[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made nearly 2 years ago

Mon Mar 5 19:22:54 UTC 2007

Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 3/5/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Oh man please no. Way too buracratic. People wanting to avoid it will
>> would have to remove such claims even when true before running for
>> adminship which wont look good.
>>     
>
> Why won't it look good? I don't believe there's a problem with
> removing claims, or perhaps adding an {{UnverifiedCredentials}}
> template.
>   

I would be opposed to either one of those.  My user page currently 
states that I'm a PhD student in computer science, and it would be quite 
a deviation from our normal practice---and not particularly nice---if 
someone were to remove that sentence, or tag it with some sort of 
"WARNING: USER MIGHT BE LYING" template.  I'd be okay with not being 
able to put an "Officially Verified" tag on it (though I think that has 
downsides for other reasons), but I would be much less okay with someone 
actively removing or tagging it as a possible lie when they had no 
reason to believe it to be false.

Mandatory verification for claims of being a specific person has a 
little more going for it IMO... impersonating "Professor Foo of College 
X" could damage the reputation of Professor Foo, a specific actual 
human, so the claim might warrant a higher bar for reasons similar to 
the Biography of Living Persons concerns.  Plus, verification that 
someone is a specific person requires far fewer judgment calls than 
credential verification.

-Mark