From Mindspillage

On Jimmy's proposal to verify identity for people who claim credentials, after the Essjay controversy

As many others do I believe this is too bureaucratic, and I don't think it will ever be followed on a wide enough scale to be useful.

I believe that for all but the most hardcore contributors it is too much bother; they won't do it. And among the more dedicated contributors, many will be against it. There's a reason we don't simply take experts at their word—not because we do not respect expertise, but because for our purposes we need to know where the experts got what they know so that someone can independently verify it, no matter how reliable the contributor may personally be.

And how reliable that person is does not necessarily match up to how well-qualified they are... or how much information they are willing to give. There are plenty of cranks who are more than happy to prove six ways from Sunday that they have a load of letters after their names, in the hopes that you will be impressed enough to defer to their crankish viewpoint. And plenty of solid contributors who are uncredentialed, who aren't willing to go to the trouble, or who don't believe that it should be required and wouldn't want to use them to influence discussion anyway, who will not participate.

Is it wrong to claim you are something you are not in order to influence decisions? Sure, and I don't condone that. But mandatory credential verification is not something I see as effectively addressing the problem. For whatever reason, some people make things up. Most people don't lie, and I do not think that telling everyone who says on their user page "hi, I live in Arizona, I have a Ph.D. in math, and I want to edit articles about graph theory" that they have to let someone check credentials is going to go over well—nor is it necessary.

Positions of personal-level trust are different—checkusers, press contacts, and similar. And for those, I don't care about credentials, unless the credentials are in some way related to what they are doing—just identity, that they are who they say they are. Already we ask that stewards prove they are over age 18; checkusers should be the same. I'm sure we will be more stringent about checking on the identities of press contacts in the future. It is reluctantly that I can accept restricting users from being able to fill these positions without proving identity, because I want to trust that people will not misrepresent themselves, but I recognize that they do not always do so.

As for admins? I'm afraid it may even be counterproductive. It implies that credentials and identity are important to adminship. And this is exactly the wrong impression. It says that we care what kind of standing our admins have for adminship—separate from their roles as content editors. (And many of the most well-regarded and prolific content editors are not admins.) There is nothing about adminship that needs special qualification other than experience with the site. I care that people who are contributing content are not backing up their statements with false authority—false credentials, misquoted references, hoaxes, anything of the like—regardless of their status as admins or not. There is nothing about the position of admin that requires us to know anything other than their history with the site. (The press likes to make a big deal about admins, but if we are doing something in response to press alone against our better judgment we are in a sad state.)

Even assuming we all thought this was a great idea and we were all on board, who is going to be doing the checking? How deep is this going to be? Is someone who has a diploma mill Ph.D. still able to say "I have a a Ph.D." or will all instances needed to be marked with "unaccredited"?

I am afraid this is a knee-jerk response, and I am also afraid that saying to the media that we are going to do it (and that is what has been said so far) foolishly commits us to something that may not be a good idea even if we had the resources to do it. And so even as I am for knowing the identities of those in positions of trust, I am against this proposal.