Jimmy Wales asks Wikipedian to resign "his positions of trust" over nonexistent degrees

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Revision as of 08:58, 5 March 2007 by 207.134.56.158 (talk) (Caps in a quote)
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Sunday, March 4, 2007

Image Controversy and discussion erupted on internet forums on 28 February, 2007, when publicity was given to Essjay, a prominent Wikipedia administrator and editor, having claimed false credentials which were published in a magazine. Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales was travelling in India, and at 06:42 on March 3 he issued a statement that further information had come to his attention and he had asked the editor to resign his positions of trust within the community. At 03:17 on March 4 Essjay announced on his user talk page that he had retired and was no longer active on Wikipedia.

The affair became public when the The New Yorker issued a retraction to their article about Wikipedia which they had published at the end of July 2006, stating that biographical details they had printed about an administrator and contributor they had interviewed had been found to be false, even though he had confirmed the accuracy of these details as shown on his user page while remaining anonymous.

The Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Stacy Schiff was referred by the Wikimedia Foundation for an interview for the article to Wikinews administrator Essjay, a member of Wikipedia's arbitration committee and generally trusted member of the community.

One regular on the site is a user known as Essjay, who holds a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law and has written or contributed to sixteen thousand entries. A tenured professor of religion at a private university...

EssJay had fabricated a persona which he described on his user page on Wikipedia, presenting himself as a tenured professor at a private US university. After the news broke, EssJay claimed that the false details were intended to avoid cyberstalking.

In a statement from User:Essjay/Archives/52 the data capture quotes him as bragging that he was able to deceive the The New Yorker reporter in the interview:

Actually, I did six hours of interviews with the reporter, and two with a fact checker, but I was really surprised that they were willing to do an interview with someone who they couldn't confirm; I can only assume that it is proof I was doing a good job playing the part. Essjay (Talk) 05:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The following is an excerpt of a statement issued on Jimmy Wales talk page:

I have been for several days in a remote part of India with little or no Internet access. I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false credentials in content disputes. I understood this to be primarily the matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and not a matter of violation of people's trust. I want to make it perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on. Even now, I have not been able to check diffs, etc.

I have asked EssJay to resign his positions of trust within the community. In terms of the full parameters of what happens next, I advise (as usual) that we take a calm, loving, and reasonable approach. From the moment this whole thing became known, EssJay has been contrite and apologetic. People who characterize him as being "proud" of it or "bragging" are badly mistaken.

On a personal level, EssJay has apologized to me, and I have accepted his apology on a personal level, and I think this is the right thing to do. If anyone else feels that they need or want a personal apology, please ask him for it. And if you find it to be sincere, then I hope you will accept it too, but each person must make their own judgments. Despite my personal forgiveness, I hope that he will accept my resignation request, because forgiveness or not, these positions are not appropriate for him now.

I still have limited net access... for a couple of hours here I will be online, and then I am offline until I am in Japan tomorrow morning. I believe I will have a fast and stable Internet connection at that time, and I will deal with this further at that time.

Wikipedia is built on (among other things) twin pillars of trust and tolerance. The integrity of the project depends on the core community being passionate about quality and integrity, so that we can trust each other. The harmony of our work depends on human understanding and forgiveness of errors.

Essjay revealed his identity as Ryan Jordan, which remains unconfirmed, and a 24-year-old with no advanced degrees, who has never taught, when he was hired by Wikia, a company that runs community-based wikis.

Jordan has since posted that he was shocked Schiff would publish such information; "It was, quite honestly, my impression that it was well known that I was not who I claimed to be, and that in the absence of any confirmation, no respectible publication would print it."

Five-hundred edits were made to his talk page between 09:45, March 1, 2007 and 17:04, March 3, 2007, and the barrage of comments was expected to continue for an extended period. EssJay subsequently retired from the English Wikipedia, and requested that his bureaucrat, checkuser, oversight, and sysop privileges be revoked.

Wikipedia allows its users to be anonymous, by creating usernames as pseudonyms. However, it is considered unethical to purposely misrepresent oneself to the media, or to use unjustified claims to qualifications to support arguments with other contributors.

From a data capture of User:Essjay/Archives/52:

Nope, the Wikia profile is me. :) One of the things that tends to happen as you become, let us say, "popular" on Wikipedia is that you attract the attention of an unsavory element. There are a number of trolls, stalkers, and psychopaths who wander around Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects looking for people to harass, stalk, and otherwise ruin the lives of (several have been arrested over their activities here). It's quite unfortunate that this happens, but it all to often does. (A good friend of mine who is a minister had to leave Wikipedia after his Bishop was threatened by Wikipedia stalkers.) For those who have little to lose from thier participation here, there is no reason not to be fully open about who they are; if you don't have a boss or a family, you don't have to worry about losing your job or your family being stalked. A few people are lucky enough to actually work for Wikimedia or Wikia, and are in an excellent position: When the people who are stalking you are also stalking your bosses, you really don't have to worry about the effects.

Many people have tried many things to keep thier identities secret: They worry over every little detail they may have released, or refuse to answer anything about themselves, making it very difficult to form any personal ties. Quite unfortunately, it simply isn't possible to keep your details quiet: You will eventually say something that will lead back to you, and the stalkers will find it. My approach was different: I decided to be myself, to never hide my personality, to always be who I am, but to utilize disinformation with regard to what I consider unimportant details: age, location, occupation, etc. As a result, I've made many strong friendships here, because I've always been the person I am, but the stalkers have spent the last two years searching for middle-aged college professors with the initials "SJ" (which are, by the way, my initials) who live in the Northeast; I never had to worry that anything I said would lead back to me, because the areas they focused on, the unimportant statistical information, was a cover

I was actually under the impression that the stalkers and psychopaths were the only people who actually believed the story; a quick examination of the time I've spent here should lead to the conclusion that there's no way I could be who the statistics said I was. (This has been confirmed by nearly everyone I've talked to; I've heard "I knew it!" more times than I can count in the past two weeks.) I've been pretty upfront about using disinformation (I didn't put "I use disinformation" on my userpage or anything, as that would have defeated the purpose); most everybody who is particularly close to me knew it was a cover.

Once I accepted a position with Wikia, I was in a safe place to "come out," and I did. Before I accepted the position, I provided all my real details to Angela and Jimbo, and immediately provided the same information to Brad Patrick; I also placed it on my Wikia userpage, from where I expected it would fairly quickly make it's way back to Wikipedia. The stalkers picked up on it immediately (but couldn't believe that a 24 year old had fooled them), but nobody here seemed to notice, which I didn't find particularly odd, since I expected that everybody here knew what was going on.

So, that's the story. My Wikia profile provides my real information; some of the other sites still have old information simply because I haven't gotten around to updating them (I've been a bit busy over at Wikia). Nothing really has changed any; I'm still the person everybody has known for the past two years, I just have a different job. I've never been disingenuous in my interactions with others: I've always been myself, and have every intention to continue being myself, people just know a bit more about what I look like and where I live now. Of the dozens of people I've talked to since I "came out," all have been happy to have a face to associate with the person they know, have understood the need to be protected, and have no doubts that nothing has changed about the person they have come to know. I don't expect anyone who knows me to feel any different. Essjay (Talk) 06:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

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