[WikiEN-l] On Transparency

Tue Dec 27 21:07:35 UTC 2005

 "Steven Ericsson Zenith" wrote

> 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.

I'm surprised that you're surprised.  I use my real name, but I respect the 
reasons others do not.
>
> 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.

I don't follow you at all.  We should put certain things in the disclaimer, 
against giving WP undue authority.  But if we had all real-name 
contributions, we should have to put almost exactly those things in, anyway.
>
> 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.

Concern to whom?  What kind of support?  They found a number of _mistakes_. 
The fact is that Britannica has similar mistakes, just no so numerous.

Caveat emptor still applies.  People shouldn't believe everything in the 
newspapers, nor on Wikipedia.  That doesn't make newspapers or Wikipedia 
useless.

Charles 