiving.
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Re:Wiki equality applies to the higher ups too (Score:5, Insightful)
For example: I have a degree in philosophy, 5 years experience as a software engineer, and I'm working on my law degree. When I speak on these issues I know when to make authorative statements (BSD is not a flavor of windows) and when not to (is BSD a flavor of Linux? I never really looked at BSD.. so I have no idea.) If I claim to know about particle physics (and I may) my knowledge will be admittedly amatuer, I don't follow that field as closely as I do supreme court rulings... I have no authority in that field.
Our community rests on trust - trust that the people who say they are X are in fact X. This trust breaks down often here on
Or at least that's my take on it.
-GiH
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You'll note that when you open up the Britannica, you don't find people's names attached to the articles there. Wikipedia, on the other hand, almost has ego built right in to the system. Look at Essjay's user page [wikipedia.org]. There's an entir
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You'll note that when you open up the Britannica, you don't find people's names attached to the articles there. Wikipedia, on the other hand, almost has ego built right in to the system. Look at Essjay's user page. There's an entire section dedicated to bragging about his edit count, his longevity with the project, his position in the top 1000, etc. Tell me, is Wikipedia about producing a great research product, or is it about who has the most marbles?
Actually, that's not true. Britannica used to brag about the qualitiy of its authors (Einstein wrote the sections on relativity for instance). I actually used to work for Britannica (nobody imporant, I worked in the QA team for Britannica Online, the .com spin-off back in 2001), and that was always one of apocraphal tales of the day-gone-by, back when Sears Roebuck gave Britannica money to run the company as a public good. Britannica was ABSOLUTELY focused on getting the best authors to write thier article
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I beg to differ with you on this point, let me explain. Our community rests on the fact that it is a public community that anyone can contribute to, much like Wikipedia. Because of the constituents it is self balancing. For instance, if you say you are a professor of X and make a dumbassed/incorrect comment (whether in your area of expertise or not) there are a bunch of people here who will call you out with superior
Re:Wiki equality applies to the higher ups too (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, if I say that it is reasonably safe to assume the RIAA's case agains Tenise Baker will survive her Rule 12 (b)6 motion to dismiss because judges tend to err on the side of allowing a trial to go forward when factual questions reasonably might exist rather than risk being overturned on appeal - the authority of that statement is difficult to track. I can cite the law (which does not state that), I can point to a few cases where the issues were similar with a likewise result.. but many things in the legal world are simply not recorded. Like the rule that a police officer probably won't pull you over unless you exceed 10 miles over the speed limit - it's true, but authority is lacking except for experience and a few folks involved in the writing of tickets who can explaint that most speed tracking machines are calibrated to a 10mph +/- accuracy, and therefore tickets for less than 10 over the limit aren't strong. Except for the departments that use other than radar decices with much higher degrees of precision... but I digress.
If two
Even in
-GiH
Re:Wiki equality applies to the higher ups too (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not exactly anyone. It is possible to get banned from Wikipedia. If this person has been using those fake credentials to gain support from others while editing articles, then maybe a ban is appropriate. De-adminship is also certainly appropriate if those credentials were presented before the community approved of his adminship.
Actually, admins have quite a bit of potential to corrupt Wikipedia content, especially if they can gain the support of other admins by presenting them with false credentials. Users can be blocked and pages can be protected from editing except by admins.
But Wikipedia doesn't really have a totally egalitarian editing policy. When the content of a page is disputed by an admin and a non-admin, the admin is going to win the dispute 9 times out of 10. That might not be explicit policy, but it is the de facto reality of the situation. Admins tend to support other admins. Even moreso if the admin claims to have certain credentials.
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If this person has been using those fake credentials to gain support from others while editing articles, then maybe a ban is appropriate.
If a person is using fake credentials to gain support and actually gets it maybe both he and all his "supporters" should be banned, since "appeal to authority" is a classic logical fallacy and in no way provides evidence that any given information is true. Experts can be just as wrong as other people and they can lie. Facts need to be determined by logic, not emotional dependance upon someone's supposed certification.
Actually, admins have quite a bit of potential to corrupt Wikipedia content, especially if they can gain the support of other admins by presenting them with false credentials. Users can be blocked and pages can be protected from editing except by admins.
Perhaps one of wikipedia's requirements for being an admin should be to read and under
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The problem is that jimmy Wales has been going around touting wikipedia as a competitor to Britannica and other, more serious, encyclopedias. This just points out a major chink in wikipedia's armour: that it's largely predicated on unverified trust.
-Eric
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Random House:
trust
1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.
Not possible to have trust without verification. The word you're looking for is faith.
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There is no problem with the standing of Wikipedia in the academic community. Nobody would find citing Wikipedia in a serious paper acceptable; this doesn't change it. The fallacy is is in the implicit assumption that something like Britannica would be.
Wikipedia,
Wikipedia equality is a false premise (Score:3, Insightful)
The major premise of wikipedia functionality is that it can be edited by anyone, yes?
By far my biggest concern about this scandal is that your premise is actually false, and the falsity of your premise is directly related to the negative consequences of this affair in a very intimate way.
I understand that in an ideal world, anything on Wikipedia can be edited by anyone with no censorship whatsoever, and in an ideal world, two conflicting edits are resolved on the basis of the actual contributions with no regard to credentials or background or the identities of the contributors involved
Perfect! (Score:2)
Sincerely,
Herb Atological, CEO of Accenture
A pseudonym? (Score:5, Interesting)
His username is a pseudonym. His claimed credentials are a fraud.
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I can see why he did it, I think you can't blame him entirely. We have a whole irrational damn-near religious awe of credentials and enormous stigma against those who do not possess this "sacred currency", if you don't have a degree you're "low cog" (lower down on the cognitive chain) and hence "less worthy". The fact is our culture worships the paper. You are deemed m
Re:A pseudonym? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't care about pseudonyms, nor what bits of paper you do or don't hold. I will continue to give someone who has a doctorate in medicine, more credence than a co-worker, at least when it come to 'what to do about my back pain'.
I do however, object to someone lying about having the aforementioned bits of paper.
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Everyone can "see why he did it", and you make a few good points about our cultural reverence for (potentially) meaningless degrees (I believe I personally got quite a lot out of my own time in college, though I know all too well that the majority of my fellow students in CS "earned" the same degree as I did but couldn't code to save their lives).
But you most certainly can blame him for lying.
Re:A pseudonym? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I'll tell you what: any day of the week, if I was in a serious car accident, I'd take a surgeon with a piece of paper from an arbitrary designed academic obstacle course than an unemployed, uneducated individual with mere natural curiosity as his only credentials.
Re:A pseudonym? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't. But I do have this irrational attachment to the truth.
Thing is, I still go to wikipedia to look up info, it's become a reflex, just typing a noun appended by "wikipedia" in google. But I no longer feel good about it. Nor am I particularly inclined to help edit it when I can see that my efforts would simply be sabotaged from above by malignant indifference, blundering incompetence, and (increasingly now) outright mendacity.
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So what's your point then? Because PhDs are hard to get, and once achieved they confer social status beyond what you think they actually merit, it becomes ok to fraudulently claim you have one?
What you say about religious awe and stigma may be true in many cases. That doesn't justify further subverting the whole system by accepting fraud as an appropriate response.
I have seen from the inside the problems with the process of acquiring a PhD, and the misuse of same by people who've suffered through it. Th
Stil Full of Shit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, his revised Wiki bio now says he was an account manager for Fortune 20 company and a licensed paralegal for 5 years before that. The guy is 24. Let's assume he was this account manager for maybe a year? So he must have started the 2 year paralegal school at what? 16 or so? Yeah.
Re:Stil Full of Shit? (Score:5, Informative)
Every compulsive liar will tell you they're a somebody--desperately masking the fact that they're just another nobody.
-Eric
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Depends on the jurisdiction, some places you don't need any sort of degree to be a paralegal.
Not only that, his revised Wiki bio now says he was an account manager for Fortune 20 company
It's possible. "Account manager" isn't an especially prestigious title to start with, and he doesn't say what kind of account he was managing. Home Depot is in the Fortune 20, some minor clerical work at a local Home Depot store could coun
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This is nothing more or less than a profound appeal to improper authority, the authority being the editor in question.
This reflects one of the greatest flaws in the US educational system. I went to public schools. I took probably 8 or more history classes, none of which ever made it to WWII and half of which spent a lot of my childhood woefully mis-educated me about the facts behind "thanksgiving." In none of my classes in public school was I taught critical thinking, logic, or the rhetorical method... vital tools for properly understanding, making decisions, and communicating effectively. We barely touched upon the scie
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No, the slippery slope argument is just that: an argument. Just because something can be a fallacy does not mean it always is. The slippery slope argument can also be valid (i
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That's a good way to foist your blame on surrounding people, virtual or otherwise. You screw up and it's the "user base's" fault? Bull. You screw up and it's your fault, not mine. I reject your attempt to lob guilt upon me for your shortcomming.
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Diversity in the workplace has told me one thing: primary education in other countries, particularly former British colonies, is worse when it comes to rote memorization. I guarantee you that no one in India is getting taught critical thinking, logic, or rhetorical methods in their early education. In some areas, we may well have moved too far away from rote skills:
Well.. (Score:5, Funny)
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-BbT
Its an Encyclopedia... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Its an Encyclopedia... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nope. It's a repository of common typing.
He should be deadminned (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the only part that really concerns me. If any editor, let alone an administrator, is using fake credentials to try to bolster support for his arguments, that should be a serious concern. This seems to be the essence of the rule against sockpuppetry, though that particular rule probably doesn't handle a case where the user has only one account.
Now that this is out in the open, I think this person should be deadminned and asked to re-apply for adminship without lying.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you see a situation where this isn't true, be bold and make an effort to correct the probl
Re:He should be deadminned (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, you forgot to carry that word "supposed" all the way through. Maybe it is supposed to not matter whether the editors of Wikipedia, but when the admins are the ones these rules in the first place, it does matter who the admins are.
This might be true if a computer were implementing Wikipedia "policy", but Wikipedia "policy" is implemented by humans. These policies (which are really very sparse, most of them are non-binding "guidelines") are not enforced systematically and consistently, so of course a person's credentials come into play.
Anyway, if a person's credentials don't matter, then why not let everyone be an admin? If a person's credentials don't matter, then surely this particular admin will have no problem being re-granted adminship after a new review.
I've tried that many times in the past. It doesn't work.
Personally I think the dichotomy between Wikipedia and the real world is a false one. Wikipedia is not a MMORPG. It's a real effort to make a real encyclopedia for the real world.
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For the record, I think credentials probably do matter, and that they probably SHOULD matter in a lot of cases. But:
Because you morphed the argument. The proper extension to "credentials don't matter" is "why not let anyone be an admin?" (More specifically, anybody who doesn't have some other problems that would eliminate them.) Too many cooks and all that jazz. I'll leave it up to others to debate whether that is
Citation needed! (Score:2)
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edu.wikipedia.org (Score:3, Interesting)
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How is this any different than meatspace? (Score:3, Interesting)
You can pick out almost any organization the size of Wikipedia and I bet I can find at least one person fudging their resume, or completely faking it and probably more than one if your company has more than 50 people. All that kid would have needed was to be a few years older and he could have diploma-milled his credentials. Not much different.
Want to go through the faculty of any small or medium size community college and see how many diploma mill teachers they have on staff? Or how many people took graduate classes but never actually completed that degree they're claiming.
Buying credentials is easy, the good ones will even verify them for employment checks. Sure, sooner or later the diploma mill will be found out, but who goes back to validate credentials periodically? A few companies but not very many.
The problem with experts (Score:2)
Well
Actual credentials (Score:5, Funny)
I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.
I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.
I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college.
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Damn, that's an awesome list of "things to do when bored".
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You forgot to add:
"and I never credit the original author whose work I copy"
Hugh Gallagher by the way. Look him up - he's a published writer now.
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Re:Actual credentials (Score:4, Informative)
Then again, kids these days may not know, so I will be more careful about citing obvious sources in the future.
[1] - Hillary Clinton
[2] - Yakov Smirnoff
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Some background on the controversy (Score:5, Interesting)
Essjay's user page at Wikia, where he "outed" himself:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/wmessjay.png [wikipedia-watch.org]
Previous details from an old user page at Wikipedia:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/essjay5.png [wikipedia-watch.org]
Essjay brags about how he fooled The New Yorker:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/essjay.html [wikipedia-watch.org]
Re:Some background on the controversy (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/essjay.html [wikipedia-watch.org]
I wouldn't exactly call it "bragging", especially in light of the other sections on that page wherein he explains quite thoroughly the wikistalker element that no one has yet mentioned. I've been active on WP for 2.5 years now, and I remember Essjay from way back. I wouldn't say we've ever had much interaction, but I remember the username, and while I'm nowhere near as active as he is, I don't recall him ever using his fake credentials as an argument in support of a decision of any kind. The credentials appear to have been used entirely as a cover for real life so that the crazy stalker portion of society (which seems to be more prominent online; go figure!) wouldn't be able to track him down.
Do I agree with hiding your identity in the way that he did? Not really -- why not just claim you're a 24-year-old living in your parents' basement in Nevada? It's no less believable than saying the same about Kentucky.
Do I have a problem with what he did? Not really.
Slashdot is, as usual, blowing this WAY out of proportion. The only thing that's even remotely "wrong" about this is that he claimed academic credentials he didn't have. If nothing else, it shows a lack of respect for the effort required to gain a PhD, but that's hardly worthy of a story on Slashdot (or any other news site).
p
Authoritativeness (Score:2)
Jochen
RealName[tm]
Sheesh, no need to freak out (Score:2)
The Wikipedia Cabal (Score:4, Interesting)
So when the Arbitration Committee had elections (which Jimbo didn't want), who did he appoint that did not get the most votes? JayJG, who had 98 people oppose him going onto ArbCom, which was a hell of a lot for the position (it was over 100, but they attacked people's votes, cajoled people into changing their votes, erased questions and comments about his misconduct etc.) Filiocht had the same number of votes for him as did JayJG, yet only 18 opposing him. Filiocht is someone almost everyone can agree is fair, a lot of people have problems with JayJG and his biases. A number of people met the vote threshold and got a higher percentage than JayJG, so we thought we finally won and got him off the committee, which he had never been elected to. But Jimbo appointed him again, just like he did the first time.
Why? Because he agrees with him politically. Jimbo ran the Ayn Rand mailing list for years and is one of those Randroid nuts. He appoints people like Fred Bauder, a lawyer who was disbarred for telling one of his woman clients to pay him in sex. Larry Sanger is who built Wikipedia anyway, but Jimbo was his boss so he not only wanted to grab the glory, he denies Sanger any credit.
The problems at the top are massive, and I don't think Wikipedia will survive it. I see a split happening, and competitors, and the first real competitor will win and Wikipedia will disappear. I saw Gopher and Archie and Veronica be overtaken by Opentext on the web (anyone remember them?) and then Webcrawler and then Alta Vista and finally Google. Larry Sanger's creation is too good to not get competition. Of course, Jimbo pushed Larry aside and is ruining things. The next Wikipedia competitor will make Wikipedia history, just like Opentext is more or less history nowadays.
I Just Realized Something (Score:2, Interesting)
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He went to the same school as I did. (Score:3, Funny)
Wikipedia and credentialed systems (Score:3, Insightful)
It's no big shocker that people will lie when they have no oversight and effectively no chance of getting called on it. It happens everywhere, in government, industry, and private relationship. Wikipedia is probably full of liars. That's not to say that getting caught in a lie shouldn't come with a price, and I hope Essjay at the least loses some credibility with Wikipedians!
But Wikipedia's utility as an information source comes from the verifiable facts submitted by contributers. It is these facts, and not contributors' credentials, that are submitted to the rigorous scrutiny, the thousands of eyeballs, the selective forces, that have made Wikipedia as useful as it is now.
If anything, this whole business demonstrates why Wikipedia's lack of official recognition of credentials is a good idea, and why any sort of credential-based system like Larry Sanger's Citizendium had better have some awfully reliable connections to the real world for verifying credentials.
Crap! (Score:3, Funny)
Judith Miller (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't. The New York Times has a journalist that pushed for war with Iraq against all available evidence. She goes to the office. She's on payroll. She prints whatever she wants under the banner of the Times.
Wikipedia is no worse than the NYT, and probably better than most.
The Ivory Tower Will Withstand All Attacks! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the sort of news bitter academics have desired ever since Wikipedia first hit the mainstream.
The well-adjusted ones are fine with Wikipedia, because they understand that it will never replace true academic research.
From Essjay (Score:3, Insightful)
Essjay's comments on why he did it (from here [wikipedia.org]):
(Emphasis mine, of course.) Sooo... yeah. An interesting excuse. The constant references to the stalkers and psychopaths sounds a little paranoid... are there really people who have been trying for two years to figure out who this guy is? I mean, come on...
Jimmy's made an enormous mistake (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Leave him alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
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"That would be ideal. Unfortunately in the real world you probably won't have the opportunity to show such merit without claims to a piece of paper."
"Piece of paper"? That is SO 20th century :-)
Re:Leave him alone! (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, he's sure showed his merit to the world now. I think we already have enough misinformation in the media, don't you?
Re:Leave him alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
But getting the recognition for lying about the paper? That's crap. You've got neither the skill to get by without it, the dedication to get it, or the integrity to tell the truth about it.
No respect from me.
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Re:Leave him alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
In my case you'd lose that bet, although I probably wouldn't quite represent myself as one of "the best performers ever hired". I've been a professional software developer for about 20 years now and have never had difficulty finding a job, even though my formal education extends only as far as the high school diploma that's packed away somewhere. Lest you think that all I've done is little bitty one-offs for individual clients all those years, I'll say that if you own an American car newer than about 7-8 years old, odds are that every time you get in you see the results of my code. The FCC uses my code to verify RF coverage and interference data for potential licensees. Checked yourself in at the airport using a self-serve kiosk? Some of my code was quite possibly in that system as well. What's more, in all those 20 years I've never had a need to lie about my credentials yet somehow I've managed to stay employed. Maybe it's magic, but I suspect it has more to do with me being competent at what I do, having a fairly good idea of what HR people are looking for, and knowing how to interview well.
You're arguing that the ends justify the means, and I flatly disagree. Lying about credentials may get someone's foot in the door, but I'd have no hesitation about bouncing their ass right back out when I found out about it. They've demonstrated that honesty doesn't have a place in their value system, and that their own well-being is more important to them than integrity. That's the kind of value system that lets corporate espionage, embezzlement, insider trading, and all kinds of other fun stuff flourish.
No opportunities to show your expertise! (Score:3, Funny)
You're absolutely right. There is no way this Essjay guy would ever have been allowed to edit Wikipedia articles if he hadn't claimed to h
Theology. (Score:5, Funny)
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In real life, this could be problematic too. I know of a person who almost died because someone represented themselve as someone they weren't. When riding his motorcycle throught a field and got tangled in some kite string from loose kite, It wrapped around his neck na
Re:Leave him alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual danger he poses to the site is quite small--and that's the beauty of Wikiedia. It will survive vandals, biased authors & liars (like Essjay) but will prevail in the end at being the starting point of potentially unreliable information that will set you on your path to finding what you desire to know. Mr. Wales knows all of this and that's why he's indifferent about Essjay's lies. The thing that worries me is that Essjay might have been editing an article on theocracy and then when it was challenged in the discussion, he could refer other editors to his credentials. And even if he wasn't doing that, users could be considering everything he says being golden because of his claimed credentials.
I would never, for a minute, consider this a threat to Wikipedia's reputation, however.
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Which is why when you're doing research and moderating such a tool source is so important. There are doctors who write garbage diet books - it doesn't mean they are good. Sources need to be cit
Re:Leave him alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. Much is made of the idea of Wikipedia as a *community*, and that the strength of that community compensates for other structural vulnerabilities. The general response when someone posits mischief on Wikipedia is: "the community will catch it." So far, so good.
However, a community is composed of individuals, and the strength of that community is directly proportional to the strength of those individuals. An academic community's strength is relies on the individual credentials of it's members. Same with an athletic community (sports team), or a business community.
But the Wikipedia community members, being effectively anonymous, have no characteristics by which to be judged. Their strengths are judged solely on a subjective basis: do people trust and respect them? So far, the Wikipedia community has been doing OK in that regard, and is generally trusted and respected by the public at large.
But here comes a guy who had built up a high level of trust and respect who turns out to be highly untrustworthy. Let's face it - the guy invented a grand CV out of whole cloth. He lied, which is the antithesis to trustworthiness. So now here is a memmber of the wikipedia community who cannot be trusted, and has lost all respect. This diminishes the community, not only by the incremental loss, but by the questions it raises: who else is faking their credentials? Who else can't be trusted?
The damage from this one guy may be trivial, but it isn't inconsequential. If you pluck a hair from your head, you aren't bald all of a sudden. But if you keep doing it, you will definitely become bald, and it will be way before the last hair is plucked. It's all a matter of perception.
So - would you be okay with THIS lie? (Score:2)
If its what you do that's so important, why lie?
How about a lie like this (minor edit to story) ...?
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" Surely Shawn has the right to decide who does and who doesn't supply him with oral pleasure? I have trouble seeing where my opinion or yours comes into it. "
His wife Norma might have a different opinion ... unless that's a lie too, because after all, he's already on the record that it doesn't matter whether you lie or not - its what you do.
Nice way to miss the point, that being a liar affects your credibility, and that of the projects you work on.
Re:Leave him alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
You, sir, live in a strange world that I want no part of. This man has proven himself to be a charletan and a liar, and until he's proven to change assigning him any level of credibility is rather idiotic.
Worse, offering him a job based on that work history makes Wika look rather silly.
Re:Leave him alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
If he had just said from the beginning "I'm 24 with no degree, but I think the quality of my work addresses my fitness for the job", then there would be no problem.
But he lied about it. And if he's willing to lie about that, what else is he willing to lie about?
If you can't trust the people, then you can't trust the information they're presenting either. Fire his ass.
Re: (Score:2)
and that is why i don't edit, or trust, wikipedia anymore - corruption all the way to the top
Re:Leave him alone! (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. It's what you do that matters. This guy lies.
If anyone thinks lying about credentials doesn't matter, you're wrong. My Master of Divinity degree required learning to read Latin, German, Koine Greek, and Biblical Hebrew, then basing research conclusions on the linguistic and historical setting of documents written in those languages.
If we're talking theology, or you read something I've written, you need to be able to trust that I do indeed have those skills, and have used them honestly. Like any other kind of specialized knowledge, it's rather easy to put one over on the non-specialist.
Come to think of it, that's been the problem in the theological world for a very long time.
doc
Re:Credentials are over rated... for some fields.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Credentials are over rated... for some fields.. (Score:2)
I'm up two, it's your turn to list occupations where they "shouldn't" be needed. And, that's assuming I even agree about the elementary teaching thing.
"with a few 6 month course in teaching, public speaking and presentation, they could teach most of what is taught in public school with the exception of perhaps science"
Which would be... credentials.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly. You don't use Wikipedia directly for academic stuff. You use it as a starting point, but you never reference it. Any college student can tell you this.
'Shaky reputation in the Academic world.' Hah. It's got a great rep - as a starting point.
Re: How will this affect Wikipedia? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it wont (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't help but scratch my head when people talk about Wikipedia having a shaky reputation. Look at the About Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] page. Nowhere do they claim to be reliable or authoritative source of information. They fully disclose the fact that they're an encyclopedia "project" that anyone can edit. Everyone knows it. And that's what they are. I always thought you have to be found making false claims in order to gain a bad reputation. But I don't see any false claims here.
As for the content, of course the quality of it is questionable. You know what website you're looking at. What do you expect? It doesn't mean Wikipedia failed. They are what they say they are. Of course they'll never reach the refined, well-edited state of a traditional encyclopedia. But nobody is demanding you to pay $1500 for a gold-trimmed set of Wikipedia volumes sitting on your shelf either.
Maybe people criticize Wikipedia because they use the "encyclopedia" moniker. But this is just semantics. Wikipedia has expanded the meaning of what an "encyclopedia" can be. But if you're narrow-minded and you think "encyclopedia" must mean "something that is always right", of course you'll end up complaining.
Is nobody else actually impressed by the quality of the entries they visit? When Wikipedia started, I expected pure crap. I still expect most of it to be crap. So it's a pleasant surprise to find to find good stuff, and there's a lot of really good stuff. (The entries on discrete cosine transformation, network protocols, and a lot of religions come to mind.) For many subjects, there was no source of information on the web with an equivalent level of quality before Wikipedia. People should appreciate that and stop whining. You're on the damn Internet, you should expect garbage everywhere.
As for the guy faking a bunch of degrees, I'm not surprised. At least he didn't fake his way into a job. He faked his way onto a free encyclopedia project. Like that's a big revelation: There's a weirdo on the Internet. You can only wonder why he went to all the trouble. Anyway, it doesn't change Wikipedia's reputation at all in my eyes. The site is still exactly the site it claims to be.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the content, of course the quality of it is questionable.
If the quality of content is questionable, of course they have a bad reputation. Their reputation is based on the quality of the content. Almost 90% of the english language articles in wikipedia are are currently not well written, stable, accurate, referenced, and written from a neutral point of view according the guidelines for a "good article" [wikipedia.org] in wikipedia.
Taiwan (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Taiwan (Score:4, Insightful)
(If MSG causes obesity in humans, then why have China and Japan historically had very low obesity levels, and even today they have far less of an obesity problem than America, despite those cultures having used MSG extensively for far longer than it's been common in the USA? Methinks Americans are eating too much and exercising too little, and trying desperately to find something - anything - to let them avoid taking responsibility for their own unhealthy lifestyles...)