Just over two years have passed since the Essjay scandal erupted on Wikipedia. Some of the most bizarre aspects of Wikipedia at that time were the strange head-in-the-sand attitudes of many WP editors. More than one editor remarked that the event was a "tempest in a teapot" that would soon go away... this, at the same time that the scandal was being reported widely in the media, from CNN to ABC. It felt like Wikipedia bizarro-land. Not only were there many editors pretending the event never happened (or, alternately, that it didn't matter), there were even editors who were hostile to the suggestion of fact-checking the edits that Essjay had made while using his theology persona.

Two years later, Wikipedia has never fully recovered from the Essjay thing, judging by the creation rate of new articles and the attrition of long-time editors. It's possible many WP editors have either forgotten the event, or never knew it happened. But the Essjay scandal is still brought up when media talks about the inherent problems with Wikipedia.

One of the things that drew me to WR was being able to talk about the issue without head-in-the-sand commentary from editors so vested in Wikipedia that a simple "we need to check his edits" comment was viewed as "hostile to the project" (when in reality, any sane editor would want to check for those sorts of problems after finding out about false credentials being used in content disputes in articles).

In the two years since Essjay, what has Wikipedia learned? What measures has the site put into place to prevent future "Essjays" from using false credentials in content disputes? I know there was talk (from Jimbo Wales) about vetting identities, but that was quickly rejected by the community. What other ways is Wikipedia preventing the same abuses from recurring?


(I've posted this to "General discussion", as I felt it dealt with bigger issues than just Essjay; feel free to move as needed)

I can agree that Essjay brought media attention to Wikipedia's problems. However I do not agree that Essjay is one of main WP problems. Actually he was a minor symptom of a major disease.

I, for one, decreased my editing level on WP not because of false experts but because true one were chased away by bully admins corrupted by a power hungry clique ruling the show.

For me Wikipedia stopped being a knowledge project and started to be a reality show. Nowadays, if I edit at all, it is only to make minor corrections of specialist articles.

Don't forget this New Yorker article that appeared just before Young Mr. Jordan was unmasked.
Thanks to the Wiki-Smiley-Magic that they piled onto the writer, despite being a fairly honest
overview of WP and its problems (and Jimbo's problems with the truth), the final text had crap like this:

And after the article, they ran a disclaimer from the editor;

Emphasis mine.
That kind of thing is likely to be a little bit negative for an organization's public image, eh?

Jimbo OUT!!! Jimbo OUT!!! Jimbo OUT!!! Jimbo OUT!!!

Despite all the initial outrage over Essjay's lies, it seems that a "consensus" has since formed on both Wikipedia and the Review that he did nothing wrong. We now hear, and many of us have accepted, that lies about one's identity and credentials are normal, and no cause for legitimate complaint. Instead, those who expose the lies are the problem.

Nor do I; back then, I felt like there was more of an effort to "protect" an editor than to vet that editor's contributions, the way any other encyclopedia would. Now I just wonder what's been done to prevent the same thing happening again.



I agree, SoaY. But is the "disease" the fact that someone can still edit Wikipedia using false credentials in content disputes? Or the fact that a big proportion of the Wikipedia community will come out to "support" the editor's right to use false credentials? (Not that both aren't signs of a project in trouble...)

It's definitely worthwhile to mention Jimbo Wales' reaction to the news. Without trying to sound like a Jimbo Wales apologist (because I'm not), it seems plausible to me that Jimbo didn't realize how far-ranging Essjay's falsehoods had gone (because there were many different stories popping up in the media at that time). If Jimbo had only been aware of Essjay using a "false persona" on Wikipedia, that would be quite different than knowing that Essjay had used false credentials and had lied when talking with the New York Times. One could possibly be defensible; the other certainly is not.

PR disaster notwithstanding, one would think any organization would put some measures in place to prevent such an occurrence from happening again. Is anyone aware of such measures?

(And, finally, why is [[Essjay controversy]] at that title instead of at [[Essjay scandal]]? Does anyone truly believe that using false credentials, lying to the press (and possibly libeling the reporter in the process) is just "controversial"?)

I don't see this as a huge knicker-twister as Essjay usually didn't do much other than direct traffic.

Article edits: 1336 (8.23%)

Within the bounds of my memory this is an all-time record low rate of article editing.

Essjay simply didn't edit enough articles for his allegations of expertise to have a huge impact. I think if he had seriously tried to milk the charade in order to push some POV on a large scale his deception would have probably become obvious enough without a media circus.

Or he might have played it out perfectly. It would be possible enough, what with the internet and all, for an auto-didactic "amateur" to gain as much knowledge (about a specific subject) as a Ph.D. student (in that subject) but lack certain special but expensive pieces of paper.

In my view if we can't tell the difference it shouldn't matter much to us. Plus in any case "experts" (both genuine and phony) should still be expected to cite sources independent of themselves, just like everyone else.

The currents in your post above seem to be less about this thread, and more about a now-tarpitted thread that I have only vaguely followed since it began (because I'm out of my depth browsing that discussion). However, I will say it's becoming more and more clear that some of the same issues that haunt WP haunt WR as well, simply due to the nature of the Internet. (But as WRers are fond of saying, WR isn't an encyclopedia).

I mentioned this in a previous thread about Essjay: he'd only had substantial (more than ten) edits to three articles. Just the three. However, this is more about the reaction to Essjay's actions than about what Essjay edited. The reaction from many Wikipedians was along the lines of, "It didn't happen. And even if it did, it doesn't matter. Because in a week, no one will remember this. It will all just go away. No one's reporting this. No, we don't need to check what he wrote. Because it didn't happen."

Did you experience this?



Yes and no, IMO. Because he barely edited in the article space, his allegations of expertise probably wouldn't have amounted to much of a scandal if he hadn't used those credentials in the NYT article. Outside of Wikipedia, it became a very big deal. Inside Wikipedia, however, it wasn't 'obvious' to many people that anything untoward had happened, despite clear evidence otherwise... such as little things like ABC News reporting on the scandal.



Absolutely.

Well if there was no tabloid feeding frenzy I think most of us would have forgotten about this. Not within a week or a month, but certainly by now. The "PR disaster" was the only lasting damage. Compromised articles can be reverted or cleaned up, which wouldn't have taken more than a few minutes in Essjay's case.

Coincidently, it is only a few days short of three years since creating my Wikipedia account, and I really can't say I did more than perhaps a few dozen edits as an ip, so I was active on the site while the EssJay scandal went down. Do you know what, I never noticed it at the time? In those distant days, I was far more interested in editing articles and was likely unaware that there were admin boards and other pages (I had never set foot at WP:AIV until after I became an admin). I didn't find out the full story until I started reading here, even when I had become aware of the case during the BADSITES debates.

I think there were a lot of people like me then, and there still is now. Providing that their edits stick, or get changed for good reason, most editors are just happy to contribute a bit to their chosen subjects - it can be said that WP's less than perfect articles still provide a great many people lots of opportunity to enjoy adding their little bits to the encyclopedia. They don't know, and likely care less, that Jimbo has dubious claim to being a good project leader, or that there are power struggles between groups of editors, or that there are those who are entrusted with extra powers of who habitually abuse them but are difficult to deter (let alone remove).

For a great majority, Wikipedia is a fun place where you can add your little bit - for eternity, is the promise - and if it went away then it would be a case of finding some other website. While it may be a name that is familiar to very many, it has no history and no expectation of a future. At this time, when many established names are succumbing to the economic situation, it is important that we have some perspective; it is currently only a popular website on the currently fashionable medium of the internet, the web may yet be replaced or rendered obsolete in the next decade or five.

What then, of these battles and concerns?

Wikipedia is a big place and many many editors who stay beyond the swirl of bureaucracy - I was one of those almost until December last year, and I agree with LHTY in that it really didn't make a huge impression on me at the time either, or many of those that edited around me. I don't think it impacted much on how the wider world looks at WP though - many use it but many doubt its reliability, and my impression that that has been similar before and after.
Cas

Not an issue.

At a personal level I was angry with Essjay, because I had trusted him. But this was a storm in a wiki.

Essjay was a very capable youngster who (like many wikipedians) roleplayed and took it too far. Jimbo hired the capable youngster. The things he'd taken too far came out. Jimbo fired the capable youngster.

End of story.

Mods,

I think this thread needs to be retitled —

Recommended Title: The Learning Curve Of Wikipediots

Suggested Subtitle: __________________________

I would've done a negative slope if I could figure out how.

Ja Ja

And who could forget how Kamryn Matika adding a WR link to that article resulted in her getting blocked by ElinorD in an infamous case of BADSITES enforcement?

Except that Wikipedia's peak editing occurred around the time of the Essjay affair, and never has really recovered since. Wikipedia's own stats show this. And the WMF's own accounting for that period shows a rather obvious drop in contributions after Essjay, as Greg Kohs gleefully reported on this very site.

No, it's clear Wikipedia's reliability took a serious hit in February 2007, as seen in the statistics Wikipedia itself collects. Wikipedia is still growing. It is not, however, growing at the incredible rate that it was before '07.

...which is perhaps just the normal state of affairs when an exponential growth curve meets the limits of reality, not necessarily tied to any particular scandal or conflict.

I'd think at least 98.7% of wikipedia's users have never heard of Essjay.

Critics of wikipedia should watch out that they don't end up in the same inward-facing self-obsessed goldfish bowl as the Jimbo koolaid drinkers.

Most people don't know and don't care about such things. For better or worse, they are influenced mostly by their individual experience of reading an article on a subject they know something about and being impressed or otherwise. If they'd read one article in the media about wikipedia they are doing well.

I respectfully disagree, Dan. Oh, sure, any project is going to have a growth curve. And there's a point when it gets harder to create new articles because all the "good ones" have been taken. But in early 2007, there were still many thousands of redlinks on Wikipedia (and even today, there's no shortage of redlinks on many articles. For example, some fauna lists are still very red).

I appreciate your take on this, Less. It's sort of anecdotal, but at least you've made it clear that this was your experience, and how you think people viewed (or never viewed) the situation. And I agree that, for the most part, people don't notice what's happening behind the scenes on Wikipedia... it's just too large for one person, or even quite a few people, to see everything.

(I also appreciate the fact that you didn't pull out non-existent stats, or write "Not an issue. End of story."-type comments that only tend to stifle discussion)

Despite JzG's Duell-ist rhetoric about having reached the end of the internet, there's still a shitton of of articles on other projects which have no interwiki link to "en:". If you're interested in rivers/mountains in central Europe (for a relatively non-remote example) and know at least one other language (or can fake it well enough) hit me up.

Ironically, WP still has no article on Narcissistic Wounding, arguably the single most dominant and destructive feature of WikiCulture.

I'm sure you could write up a draft and get somebody to post it for you with appropriate attribution.

What are you basing that stat on, Doc? The majority of en.Wikipedians live in the U.S. link, where the scandal was reported extensively. More to the point, how many users abandoned Wikipedia or stayed away after hearing of the scandal? That's something we'll probably never know. But we do know that ABC is viewable in over 96% of U.S. homes, and CNN in more than 50%. Those are numbers that can be cited.



Indeed. I wasn't aware of that thread, but it has struck me as odd that some Wikipedians are claiming, or have been claiming, that there are no articles left to make. Didn't one pundit even suggest there could be as many as 50 million articles? (Though I don't know that 50 million is a good estimate). Still, 2.8 million is a long way off from that estimate.

Exactly. That was the same point I made here shortly before I left Wikipedia. The larger part of the Essjay scandal wasn't about Essjay did, but about how the reaction to his frauds exposed the moral blindness and irresponsibility of WP's leadership. And as is clear from many of posts above, the wiki-cultists still don't get it more than two years later. So in answer to Firsfron's original question: nothing. Not a damned thing.

Depends on whether they can be written faster than the source material slips into oblivion (or in some cases, is completely destroyed). This is the most critical role of wikisource, webcitation, etc.

I think I said that.

Here is the lesson that people should have learned by now:

Jimbo Wales, accompanied by his .org grinder monkey, the WMF, will keep on selling what his target market is buying — and that has nothing to do with encyclopedias.

People who are still kidding themselves about that — after all these years — are probably incapable of learning in this area.

Jon Awbrey

Um......he told a reporter from the New Yorker that he

And Jimbo kept on supporting him.
On Jan. 7, Essjay admitted he was a 19-year old student, not a PhD.
On Feb. 23, Jimbo (at Arbcom's insistence) put Essjay on the Arbcom.
On March 3, Jimbo asked for Essjay's resignation.
All reported in the mainstream media over the few months following.

I would call that a BIG PROBLEM. Too many people on this thread are dancing around it, or
claiming "it didn't have a major effect on anyone" or "nobody's even heard of Essjay".
I call BULLSHIT.


I disagree. The timing of the edit downturn on this chart is too neat, too obvious.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Nah.

Bingo. There are more than 1000 active admins. The vast majority of them didn't vote in the last ArbCom elections, most are not involved with any recognizable "cabal," and have never even been mentioned on this site. As a class, admins are more involved with meta crap than the average editors, who have mostly not heard of Essjay. Contributors are generally only dimly aware of the drama we fetishize here.

More accurately, lies about one's identity are endemic to the system, and singling out one person for it - when the number of people doing it is easily in the thousands or tens of thousands - is unfair. Although in Essjay's case, he (arguably) managed to attain quite a bit of administrative authority on the basis of his fake credentials, whereas the person you're targeting with the comment above obviously did not. So, to be even more accurate, the fact that one's success on Wikipedia is proportional to one's talent for lying is the cause of legitimate complaint, not the mere fact that people lie, which is to be expected.

If you'll recall, I myself was perfectly willing to give Essjay a pass on the fake-credentials issue when the facts first came to light, again, because it seemed unfair to single him out. It was only when he tried to excuse himself on the basis of obviously bogus things like "fear of IRL harassment" and "getting a dozen death threats every week" that I started to realize that his was no innocent piece of errant whimsy, much less a form of self-defense. He simply liked jacking with people, like so many others.

The Essjay scandal was live when I first began to pay attention to Wikipedia and its silly ways, and I was fascinated and amused by the whole thing. It was a gift, and it keeps on giving.

Some sort of award needs to be bestowed upon the man for services rendered to the highlighting of Wikipedia corruption in particular, and internet humour & drama in general. Something like this, say. Lest we forget, etc.

I think this is a legitimate fear. I don't know why you would disagree.

This is probably an exaggerated figure. He probably did receive a few threats that weren't exactly credible. It happens.
In fact if I had to bet money I'd say more of the threats came after the story broke, but who knows whether he still checked his e-mail at that point.


Well if I read that article I would have known the reporter was misled and/or had no idea what she was reporting because numbers clearly show that Essjay had about 1300 article edits and had actually written or contributed to maybe a couple dozen entries.


Actually I think he was 24 but I agree that Jimbo shouldn't be appointing people to arbcom willy-nilly and disregarding the runners-up in the previous election.
The resentment is not specific to Essjay, and it isn't because he works down at the chip shop and says he's the Archbishop of Louisville. This would apply to any hand-pick whether or not they ever pretended to have a Ph.D.

People lie about their backgrounds too, this isn't specific to Essjay either. The only thing unique about him and the only thing that did any real damage was the tabloid coverage, but he had pretty much vanished by then.

I was thinking more along the lines of a Simulated Gold-Plated Disposable Tool of some sort, but I couldn't find a suitable image on the Internet in my initial scan.

Ja Ja

Thank you, Cedric. I half-suspected this myself, but wanted confirmation from other people since I've been out of the picture off and on for a while.



Jesus! They were really going to throw it all away...

I could have mentioned that I was part of a group of editors that were extremely involved in editing Beatles related articles at the time, one of whom was Lar (being made admin during the time) and a now largely absent sysop Kingboyk, and none of us ever discussed the matter or were likely aware of it - the admins excepted. While the editors were Brit-centric, I suggest that we were otherwise a reasonable example of the general content editing editorship. As Doc says above, it must be remembered there is an incredible divorce between the editing for fun majority and the process involved contributors in the appetite for wishing to know what is going on behind the scenes, and all who contribute here should recognise that.

Anyhow, what use do I have for stats and suchlike - I am a WP admin?

The chart referred to peaks in late 2006 before declining sharply - if anything it looks like the sharp decline slows down in the first quarter of 2007 before a spike later in the year.

I can imagine the whole process of WP and WMF as being like a bit of a rollercoaster ride really, and there is a lag over how it is managed ethically from early days until now. The BLP issue being a case in point among others. I have not studied the Essjay timeline in much detail to have a firm view on who knew what when and whether what action was appropriate or not.
Cas

Which I think is something that the Essjay scandal probably exacerbated. Since one expert was unmasked as a fake, attempts to establish credentials have come under more distrust, which increases the antiintellectualism of the site.

Which means, the problem isn't the hoax per se, but the culture of anonimity.

Luís Henrique

I would probably agree that it's a legitimate fear for a Wikipedia administrator who mixes it up with WP'ers who POV-push on subjects like, say, Balkan or Middle-Eastern ethnic conflicts, BLP's of South American drug lords, or the always-volatile "batik vs. macrame" question. It's not a valid reason to pretend to be a tenured theology professor, though... is it?


Ya think?

hmmmm.... I think the project's reaction to the essjay thing was always a far bigger deal than the matter itself - it spoke pretty poorly of many, I reckon.

In other news, am I alone in presuming that Essjay is still very involved in wikipedia? It's another 'no big deal' thing in my view, but I reckon he's an admin again, and enjoying the game again.....

Yes, I've wondered myself what his account name is now.

Well, thanks for observing the obvious — no, I mean that seriously, as the overwhelming hyper-majority of Wikipediots have simply lost the capacity for phenomenology, if they ever had it.

What the little twits don't seem to get is that an Anonymous Puppet Press is not a Free Press, not the Press of a Free People, but a Tool Of Oppression.

I hate to think what will happen if they have to find that out the hard way.

Jon Awbrey

Yes, indeed. The Anonymous Puppet Press should be banned by law.

or ignored?

this is a semi-serious point - isn't it one possible outcome of the unwinding of the wiki for it to be generally understood to no more consistently reliable than a uni level newspaper, or a local rag (I know some with say I'm being kind though....)

I reckon that's more likely, and far more desirable, than strong regulation / banning etc.

The really nice thing about the Anonymous Puppet Press as a Tool Of Oppression is that the overwhelmed hyper-majority of the puppets are far too fascinated by the sawdust in their own belly-buttons to see who's pulling their strings.

The Invisible Hand Rules !!!

Jon Awbrey

PM, I suspect differently. Nobody here seems to have mentioned or reminded us that Ryan was brought to San Francisco from Kentucky by Wikia, Inc., taken out to dinner, and hired on to the Wikia staff (in January). Within two months, Jimbo had hung him out to dry in the mainstream media and fired his pseudonymous butt.

Do you think he'd be eager to pay back his "respect" for Wales by going right back into his non-profit-to-for-profit PR machine? Personally, I'd be holding a bit of a grudge, having lost my dream job in just two months' time. But, then, we all know about me a grudges.

Greg

If you think about how these things usually play out in the real world — admittedly a risky premiss in applying that to Wikiputia — Ryan, if he was smart (another chancy hypothesis), will have documented enough closet skeletons and other buried bodies to have earned himself a bullet-proof two-way non-disclosure agreement and a nice fat retirement income.

Ja Ja

Sometimes I have to wonder why there aren't more cases like this (that we know of):

It could be:
A. The Essjay incident has made people more hesitant to exaggerate their educational background or claim advanced degrees in subjects they never sat through.
B. Other people, unlike Essjay, do not believe they should/would/could have any advantage to gain by making such claims.
C. Other people are more creative and careful about covering their tracks, because they either learned a few lessons from Essjay or were smarter than him to begin with.
D. Other people, unlike Essjay, are not power- and attention-hungry enough to enter situations guaranteed to hasten exposure as a fraud.
E. It is routinely tolerated as an open secret as long as it doesn't lead to embarrassing headlines.
F. Some combination of the above.
G. Other (please explain).

Maybe this could be made into a poll if somebody wants to and can figure out how (shrug).