Wikipedia prof was a ‘fake’
p2pnet.net news:- The Wikipedika has suffered another blow to its credibility.
A professor with degrees in theology and canon law, one of the Wikipedia’s “most prolific contributors and editors” who’d contributed to an estimated 20,000 Wikipedia entries, has turned out to be a fake.
In reality, he’s a 24-year-old college drop-out, says The Telegraph. “The editor, who called himself Essjay, was recruited by staff at Wikipedia to work on the site’s arbitration committee, a team of expert administrators charged with vetting content on the ‘free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit’,” says the story.
‘Essjay’ was Ryan Jordan, “a 24-year-old from Kentucky with no advanced degrees who used texts such as Catholicism for Dummies to help him correct articles on the penitential rite or transubstantiation”.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told the Times Online he’s “personally saddened” and, “confessed that he did not take the issue as seriously as he should have done”.
Wales went on, “He got himself into this years ago, and kept it up because he saw no way out. He started his deception before we became friends, and I was not particularly aware of his alleged credentials. I know him as an excellent editor.
“Mr Ryan was a friend, and still is a friend. He is a young man, and he has offered me a heartfelt personal apology, which I have accepted. I hope the world will let him go in peace to build an honourable life and reputation.”
On the Wikipedia site, “in light of the EssJay scandal,” Wales says:
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.
Recently, Bill and the Boyz admitted they’d tried to pay well-known writer Rick Jelliffe to alter the content in a Wikipedia post.
Microsoft, “acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an open-source document standard and a rival format put forward by Microsoft”.
Wikipedia lawyer Brad Patrick says Microsoft’s actions were unethical, said Ars Technica at the time, continuing:, “Patrick feels that this ordeal puts both Microsoft and Wikipedia in a harsh light. ‘This is a hot issue, and Microsoft wanting to soften the edges on an entry raises concerns about the perceived independence of both Wikipedia and Microsoft’.
“A Microsoft spokesman said that the company tried to change the Wikipedia articles on its own, but the edits were refused. “At that point, we realized we needed to enlist some help,” he said.”
Also See:
The Telegraph – Wikipedia professor is 24-year-old college dropout, March 7, 2007
Times Online – Wikipedia chief promises change after ‘expert’ exposed as fraud, March 6, 2007
alter the content – Microsoft Wikipedia row, January 24, 2007
Ars Technica – Microsoft asks blogger to “balance” Wikipedia entry, offers compensation, January 23, 2007
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March 7th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
The Rick Jelliffe reference is old, incorrect and now out of context. Wikipedia has changed their position on the issue of retaining independent experts to edit disputed articles. Regardless of the pros and cons of the ODF vs OOXML argument, the implication that the Jelliffe incident was an attempt to subvert Wikipedia is mischevious.