[WikiEN-l] On Transparency

Tue Dec 27 20:22:25 UTC 2005

A brief contrarian point of view.  If Wikipedia is to succeed in any 
measure to move beyond its tabloid status then transparency is essential. 

That is, every admin must necessarily have their identity exposed and it 
surprises me somewhat to see the resistance here - and I find it hard to 
justify.

Authority (in the sense of an encyclopedia) comes because the 
individuals involved are transparent and respected in some conventional 
sense.  Hidden identity provides no basis for authority since the 
landscape of individuals is unknown and the changes to that landscape 
impossible to track. Such that, even if a group of anonymous admins is 
able to command respect for a period, there is no guarantee, no way to 
judge, that a group of admins have the same capacity in the future. 
Indeed, if the current group of admins do manage to establish public 
confidence then the public is immediately at risk since that group can 
be opaquely usurped.

The short end is that for the long term welfare of Wikipedia admins - 
all contributors - need to be transparent - otherwise Wikipedia is 
simply a propaganda engine.

That the journal Nature should give any support to the scientific 
articles in Wikipedia is a cause of great concern - since Wikipedia is 
not a specialist encyclopedia they have by inference given unfounded 
credence to the whole.

With respect,
Steven
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stevenzenith