Talk:Essjay controversy/Archive 6

Archive 1

←

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

→

Archive 10

Protected

Resolved

We now have 5 editors (at least) edit warring on this article. Discuss it here please. I started warning you individually but it seems more and more of you are jumping in. As such, I've fully protected the article (no doubt, on m:The Wrong Version). Again, sort this out here Glen 10:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of The Wrong Version, Quack just gave a faulty edit summary and reinserted that out of context POV letter quote again...[1] Nothing we can do about that right now until it's unprotected, of course, but I find it ironic given the "Do not act like Essjay" summary he wrote earlier when someone removed the quote[2] and how adamant he's been about condemning the unethical practice of lying on Wikipedia. --tjstrf talk 10:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Moving along to the subject of this thread....

This version of the article is an exceeding improvement over the version currently locked.

Strengths:

• A compelling Introduction. The prior version, the one now showing, did not even have a real one!
• Excellent background information. The info is essential to understand for the reader not already long-acquainted with Wikipedia. For those of us already acquainted, it may seem superfluous, but it is nothing of the sort. Journalistic articles often take up a story in the middle somewhere. Encyclopedias should not.
• It reads like an encyclopedia article rather than a loose collection of snippets of the news.
• It provides a superior article structure. See comment just above.
• It clearly makes this article one about Wikipedia. Because this controversy is! It never was (or should have been) a biography. With the article about Wikipedia, it makes available sources required to craft this into a full, compelling narrative without gaps.
• It does the above without going beyond the references cited. It contains no original research, something impossible for me to even do since I am limited to gaining knowledge of this from the very same sources everyone else is.

Weakness:

• It could stand having inline citations re-incorporated. Once the version is restored, it may be quickly done collaboratively. If you cannot cite something from your knowledge of the sources, place the cite tag since someone else probably can.

C.m.jones

Please unprotect, I want to add some information... Arcticdawg 10:38, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I really don't think that version is better. It seems to hostile to Essjay and really, we do not need that much information about wikipedia at the beginning. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 10:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm still confused about why Larry Sanger is so extensively quoted and referred to in the proposed version. Yes, I know the history. That doesn't mean his personal opinion, with extensive quotes from a blog (!) are any more significant than that of any other former Wikipedian's. As well, the language is really excessive. The opening paragraph:

The Essjay controversy is among the most publicized controversies about Wikipedia to date. It began in early 2007 when it became known that a prominent English Wikipedia editor, administrator and short-lived Wikia employee going by "Essjay" had lied about his age, background, and academic and professional credentials to Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Stacy Schiff during an interview she conducted for The New Yorker magazine for an article about Wikipedia. The public revelation of Essjay's deception, along with the flurry and breadth of media coverage that soon followed, spurred public debate about Wikipedia like none prior. Critics decried the incident as evidence of their concerns about Wikipedia's accuracy, article-creation system, non-vetting of its contributors and administrative personnel, and even the legitimacy of the Wikipedia project as a whole. Wikipedia itself went into a shocked phase of introspection over numerous of the very same issues, which as yet remain without closure.

What I would edit to:

The Essjay controversy is among the most publicized controversies about Wikipedia to date. It began in early 2007 when it became known that a prominent English Wikipedia editor, administrator and short-lived Wikia employee going by "Essjay" had lied about his age, background, and academic and professional credentials to Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Stacy Schiff during an interview she conducted for The New Yorker magazine for an article about Wikipedia. The public revelation of Essjay's deception, along with the flurry and breadth of media coverage that soon followed, spurred public debate about Wikipedia like none prior. Critics decried pointed to the incident as evidence of their concerns about Wikipedia's accuracy, article-creation system, non-vetting of its contributors and administrative personnel, and even the legitimacy of the Wikipedia project as a whole. The Wikipedia community itself went into a shocked phase of introspection over numerous many of the very same issues, which as yet remain without closure.

I agree that the prior version requires work, please do not misunderstand me, and the opening paragraph gave me quite some concern. Can people live with this re-edited version of the opening paragraph? Risker 11:33, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, for a start he was not, at the time, "a short-lived Wikia employee". He was a recently-appointed Wikia employee, no doubt. There are other problems with it. E.g. there is just too much interpretation and resort to cliched phrases when we talk about a period of introspection, issues remaining without closure, etc. It is true that many of us are discussing it, but there are literally millions of users who are not obviously introspecting at all, and it is not even clear what issues need to be "closed" at this stage. Let's just state the undisputed or well-sourced facts in objective, neutral language, rather than adopting journalistic cliches. Metamagician3000 12:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with User:C.m.jones's version. Too much editorializing and original research not to mention the fact that if removes so many inline cites. Essentially User:C.m.jones's version undoes the work of numerous editors and is a massive change that is perfectly normal to see other editors reverting. We're supposed to be bold but not reckless, User:C.m.jones' edits are the latter. If that version comes back I'll be one of the editors reverting it out. (→Netscott) 12:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. User:C.m.jones' edits have been wantonly PoV, have not been sourced under WP policy and have contained bits of original research and blatant editorializing. User:C.m.jones might want to take his version to a blog? Gwen Gale 13:01, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

To summarize: It appears there isn't really much dispute here after all - the consensus here on the talk page is that the User:C.m.jones revision is not suitable. However, the article as it exists right now is nowhere near the quality standard we need for a page that is no doubt getting tons of hits. Suggestions on how to proceed? Risker 21:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Unprotect and let the article evolve as it will? If anyone breaks that... 3RR or whatever, deal with it then. --Dookama 21:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, it's been protected long enough and eseveral proposed changes have queued up below that should be dealt with. Dookama, the policy's at WP:3RR. It says you can't make the same revert more than 3 times in a day or you get a (usually 24 hour) block. --tjstrf talk 21:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

There is no consensus here, not even slightly remotely and in the tiniest minute way. We have 3 users who say no and two who say yes. As I said before, the only way to get input is to leave the article up for half of a day. I do intend to revert to give it a chance in these regards. Two or three editors have no right whatsover to hijack an article revision. A fair course of allowing editors to actually view it widely - on the article page as an article - is how real consensus can be obtained. C.m.jones 00:58, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

C.m.jones, maybe you're not familiar with Wikipedia policy but if you're making drastic changes like you're attempting to do here then you've got to have consensus for them. This obviously you do not have. Let's drop this line and move on now. (→Netscott) 01:02, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you might want to read what I just said rather than snowballing. C.m.jones 01:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

My recommendation: Do like most good editor's do and propose your so far non-consensus changes here on the talk page and build a consensus for them. Then once you've established a consensus, institute them. It is not very good form to be holding the article hostage as you are while trying to implement a new version that has 0 consensus. (→Netscott) 01:08, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

My recommendation: Do like most good editor's do and propose your so far non-consensus current article here on the talk page and build a consensus for it. Then once you've established a consensus, institute them. It is not very good form to be holding the article hostage as you are while trying to prevent a new version that has not had chance to build consensus. C.m.jones 01:10, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Your response is laughable, as an article matures I would argue that it inherently becomes a consensus version. Your edits are not of an "evolutionary" type and so this is mainly why you're encountering the resistance you are. Again your version undoes the work of numerous editors. It's normal that those editors aren't going to agree with such an undoing. (→Netscott) 01:15, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I find myself agreeing with Netscott's position. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 01:11, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

C.m.jones, six editors have written on this talk page that they do not agree with your proposed revision. The article has been protected for 14+ hours now. I've proposed a third option here [3], which may not be any more successful at reaching consensus, but it does seem that it is time to move on. Consensus has to be built for proposed changes, not for existing articles. Risker 01:16, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree inline citations are better, yet this version of the text of this article is a vast, VAST improvement over the version currently showing. The text does not seem to go beyond the available sources - and believe me, I have followed this mess extremely closely since it began. Certainly nothing in the text appears made up. It already provides an improved structure. CyberAnth 01:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Help me out please, CyberAnth and C.m.jones - I cannot get past feeling the extensive sections on Wikipedia and Larry Sanger's comments are unhelpful at best. Taking those out, and removing the verbal excess, leaves us with less of an article than we have now, as far as I can see. Risker 01:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC) EDIT: This article absolutely must have inline citation as well. Perhaps one of you could work up this proposed change with the inline citations so that we would all be clear exactly why you feel there is no hyperbole in the proposed version. Risker 01:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm getting the distinct impression C.m.jones and CyberAnth will continue to edit war if I (or another admin) unprotects. Yet, this has been protected long enough. If the edit warring continues I will not hesitate in reprotecting and issuing 3RR block(s) for disruption. I suggest a consensus reached here before any drastic changes are made. It seems Risker has proposed somewhat of a compromise - perhaps this is a good starting point. Unprotecting now Glen 04:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Credentials versus reliable sources

Resolved

It's interesting to see that many have criticized wikipedia for relying on reliable sources and not credentials and now they attack wikipedia because of the possible influence of false credentials by Essjay. Editors should have ignored any credentials and accepted only contributions that were reliably and properly sourced. This way Essjay could have said he was Stephen Hawking while he was only a 11 year-old boy and still his properly cited contributions would have been perfectly acceptable, while his unsourced claims based solely on his credentials (even though he was Stephen Hawking ;-) should have been dismissed as POV. I don't know why this issue was so harmful to wikipedia. It's all about politics and people who are afraid of freedom of speech and free content. People who want to control everything are afraid of wikipedia. As an example:

“ "It's another very good reason not to trust editorless media," added Mr. Andrew Keen, author of the upcoming book, Cult of the Amateur, which examines how such participatory Web sites threaten U.S. values and the economy. ”

[4]

He is afraid of lack of control of people's thoughts, and he also wants to earn a few bucks promoting his devious book against freedom. How I would like to know George Orwell thoughts on this subject. Regards Loudenvier 18:45, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

This talk page is not for personal opinions on the article subject itself, but rather discussion of how to improve the article. Though you make a good point at the beginning. --tjstrf talk 19:02, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think your point is rather excellent. The Essjay controversy isnt so much about one user, but about criticism of Wikipedia. That criticism might focus on certain aspects like policy, process, or article quality, but in the end its largely aimed at attacking Wikipedia and even open culture as a whole. -Ste|vertigo 01:47, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

CNN

Resolved

Can someone please add this to the media list? thanks! - Denny 21:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/03/08/wikipedia.credentials.ap/index.html

Done. -- Avi 22:00, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• This is not a new article -- it's the syndicated AP news report already listed from the previous day. There are multiple places it has appeared--Leflyman^Talk 22:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• • What we really need is to have someone go through and prune the lists, IMO. Even better, switch to Harvard referencing and then leave off the laundry list of links, but that's just my opinion. -- Avi 01:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Two degrees?

Resolved

According to the Wolfson article, Essjay had two doctorates. According to the initial article, it was a doctorate in theology and a degree in canon law. I believe his old webpage said the same. Although we can (and I have) sourced the two doctorate claim, since it is more likely that the wolfson article is in error, unless all canon law degrees are doctoral, perhaps we should just write "two degrees" and leave out the doctorate? Just because we cannot put in original research, even if we know it to be true, should not mean we are FORCED to put in sourced information that we know may be false. Then again, attributability, not truth, is our motto, so I'd like to hear some comments from y'all. Thanks. -- Avi 05:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

When it comes to accuracy I think WP:BLP trumps WP:ATT. (→Netscott) 05:25, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Does "living person" apply to someone who can not be proven to be living? (SEWilco 05:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC))

Ryan lives, and can his relationship to Essjay has been properly attributed. He should be treated with the same courtesy we give to everyone, his deceptions notwithstanding. Having lost his good name and positions in wikipedia, and his job in wikia, should be more than enough. There is no need for him to be further pilloried by wikipedians, at least, that's my opinion. -- Avi 05:53, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia have enough information to know when he is no longer living, or does his BLP status extend forever? (SEWilco 06:01, 9 March 2007 (UTC))

How about we worry about that in, let's say, six months . I think his biologically-active status at current is not a matter of debate. We should all live so long that we have to worry about the death by natural causes of a 24 year old :) -- Avi 06:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Set aside, assumed to still be living. May be reconsidered in future situations when WP:BLP is invoked as relevant. (SEWilco 06:08, 9 March 2007 (UTC))

Essjay claimed two doctorates (actually four, including the two honorary degrees).[5] -Will Beback · † · 05:41, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Avi 05:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Retitle? 'Fallout from the controversy'

Resolved

A small suggestion, but I think "Reaction to the controversy" or "Issues resulting from the controversy" might be more NPOV. To me, "fallout" seems to fit with those media outlets that go overboard in calling the controversy a 'scandal'. Kavri 06:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, would the following quote from the NPR interview with Jim Wales, cited above, be useful in this section?

(transcribed by me, time on clip is at 15:10/23:30)

“ Wales: ...but I think it will be a little while before we really settle in on a policy its a, the way we operate, its a community website and the community really discusses things and thinks about them. We don't really do a whole lot by top down decree or decision, it's really a matter of finding consensus. ”

--Kavri 06:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I concur, Kavri. The current "fallout" section can be merged with the "Wikipedia" subsection of the "Reaction to Controversy" section that now exists. That quote seems to fit in well. (I'll confess to discouraging deficiencies in my knowledge of wiki-markup and permit someone who is more fluent in it to insert this.) Risker 06:47, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

 Done I have organized each, separate and different section with respect to Reaction to controversy and *Outcome from the controversy. *Note the title change. Further, I have incorporated the "Mr. Wales quote" too. QuackGuru ^TALK 08:15, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I dont understand the relevance of Jimbo's quote - it makes no sense there. For example, he's referring to a policy, but no background as to what policy he's even talking about? Glen 08:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

See the section on this talk page called Proposed changes to Wikipedia as a result. WAS 4.250 09:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

No, I mean within the context of the article - it seems disjointed Glen 09:44, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Spelling change

Resolved

I have reverted a change "honourable"->"honorable". Although the editor's rationale (US English for US topics) is perfectly logical, this is a direct quote, word-for-word, from a source. We should retain the original spelling. 131.111.8.99 18:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Sources should always be quoted as they are. Honourable is hardly a spelling mistake, SqueakBox 19:00, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep, never ever alter a quote, no matter how mangled, never mind the spelling here's ok. Gwen Gale 19:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

(sic) could be added to an obvious typo, eg EssJay, but honourable is not a typo. Nor is it true, as the edit summary implied, that British people cant spell, SqueakBox 19:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The spelling is correct if you are English and wrong if you are American, period. Please invest in a dictionary, they are wonderful things. --Tom 19:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Invest in adictionary? What one of those horrible paper things that gives you eye strain. Given the number of free online dictionaries this would be a rather pointless waste of money, methinks. Investing in an American dictionary wouldnt be any good for a Brit anyway as you'd never be able to find the word you were looking for, SqueakBox 19:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Uh... I don't agree with that at all (and I own several dictionaries), but the source now uses "honorable". Not sure if it was edited or just misquoted to begin with, but it should now stay at "honorable". —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 19:12, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Why don't you crack one of those dictionaries open and read it and get back to us unless its an English/British one of course :) Anyways, is this really what Wikipedia has come to? Awesome! --Tom 19:15, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

What's with the hostility and personal attacks? Calling people "thick" who disagree with you isn't cool, dude. Not sure what gave you that impression, but it's wrong. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 19:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

This is an American dictionary, shall I keep going? Gwen Gale 19:17, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for making my point! Did you read the link? Man people are thick. --Tom 19:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, what are you talking about? Gwen Gale 19:24, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

If you read the link, in the examples they use "honorable". That seems to be a "universal" dictionary which is pretty cool. It gives the spelling in like 15 different languages. Anyways, I am just fooling around and mean no harm or offense. Please have a pleasent day. ps my spelling SUCKS so I am the last person who should be having this conversation, cheers! --Tom 19:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Truth be told it's not at all wrong if you're an American. Perhaps inappropriate for an American publication, perhaps affected for an American but no matter, quotes should never be altered, it's the road to chavel, I mean, someone tweaks it here, then someone else tweaks it 10 years later, then again 50 years later and after awhile it's got aught to do with what was said to begin with. Gwen Gale 19:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The source does seem to say "honorable". Am I missing something? WjBscribe 19:16, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see was originally sourced from a British article.... WjBscribe 19:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

We need to quote the source verbatim whatever the spelling is, this US/UK thing is a red herring, SqueakBox 19:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Per WP:MOS, "..with respect to British spelling as opposed to American spelling, it would only be acceptable to change from American spelling to British spelling if the article concerned a British topic." (and one can be sure vice-versa). No matter, I've swapped out the source so that the quote corresponds to an American spelling. (→Netscott) 19:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It wouldnt be acceptable to change the spelling in a quote merely to follow alleged guidelines that I am sure dont encourage changing quotes, SqueakBox 19:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Please read other comments. The source now reads "honorable". Thanks. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 19:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

What an absurd discussion topic this is. Wales said a word out loud that is represented as "honorable" in the English he uses. I'm glad someone found a US source that spells the word the way he and Essjay do, so we can put this to rest. Moncrief 19:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

<sarcasm> This article is about a controversy. It is not about Essjay or his spelling. </sarcasm> Risker 19:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe this discussion deserves its own Wiki article. Anybody want to start it :) --Tom 19:31, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

That's the wikipedia way and wikipedia is doing wonders for UK/US relations as a result of dealing with tricky spelling and naming issues, SqueakBox 19:29, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

On Conservapædia, they wouldn't have this problem.  ;-) Anville 20:17, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Nor are conservapedia an internationmal encyclopedia, strictly a (US) national one, SqueakBox 21:51, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Haha now I am being thick :) What's funny? Gwen Gale 20:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, uhm, I read the link. Oo! Aye, they sound so very keen on American spellings, wonder if they have a clue about the etymologies though, all that political wankering over them on both sides of the pond way back when. Gwen Gale 21:47, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

If we are only arguing about a US/UK spelling - does that mean we are now close to concensus on this article ;) - Munta 20:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

GOOD LORD. What a long, vehement discussion about a single letter! 131.111.8.98 22:05, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Isn't this all a bit non-U? <ducks> .. dave souza, talk 22:44, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

See my talk page in a tick for a tale about s 'n z then :) Gwen Gale 22:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Can we transfer the huge list of news sources to the talk page?

Resolved

I've just printed the article as it exists now, and the list of media mentions is almost as long as the article itself. Since the article is still being actively edited, I wouldn't want to delete any of the news sources just yet, but it is really weighing down the page. Can we move that list over here to the talk page for now? Risker 19:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, in the absence of any comments telling me NOT to do it, I am going to move the non-referenced news sources over to this page in about an hour. If anyone has a concern about it, please say so now. Risker 03:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

"weighing down the page" <-- what does that mean? --JWSchmidt 03:18, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Two reasons - they just take up a huge amount of space. I know it's very analog, but a lot of people print Wikipedia pages. Secondly,and now more importantly - these external links, many of which are already included in the references, are not adding anything to the article right now. People included them in the earlier development period of the article, as made sense at the time; however, now that things are slowing down, and more of these sources have been mined for their useful information, having them on the page gives them undue weight. I cannot think of another article that has this many external links.Risker 03:33, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Essjay "retired" from wikipedia?

Resolved

"In March 2007, Jordan announced his retirement from Wikipedia."

He was asked to resign. Is, "retired" the best way to describe it? It sounds like an unnecessary euphemism IMO. Malamockq 02:27, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

You're confusing Wikia and Wikipedia, methinks. It is meaningless to ask someone to resign from Wikipedia. --Gwern (contribs) 02:35 10 March 2007 (GMT)

"Wales asked for Jordan's resignation from both his volunteer roles on Wikipedia and his paid job as Community Manager at Wikia."

""In March 2007, Jordan announced his retirement from Wikipedia.""

Direct quotes from the text. Malamockq 02:41, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, his user page says he has retired. Somewhere around here there is a "resigned" template too, so it is reasonable to assume there was a conscious decision in which term to use. Risker 03:00, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo asked Essjay to resign from his positions of trust within the community. Essjay could have continued as an editor (without being an administrator, bureaucrat, checkuser, arbitrator, etc.), but chose not to and to retire (the account, at least) instead. They refer to two different things. Resign from positions of trust, retire as an editor entirely. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 03:03, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Comments

Resolved

- or at least finished

Hi guys! It really sad that the guy actually a 'con'. You can be a 'con' of yourself but never be a 'con' of credentials..it will lower the image of wikipedia..che 05:40, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

He might have lied, but he was not a "con". -- Ned Scott 06:01, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Back to the letter again

Resolved

Aside from the webcite link, has anyone else seen a reference to this letter in any of the dozens of media reports? If not, doesn't this become more or less self-reference? Risker 17:12, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

It's in the Guardian article which is cited as support and even includes a quote:

"There was a letter sent to a professor, in which his phony credentials were used as part of an endorsement of Wikipedia's value and accuracy: "It is never the case that known incorrect information is allowed to remain in Wikipedia." Later, describing fooling magazines, he bragged about "doing a good job playing the part".

I had checked the bragging statement a few minutes ago and I remembered having seen the letter referred to also. Gwen Gale 17:18, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah thanks, I'd missed that. Risker 19:53, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

QuackGuru's reverts

Resolved

QuakGuru has also reverted back to the ragged, PoV, bloggy factoring scheme. I don't think that's a very helpful reaction to the lifting of protection. Gwen Gale 21:59, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm extremely inclined to revert User:QuackGuru's problematic changes but I'm holding off in the interest of seeing the article not become locked again. (→Netscott) 22:00, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it should be reverted, it is a step backwards. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 22:01, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I have restored the factoring and structure but have left the images in. QuackGuru, please heed the need for other input ok? Gwen Gale 22:06, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm really disappointed in you User:QuackGuru for just leaping ahead without discussing. You still have not provided a rationale for including each of these images. We need to discuss this; much as I hate edit warring, these images are all problematic and we need to have a better reason for having them there than "there's no rule against it." Keeping anything in this article that is not supported by reliable, outside sources makes it a target for AfD. Risker 22:15, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree. Gwen Gale 22:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Erm, User:QuackGuru has reverted all the way back again. Is this bordering on true 3rr or what? Gwen Gale 22:21, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Given User:QuackGuru's inappropriate editing behavior I'm now thinking that the article's come off of protection too soon. (→Netscott) 22:25, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I have organized the article. The other version was clutter and hard to read. QuackGuru ^TALK 22:27, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

The last diff looked mostly cosmetic to me. -- Kendrick7^talk 22:29, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Those "cosmetics" turn it into a bloggy, strident mess. If you can't see that, there's not much more I can say. Gwen Gale 22:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I didn't see the part Risker just rm'd. Yeah, that is kinda bloggy. -- Kendrick7^talk 22:35, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

The headings have all been reverted back to versions that were improved upon some time ago. I concur that protection came off too soon; there was insufficient discussion prior to unprotection to warrant the change. Risker 22:36, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I was assuming good faith, but the edit warring has continued. Not much choice but to reprotect. Trebor 22:42, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Problem with wording in 'Wikipedia Critics'

An edit war over this sentence? who also says and is reported to be co-founder of Wikipedia which Wales says is inaccurate? Can't anyone see what's mangled about this one? Gwen Gale 12:09, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Gwen, I've started a new section for your comment, as it isn't part of the discussion about the edits that were done by Risker. While there was a side discussion about the co-founder issue, it was talk page discussion, brought in in passing as a side note, and in fact, with requests for it NOT to set off another round of talk/edits. However, since there is an edit made at some point in time that you have issue with, I've taken the liberty of starting it as a new section seperate from the current one which was primarily concerned changes to references. Also, it would be clearer if you either say what you changed, or, specified what the problem was and suggest a change, rather than an open call of "Can't anyone see what is mangled about this one"? It saves the problem of presumption over what one considers 'mangled'. Thanks. -- Kavri 13:38, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If you can't see the grammar issue in this sentence there's not much I can do to help you. Gwen Gale 13:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Gwen, I agree the sentence isn't worded well, however, it would make more sense to me that if you are going to comment, that it either you make a valid question asking for opinion, or make a statement about changing, or wanting to change, a section, then to rhetorically (my presumption on your response to my post is that you meant the question rhetorcially) ask "Can't anyone see...? Also, in my opinion, I find that your response of 'there's not much I can do to help you' unproductive in what was a call to make a question/concern clearer for everyone involved. If you want to make a post regarding your edit, than asking the general populace if they can't see what is mangled makes the onus on you to be clear. -- Kavri 14:02, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey Kavri thanks for your input on this. I stand by my comment that if an editor can't see a glaring, quantitative syntax botch there isn't much I can do. I think it was helpful for me to hint that an editor can ask for minimal standards of literacy (or basic heed) here. Moreover, the flawed sentence was being constantly replaced in an edit war. Ok, having said all that, I know you only want to see reduced conflict here, me too, so I think your comment is cool either way. Gwen Gale 14:31, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Is that sentence still in there? I thought we'd gotten rid of it about 18 hours ago.... Risker 13:41, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

It was replaced through edit warring, I fixed it. Gwen Gale 13:43, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I am out, I really don't appreciate having my edit summaries labeled as misleading. Call Sanager whatever you want, but it seems that whatever his role in wikipedia was, it should be mentioned for context.--Tom 14:02, 14 March 2007 (UTC) ps, I was not edit warring either, if that was directed at me, I made one revision and I am now FINISHED!

Gwen, I find your edit disingenous. You quoted the line, "who also says and is reported to be co-founder of Wikipedia" which I do believe reads rather poorly, however, you reverted to a version pre the compromise of 14:59, 13 March 2007. In fact, I thought your language referring to an 'edit war' a bit strong, but didn't mention it. However it appears you are the one continuing the 'edit war' by reverting back not to the version before the section you quoted, but going all the way back to a version that preceded the compromise which had consensus. Not only was Denny's version an end to that round of reverts, but was even suggested by myself as a possible policy for all 'co-founder' controversy.

I have re-verted the wording back to the compromise version, suggestd by Denny - (cur) (last) 14:59, 13 March 2007 DennyColt (Talk | contribs) (compromise version, both Wales & Sanger listed as "a founder") - and hope that the compromise can stand, rather than opening up the 'co-founder' issue again at this time. For now, it is a workable solution until some sort of consensus/policy is reached. -- Kavri 14:48, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, truth be told I think I went back to the wrong version is all, thanks for fixing that. I'm ok with the compromise. I stand by my remarks about care and heed but any editor who doesn't agree can blow me off, this is a public wiki (as I'm wont to say), after all. Cheers! Gwen Gale 14:52, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Apologies extended for presuming bad faith, re: "you are the one continuing the edit war". It was a somewhat reasonable assumption, but then again, assumptions are what get most of us into hot water to begin with. Thanks for letting the compromise stand. -- Kavri 14:57, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I do think Tom was unfairly singled out, as his revert was to the consensus form, and that his edit statement in no way was 'misleading'.

I have gone through the history, trying to glean where things went wrong:

• Glen re-vertd to take out 'a founder' despite previous consensus on the 'co-founder' issue.

• C.m jones re-verts Glen, but not back to the previous version, he is the one that entered the unwieldly phrase, "who also says and is reported to be co-founder of Wikipedia which Wales says is inaccurate" that Gwen pointed out

• Gwen re-verts to the previous, which was unfortunately Glen's re-vert on the consensus version reached earlier:

• Tom changes the re-vert squabble back to the agreed on consensus form.

While Tom's reaction seems strong to me, I do not know what previous circumstances led up to his frustration of the situation. I would hope if he reads this, he would understand that though Gwen's summary remark was unfortunate, that she herself seems to be acting from Glen's revision forward...and I would hope that his contribution isn't halted because of this incident alone. -- Kavri 17:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, perhaps I should shoulder some of the blame for this confusion. When I revised and tightened the sources in this section, I failed to note that somewhere before I started working, the phrase describing Larry Sanger as "a founder" had disappeared already in an edit before the one I used as the baseline. After all the work of finding a compromise solution on this issue, the absence of that phrase should have been obvious to me. It wasn't an intentional disruption, simply an oversight. Risker 18:37, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to chime in, no big deal or offense taken. I probably over reacted above. I am just not use to being accused of edit warring since I really try to avoid that(except in Gwen;s case :) ) just kidding! Anyways, carry on and remain calm and civil! Cheers! --Tom 18:43, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Block Quote Format (Proper Style and Structure of Article)

• Wikipedia community

Speaking personally about Jordan, Wales said,

“Mr. Ryan [sic] was a friend, and still is a friend. He is a young man, and he has offered me a heartfelt personal apology, which I have accepted. I hope the world will let him go in peace to build an honorable life and reputation.”

This is just mainly a style issue. Proper style and structure of this article is essential. Both quotes should be in block quote formats. One is in block quotes and the other is not. This is odd and abnormal to me. I suggest both be put in block quotes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Essjay_controversy&diff=115132676&oldid=115131062 < I do not understand this edit. Any suggestions. QuackGuru ^TALK 19:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

<blockquote> is for long quotes that, stylistically, should be separated from introductory text. That quote is very short and short quotes should always be integrated into paragraphs rather than physically separated. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 19:55, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Where is that stated in policy. Or is this your humble opinion. Lets be clear. Also, this situation is different. There are two quotes. It looks abnormal one is in blockquotes and the other is not. It does look better in format with both being in block quotes. (Thinking.) I could find and add another quote from Mr. Wales and then it would be necessary to have block quotes thereafter. Thank you. QuackGuru ^TALK 20:05, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Well first of all, I learned it in grammar school. Second of all, it's explained on the VERY front page of Wikipedia's Manual of Style, so no, it's not "my humble opinion" (could you be any more smarmy, by the way?). Third of all, you are seriously suggesting finding a quote for the expressed purpose of being able to use a second <blockquote>? You're kidding with this, right? —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 20:08, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Blockquotes are not meant for short quotations: Wikipedia Manual of Style and Block quote which says "Generally speaking, a block quote is used when cited text is four or more lines in length." Gwen Gale 20:11, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Quack, if you have further questions, please review WP:Troll#Pestering first, thank you. Gwen Gale 20:17, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I already was thinking of adding more quotes to color the picture earlier. Afterall, I am the one who added the Essjay quotes and I believe quotes are a direct way for readers to understand the scope of this event. I will leave it up to the Wikipedia community to decide about the block quotes. QuackGuru ^TALK 20:21, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Mind, editors may take excessive quotes in an article as nothing but a way to throw in slanted PoV by breaking up the encyclopedic narrative and WP:NPOV#Undue weight, which might in turn be taken as more disruption. Please take heed before setting off on that tactic, thanks. Gwen Gale 20:26, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

QuackGuru... It isn't "up to the Wikipedia community to decide about the block quotes.", it is the accepted Style (Strunk and Whites "Elements of Style" is a short but good style book, btw). The people that are talking to you are correct, and inline quote is usually for a sentence or two, possibly more if they are very short sentences, a block quote is for longer quotes. My basic rule of thumb has been, if a quote goes across three or more lines, it could reasonably be blocked. I did actually see your concern earlier, checked the quotes, and they did in fact conform to accepted style. Um...as a side comment, while bbatsall might have been a bit flip, it seems to have been in response to your challenging with a policy call and assuming it was his opinion. I learned most major style points, including quoting, in high school myself. I think perhaps it is the continued arguements, large and small, that cause people to be frustrated with you at times. Perhaps you could save the arguements for the larger questions, than to challenge people continuously, even on minute points. Please? -- Kavri 01:50, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

First sentence

The first sentence says:

"The '''Essjay controversy''' arose in [[February 2007]] after ''[[The New Yorker]]'' magazine noted that prominent [[English Wikipedia]] editor and administrator '''Essjay''', later identified as '''Ryan Jordan''', was found to have posted false information on his Wikipedia userpage about his age, background, and academic [[credentials]].<ref name="Guardian">{{cite web | url = http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2028328,00.html | title = Read me first | accessdate = 2007-03-07 | last = Finkelstein | first = Seth | date = [[March 7]] [[2007]] | work = Local News | publisher = [[The Guardian]] | archiveurl = | archivedate = }}</ref>"

The New Yorker says:

EDITORS’ NOTE:

The July 31, 2006, piece on Wikipedia, “Know It All,” by Stacy Schiff, contained an interview with a Wikipedia site administrator and contributor called Essjay, whose responsibilities included handling disagreements about the accuracy of the site’s articles and taking action against users who violate site policy. He was described in the piece as “a tenured professor of religion at a private university” with “a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law.”

Essjay was recommended to Ms. Schiff as a source by a member of Wikipedia’s management team because of his respected position within the Wikipedia community. He was willing to describe his work as a Wikipedia administrator but would not identify himself other than by confirming the biographical details that appeared on his user page. At the time of publication, neither we nor Wikipedia knew Essjay’s real name. Essjay’s entire Wikipedia life was conducted with only a user name; anonymity is common for Wikipedia admin-istrators and contributors, and he says that he feared personal retribution from those he had ruled against online. Essjay now says that his real name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught. He was recently hired by Wikia—a for-profit company affiliated with Wikipedia—as a “community manager”; he continues to hold his Wikipedia positions. He did not answer a message we sent to him; Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay’s invented persona, "I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it."

at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/31/060731fa_fact?currentPage=6

WAS 4.250 20:16, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I've added a citation from the IHT to support use of the word "false" in the header. Gwen Gale 20:52, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I updated the first sentence based on your source. Please overview. :) Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 09:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

"Academics" section

The subsection of "Reactions" titled "Academics" sounds like it is presenting the opinions of academics on the controversy. Brock Read of the Chronicle, however, is not an academic; he is a journalist who writes for an academic audience. Given that opinions among academics onabout [to clarify] Wikipedia have always been very divided (and given that representing a non-academic as an academic is kind of the whole point here), it seems like a key distinction. Chick Bowen 19:49, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, didn't pick that up. However, the issue here is not whether Read is an academic, but whether his article in the Chronicle is a suitable source in terms of WP:A for the assertion of an effect on "Wikipedia's credibility – especially with professors who will now note that one of the site's most visible academics has turned out to be a fraud.". alternative views are put in the comments on that aricle, and here in the following sentence citing Dr Nicola Pratt – together the hopefully provide a WP:NPOV account of both viewpoints. Any clarifications in mind? .. dave souza, talk 20:03, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for making the clarification. I made one very small additional change, since I wanted to make clear that the report wasn't based on a survey of professors or some such; it was Read's prediction of how professors would react. Chick Bowen 21:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks good, ta. ... dave souza, talk 18:24, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Article in Maclean's: Wikipedia's trouble with the truth

Maclean's (National Canadian newsmagazine, similar to 'Time') had an article on the essjay controversy. (So much for getting away from the topic, I just got around to reading the magazine last night, and lo and behold, an article in my mag). I'm including the link here, because I figure a primary source, of importance, coming from Canada, was worth mentioning, but I had no desire to jump into inserting it into the article. Perhaps others would like to read the article and suggest what, if any, part of it should be put in the article. I personally think the last paragraph sums up the concerns that many have walked away with after finding out about what happened.

As well, I'll note that it was somewhat noticable in the magazine, it was on page 39, but took up one third of the page. There were three columns, each with a different story, the Wikipedia one was in the center. To the left was 'The straw make all the difference' about flavour straws that are healthier than flavoured drinks, being introduced by Macdonalds. To the right was 'Water: the next global money-maker' talking about the water industry and technologies.

On the online version of Maclean's, I actually had to do a search to find it, as after several attempts looking around for it failed. Obviously, it wasn't front page news.

The link is http://www.macleans.ca/homepage/magazine/article.jsp?content=20070319_103212_103212

-- Kavri 20:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that Kavri; interesting to see the "business" take that Macleans gave this. Another editor or two mentioned that there might be value in mining the "international" flavour of the controversy; I wish I was multilingual in my reading to see what the press in other countries have to say. Risker 21:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Since when is Wikipedia "a company attempting to transition from online co-operative into a genuine media business"? Was this an editorial decision to intentionally mislead or an incredibly incompetent reporter? Filliam H. Muffman! —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 22:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Um...bbatsell, the majority of mainline media is biased and somewhat irresponsible in my opinion, but lets not bash my country's major news magazine as having an 'incredibly incompetent' reporter, eh? I myself don't particularly like how the article is written, but as Risker makes mention of, I had included it for some international input. I imagine many people outside of the "Wikipedia Communit" especially those who are not netizens of some kind, probably have various views of what Wikipedia is, even if it is not what Wikipedia declares itself to be. Anyway, I'm being a bit defensive, but seriously, 'incredibly incompetent' is a bit harsh...god/dess/es...its not like Canada inflicted "Fox news" on the world *wide grin* -- Kavri 22:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't attempting to malign Canada (or even the magazine, really), but if something is reported that is blatantly false, I think I can say so without being accused of bashing, can't I? :) I know nothing about the magazine and have nothing against Canada, just saying that the article is false. (Add.: and the reason I used the phrase "incredibly incompetent" is because less than 5 minutes worth of research would have revealed the actual facts to the reporter — it's also entirely possible that it was something changed after the article left the reporter's hands; there are lots of bad editors out there.) —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 22:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Forgive the impertinence of the Canadian media; in fairness, even though Wikipedia is formally separate from Wikia, the latter's success is at least partially attributable to the former's popularity and reach. We Canadians are a terribly cynical lot. Having said that, I think I'll spend the next day or so seeing if I can make any sense of the articles from other lands, and then figure out where they might fit into this article. Risker 00:18, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Hidden comments

Why is this happening? Gwen Gale 22:02, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Comments? Why is the Talk page not used for major changes?

Perhaps I'm missing something here, as a new user, I'm still trying to wade through various policies/guidelines. However, my understanding is that the Talk page is where major changes are...oh my gosh...talked about. Shouldn't things like new sections added, old sections removed, and sections retitled at least garner a line or two mention in the talk page, with what was done and why? I know there are summaries in the history, and I don't think every reference, word change, syntax change necessarily needs comment here, but I would think any major re-structure (such as the examples I gave above) would at least merit a mention/reason on the talk page. -- Kavri 22:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Generally that is the case, yes. :) (I guess the only exception would be articles without a lot of contributors, which certainly doesn't apply to this article.) It's always considered a Good Thing to propose and/or discuss major changes on the talk page. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 22:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Jesuit

I haven't read through everything, so send me packing if this point has been raised before: is Essjay a version of S.J., Society of Jesus? In other words, was part of this editor's passing-off a sort of fantasy of Jesuit membership? Given his stated interests and the desire to appear authoritative, it seems plausible.--Shtove 22:47, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

No, he specificallty denied on his original userpage that is was nothing to do with the Jesuits, but was based on his initials. How "Ryan Jordan" came to form the letters SJ, I don't know... Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 22:49, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm just out the door ...--Shtove 23:07, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I read somewhere his friends called him "Steve Jordan". Essjay said "Essjay" (or S J) is what some of his friends called him. Seems reasonable. Perhaps steve comes from his middle name. WAS 4.250 23:12, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Pls unprotect

Would a disinterested admin please unprotect this page? Semi-protect might be helpful though. Thanks. Gwen Gale 14:58, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry

I am sorry for protecting the article then not responding to questions as to why I did this. I completely made an asshat of myself and I feel the need to explain myself. Firstly, my decision to protect the article was a measure to enforce talking it out on the talk page, which in my humble opinion is a more constructive use of edits than edit warring. An edit war certainly was brewing, even if no one violated the three revert rule. I trust that you all will be able to talk it out. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 17:33, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Messedrocker. I don't believe that you made an "asshat of yourself". Not at all. I don't think the page needed protection, but that's a difference of opinion, not a crime. Don't be so hard on yourself, and keep up the good work, please. Best, Johntex\^talk 18:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

My take

• I don't care if the word "lied" is used (it's supported) though I agree "false claims" is more neutral.
• Essjay's citing of the book Catholics for Dummies is widely supported and is ok for the article.
• Saying he "admitted" using CfD is not supported at all (so far as I can see) and hence is not ok. Cheers. Gwen Gale 14:52, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I've seen something with a direct quote from Essjay saying he used Catholicism for Dummies. Direct quote, primary resource, blah blah blah. I'll look it up when I get back, but I was wondering if I should even bother or if a quote directly from someone which they put on Wikipedia is considered OR/Self-reference? If it is (and I think it is), then I call BS and think policy should change, but... c'est la vie. --Dookama 21:12, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Famous Wikipedians (Categories For Mainspace And Talk)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Notable_Wikipedians

{{Notable Wikipedian|Essjay}} I believe this is for talk pages.

[[Category:Wikipedia people|Jordan, Ryan]] I believe this one is for articles.

I am not sure where to put these. An experienced Wikipedian can place these in their proper place. Collaboration is the key. Thanx. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 18:35, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually this article was mentioned in each of these before but has been removed from the categories. The article is about the incident, not the person. 216.95.209.50 18:39, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Uh, this article isn't about Jordan... it is about the controversy... no personality cats are warranted here. (→Netscott) 18:40, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Your missing the point. The incident made this Wikipedian famous. That is what theses categories are for. Essjay is one of the most famous Wikipedians. A notable Wikipedian. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 18:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Right, and if this article were specifically about him I'd agree to your logic of applying these categories. (→Netscott) 18:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Not happening Quack. An article about Essjay the person had consensus or near-consensus for deletion earlier, this page can only exist if it deals with the incident rather than the person. --tjstrf talk 18:52, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Use a category for notable Wikipedians which is about Wikipedians and not people. We just have to use the attributable category. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 18:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedians aren't people? --tjstrf talk 18:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

The category is for Wikipedians and not a person specifically. It is a specific category for Wikipedians which is separate from other catagories about people in general. Essjay is a Wikipedian and a notable Wikipedian. The category is not about a person. It is only for famous Wikipedians regardless of how they got famous such as from a controversy. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 19:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately for you, we don't have an article about Essjay. So there's no article to which you can appropriately add the category. --tjstrf talk 19:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

The article is related to the controversy. It orignated from a Wikipedian who is now very notable and famous. The categories are fine. For controversial Wikipedians we use the categories as I mentioned. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 20:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you miss the point of these categories. These Wikipedians are notable for what they do (or have done) when they are not editing Wikipedia. Essjay's real life is no more notable than yours or mine. Risker 20:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

The categories are about Wikipedians. There are other categories about people in real life. We as editors can decide about the categories. It uses the word "Wikipedian." This is a no-brainer. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 20:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) Quack, go and look at these articles. They are all about people who would be notable, whether or not they edited Wikipedia. Essjay does not fall into this category. Risker 20:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Which Wikipedian category does a "Controversial Wikipedian" fall under if you disagree. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 20:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

• It is a shell game. Certain people don't want an article on Essjay. Therefore, they want an article that relates to Essjay but is not about him. Since the article is not technically about Essjay, then categories that specifically relate to an individual are inappropriate. Johntex\^talk 20:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Very well. When arguements have no validity or basis, it further confirms the categories are valid and acceptable. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 01:57, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

And if you think with that line or reasoning you're going to successfully add these personality categories to this article you are quite mistaken. (→Netscott) 02:02, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Credentials discussion

In some of the press articles, reference is made to a discussion on Wikipedia about credentials, though the location is not specified. Would it make sense to include a link to those discussions (including the straw poll) from this page?

• User:Jimbo Wales/Credential Verification
• User talk:Jimbo Wales/Credential Verification/Straw polls

--Elonka 01:52, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty new, so I'm still working on learning policy and such. To me though, it seems since these polls and policies are in the drafting stages, that it would cause further confusion to link to them now, they will in all liklihood be changing over time, and I think it would be best til a finished, or at least stable, version is ready. Also, since it's mentioned in the article, I don't think it is needed to give links to the actual internal processes. If someone is a Wikipedian, or an interested user/reader who wants to dig deeper, they can easily be pointed in the right direction for the information. My two cents. -- Kavri 04:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Link to sandbox is too big

Quack, you seem to have some real talent in making boxes, but I am afraid that the one you have made for the sandbox is just too big. Something about the size of the "Archives" box would be more appropriate. While it is good to be working in the sandbox, and I think it was a good idea to put other reference links there too...the link should not overpower the talk page. Could you please reformat? And perhaps get rid of the red lettering, really the sandbox link is not the most important thing on the page. Thanks. Risker 05:00, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

That was a banner ad for a fork. I've skived it down and placed it on top of the contents box with a bit of bolded text. I'd have rm'd the sandbox altogether but I'll leave that to consensus. Gwen Gale 05:09, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm all for removing it....and deleting the sandbox fork while we're at it. (→Netscott) 05:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

What on earth? I go offline a bit... the sandbox was never intended to be a fork and the banner thing was ill advised. It's... a SANDBOX, to work on tweaking concensus without edit warring over the main page. don't other articles have them...? If you guys want to nuke it, I'll speedy tag it myself if I'm still on and see requests to do so. It was intended to make our lives easier to hammer ideas during protection. - Denny 05:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

It's been abused and is in the form of a complete article. This is unacceptable. I've speedy tagged it as a fork and rm'd the link from this page. Do what you all like, I've done what I think is helpful under WP policy. Cheers either way. Gwen Gale 05:18, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I concur with your opinion, Gwen Gale. It went too far. Risker 05:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree and have no problem with your action, Gwen; I endorsed your speedy tag there. however, just so I know: I thought it was fine to create development sandboxes anytime, as needed/desired (not withstanding abuse, as happened here). - Denny 05:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

What type of abuse are you refering to. I add a link to the sandbox and added links in the sandbox. I call it good editing. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 05:25, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I call it "give an inch... make an attack page" Gwen Gale 05:27, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't put up the sandbox to completely redo the article end to end; it was for two very specific points in the above sections (Catholics for Dummies, possible image placement ideas). Putting that horrible banner up top was unneeded and likely to ignite soon another unneeded shit storm. :( - Denny 05:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

It caught my eye then. Gwen Gale 05:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Quack, you might want to reconsider the "sandbox" on your user page as well. Risker 05:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which. Gwen Gale 05:34, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Two ANI reports...

Gwen and I apparently think alike. Here and here... Quack, please try to slow down. we are in no rush here, except for a desire to rush I think to stablize the article. - Denny 05:43, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I nominated the sandbox I had started for MfD here. - Denny 06:10, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Calgary Sun article

“ Suspicions were raised when he kept asking "So who is this Pope guy everyone keeps talking about?" and insisting that Jesus' middle initial was "H." ”

I presume this is patently false? -- Zanimum 14:58, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Link to the article: Stephen Lautens in Calgary Sun 17 Mar 2007 Good old Stephen, following in the footsteps of his dad. A bit of light reading.... Risker 17:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Reaction

(intro placement here)

Wikipedia community

I believe a small intro paragraph or a sentence or two to the lead of the reaction's section could be a bright idea. The beginning of the reaction's section may need an introduction at the top of the section.

Speaking personally about Jordan, Wales said, “Mr. Ryan [sic] was a friend, and still is a friend. He is a young man, and he has offered me a heartfelt personal apology, which I have accepted. I hope the world will let him go in peace to build an honorable life and reputation.”[21]

Any thoughts. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 20:23, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the sub topics under the 'Reaction' section work just as well as some sort of intro sentence/s in the 'Reaction' section. That said, I'd not likely object to a very general NPOV sentence or two, but I really don't think it's necessary. I would prefer to see such a sentence posted in Talk first, and not just added to the article though. Secondly, I do NOT think any kind of mention is needed in the lede, as it is already covered very well, imo, with

Reaction to the disclosure was broad-based, encompassing commentary and articles in the electronic, print, and broadcast media. The Wikipedia community researched Essjay's article edits on the site to verify accuracy, and created and debated various proposals to improve the project's handling of identification and credentials.

-- Kavri 20:42, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think the lede is too short and is incomplete now. You might want to review WP:LEAD, but the section I am thinking of is as follows:

The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, explaining why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describing its notable controversies, if there are any. It should be between one and four paragraphs long, should be carefully sourced as appropriate, and should be written in a clear and accessible style so that the reader is encouraged to read the rest of the article. Small details that appear in the full article should be avoided in favor of a very brief overview of the article.

There are some key points that seem to have been rearranged out of it, when we have been making reasonable changes. I was just thinking about beefing it up to ensure that it met that standard. I do, however, agree about finding another place for the Louisville newspaper stuff.

• As to the reaction section, I am not really inclined to mess around with it too much; some care was taken to put it into some form of logical, chronological order. Any "overview" sentence needs to be extremely carefully worded and sourced to keep a neutral tone. Risker 20:52, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

To make myself clear, between the header Reaction and the subtitle Wikipedia community is where a small introduction paragraph would fit nicely. At the moment, it is a weak point in the article. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 22:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Footnote clutter

Upfront admission: I hate footnotes. As many have repeated, a footnote is like a knock on the door in the middle of your wedding night. Almost ridiculously, this article's first sentence is now bothered with seven knocks on the door. Even the most ardent footnote fetishizer might find this excessive. Once the article comes out of lockdown, can we prune the notes down a little? Few if any of the facts in the article are in serious dispute, though there are questions about placement and emphasis. The creepy crawly footnotes can be whittled down without any real threat of inaccuracy. Casey Abell 15:00, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I think they exploded into Ultra Mega Citation Mode because so many people were being obnoxious previously, fighting tooth and nail to get this deleted as non-notable, even going IAR on related Essjay stuff... everyone thus took a better safe than sorry bulletproof approach... - Denny 15:03, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes and footnotes sitting upon strong citations are the only way to build a stable article where controversy (and worse) abounds. Gwen Gale 15:04, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

(ec)Some can be removed, particularly for statements that are double- and triple-sourced. That is unnecessary. However, as there have been controversies about the strangest things in this article, great care must be taken to ensure that we have indeed got the right source attached to each statement. Risker 15:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

If we do cut out some later, leaving 1 of 3, lets of course always leave the 'strongest' most mainstream/citeable... - Denny 15:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Accurate sourcing is fine. But footnote mania has gone ballistic, bonkers and bananas when seven citations are hung on a single sentence – especially when the sentence is not in serious factual dispute. Ultra Mega Citation Mode looks like (and is) a bad joke to Wikipedia newbies coming to the article after hearing about Essjay. We grizzled oldbies have gotten so used to the critters that we sometimes don't realize how silly they look in bunches. Casey Abell 15:16, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that's an artifact of edit warring and they can be skived down soon enough. Gwen Gale 15:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

At least nobody is asking us to source the term "Essjay controversy" anymore. Risker 15:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Newbie question. If the footnotes get pruned, is there anything wrong with listing the pruned footnotes in the reference section? -- Kavri 15:44, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

There can be footnotes after each sentence if need be, Wikipedia as a whole is going down this path and I agree with it. The worry has to do with hangin' 3 or 4 on the end of a sentence. Gwen Gale 15:51, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I understand the 'problem' with multiple footnotes. However, some articles have both a Notes and a References section (for example, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic). Can the article have the one or two strongest footnotes, but have the 'pruned' footnotes show up in a References section at the bottom rather than be deleted from the article? Or, possibly, with no References section, can one have a line at the end of the article saying, 'Other sources used in the article' and then just list all the 'pruned' links in that last footnote? I just dislike the idea of getting rid of the sources altogether. -- Kavri 16:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Wontedly, one puts the most fitting and strongest footnotes in the text and the others can go into the references and external links sections as needed. Gwen Gale 16:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

• I don't think we need to spend one moment of time trying to whittle down the footnotes at this point. Footnotes are great things. They are not at all like "a knock on the bedroom door during your honeymoon". They are much more like openning the bedside drawer on your honeymoon and finding a new toy to play with or a new outfit to wear (or whatever floats your boat).

In an article such as this one, that calls the credibility of Wikipedia into question, footnotes are are incredibly important. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check which has the meritous objective of trying to back up every single fact in Wikipedia with multiple sources. That's every single fact in the whole project! Surely an article on a controversy should be among our best-sourced articles of all.

It will be a reasonable question at some point in the future to review our references and make sure that we have not gone over-board. Now is not the time, however. For the next few months, while we are having debates about changing our very culture with respect to credentialling, lets have this piece contain plenty of references. Having a few too many is vastly prefered to having too few. Johntex\^talk 16:09, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you in principle, Johntex; however, this might be a good point at which to review the footnotes in the lead to make sure that they are true references to the information in the article. When I cleaned up the sections referring to Larry Sanger, I found there were some errors in the sourcing/quoting. Risker 16:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

For the record, so long as we don't 'lose' the information, I'm okay with however it gets formatted, I just worried about the word 'pruning' meaning 'deleting entirely' which I wouldn't be okay with. I agree, the formatting of it, and possible deletion if absolutely necessary can be done later. I would suggest at that time we make both a 'Notes' section for the footnotes used, and a 'References' section for the rest. -- Kavri 16:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

We'll leave aside the debate on whether footnotes are like new toys on your honeymoon (gawd, that sounds dirty). But seven of the critters hung on the same sentence look even goofier than my six-critter example. This article's first sentence doesn't look like careful sourcing. It just looks nuts. Or more exactly, it looks like WP has gotten so paranoid about fact-checking that we've gone over the edge. Is this the face we want to show to outsiders coming to an article on the biggest controversy since Siegenthaler? Some balance is needed. The first sentence needs at most two cites...to the New Yorker article itself (with the Editor's note) and maybe to an all-round, accurate outside story like the 3/5/07 New York Times article. All the other cites are absurd and unnecessary stuffing. Casey Abell 16:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your position Casey Abell. Are you saying that if they are pulled from the main article, that they shouldn't even be allowed to be cited in a Reference section, seperate from a Notes section that has the footnotes? Why? They would no longer be in the article text, just listed below as other sources in a Reference section seperate from the Notes section (presuming this idea were adopted, of course). I think the lack of seperate Footnote and Reference sections is part of the confusion. If it shows up in the text, the section should be called 'Notes' or 'Footnotes'. A 'Reference' section is for all sources you referred to in your research, whether or not you use the material in a footnoted way, or not. Then again, that was how I was taught, ymmv. -- Kavri 16:35, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind, Kavri, that nothing actually disappears. It is all there in the history, and can be pulled up again if required. Risker 16:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

lol. I must need more coffe, I don't seem to be as clear as I think I am. I do know it's kept in the history, I meant deleted from the final article as it stands. I think that all the footnote/reference material should be IN the article, but I do agree the number of citations inline gets a bit clunky, so wouldn't mind some of them removed, so long as they are still down at the bottom of the article somewhere (preferably in a 'References' section, with footnotes going in a 'Notes' section, but I'd not squawk if they were included in some sort of 'also see' section. I just believe that all reference/notes so far, should be in the article itself, somewhere. -- Kavri 16:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

My position is simple: don't clutter sentences with redundant and unnecessary footnotes. Right now the first sentence could be completely and accurately sourced with the (at most) two cites I mentioned. So why stick in footnotes to the other five sources? All the clutter just makes the sentence look silly. I wouldn't mind a separate "External references" section for other articles not used in footnotes. We had such a section previously, and other editors scrapped it for reasons I don't understand. If kept to a reasonable length, such a section would be a valuable addition. Casey Abell 16:50, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, just wanted to know that you were okay with them showing up somewhere. Personally, I think a lot of articles would look better sorting things out properly...the Logic article I referred to above is a good example. It has 'Footnotes', 'References', 'See Also', 'Further Reading' and 'External Links'. Obviously this article doesn't need the 'Further Reading', but I thnk the other four would work fine. (My two-cents that had babies and is up to $1.50 now [$1.28 in USD]) -- Kavri 16:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind, at one point we had another 30 or so sources tacked on to the bottom of the article. As things started to stabilize, we moved the list over here into the talk page (I think it might be in Archive 4 or 5), and if necessary we can go back to them and mine them for further information. Perhaps we can agree to include "deleted" footnotes into a heading on the talk page so they are more easily accessible? As the article gels further, some of those sources can be added back in as required. Risker 17:06, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I like footnotes, instead of just reading an article, I can see what reliable sources it is based off of. This is the standard way to cite our text. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Notes

-- 10:56, 16 March 2007 Casey Abell (Talk | contribs) (→Footnote clutter - - helpful example)

No, if you are meaning quoting both those sources, it doesn't look silly to me. They are both from different papers, have different 'spin' on some of the details (the use of the word 'enraged' not within a quote, and included different information (Essjay's response to the courier's email, was to be left alone, obviously something not to be found in the other article).

If you are meaning something else besides both sources being used, could you please clarify yourself. With just a question of 'Doesn't this look silly?' you are not specifying the problem. -- Kavri 17:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how I can make myself clearer. The footnote clutter, especially the seven critters crawling over the first sentence, looks goofy. My guess is that sooner or later – probably later, when the general hollering over the article dies down – somebody will come along and quietly trim the redundant and unnecesary footnotes. As I've said as clearly as I can, there's no need for more than one or two footnotes for the first sentence, and a number of duplicate footnotes to the same source can also be eliminated. Casey Abell 18:06, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep. Meanwhile so long as there's any hint of edit warring I think it's more helpful to leave them be. Gwen Gale 18:08, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I think in a BLP article the more citations to support the claims of the article the better. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 18:12, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Casey , First off, you never signed your post, and I actually thought is was something Gwen posted, but it didn't make any sense as part of her bit about them being strung out on the end of a sentence. Second, I think saying 'I don't know how to make myself clearer' is disingenious when I specifically stated what the confusion was...and that you then edited the original post, again not signed, removing the links, which is retro-edit that makes my post seem strange. Third, you listed your example as 'Notes' followed by a handful of numbered entries. In and of itself, no, there is nothing wrong with this...notes go in the note section, in a numbered list. If you meant the overall number of footnotes to the article, that isn't what you stated. Finally, you actually articulate what you think is silly, " The footnote clutter, especially the seven critters crawling over the first sentence, looks goofy. " I agree, that the inline clutter isn't attractive, you have my full support on that. As I made clear in the posts above this, on the on-going discussion, that I merely want to make sure that the references stay in the article somewhere. I gave an example of an article that has both a 'Notes' and a 'References' section, and that is the usual standard in writing, to have a 'Notes' or 'Footnotes' section, and a 'References' section for other citings. I also agree with Risker, that once the article stabilizes, that the total number listed at the bottom could possibly be pared down, but also agree with Gwen and others, that while the article is controversial, it is probably best to leave them all in. Again, I have no problems with a few inline citations, listed below in a 'Notes/Footnotes' section, and then the citations that are removed from inline being listed in a seperate 'References' section. Until the article is more stable/less controversial, I'm not a fan of completely removing any citations from the article. -- Kavri 02:52, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't have the foggiest what you're talking about when you say that I didn't sign my posts to this talk page, or that I made "disingenious" changes to my posts or to any other posts on this page. I have made sixteen edits (seventeen, counting this one) to this talk page. The full list is here. I have reviewed every edit, and none of them support your comments. All my edits were signed and I made no misleading changes to them or to anybody else's edits. You and all other editors are welcome to review the diffs.

As for my substantive point about footnote clutter, you seem to agree with me. So I'm not sure what the disagreement is about, if there's any real disagreement at all. I agree that the number of footnotes could be whittled down and a separate "References" section for other articles not used in footnotes would be helpful. As you say, these changes probably won't occur until some time has passed and the significant content disputes about the article have been at least mostly resolved. Casey Abell 04:09, 18 March 2007 (UTC) <---This is my signature, attached to this post as well as to all my other posts on this page.

Okay, I have reread this entire section, and I think I now have some idea of what you're talking about. You may be referring to this edit, marked "helpful example." The edit clearly shows my signature: [[User:Casey Abell|Casey Abell]] 15:16, 16 March 2007 (UTC). What I did in this edit was to place six footnote indicators directly before my signature. The intent was to provide a (I hope) helpful and humorous example of the kind of footnote clutter I saw in the main article. The fact that I placed the footnote indicators directly before my signature clearly indicates that I wasn't trying to hide my authorship or to mislead anybody in any way. If there had been the slightest confusion on your part, a quick glance at the diff would have resolved the problem. However, I realize that you are a somewhat inexperienced Wikipedia editor, so I appreciate that you may not be familiar with examining diffs to clear up possible misunderstandings. Casey Abell 05:16, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• Casey, in looking over the situation, I realize I shouldn't have posted without indenting. I find that others at times go back to the original border rather than indenting indefinitely, and I thought it would catch your attention over being deeply indented, as it wasn't a current topic, per se. I was only meaning my comments in regard to your example of footnote citations, and thought that was clear from the content of my post. I apologize for not being clearer, as I understand how upsetting it is to feel that one is making some kind of blanket statement or accusation.
• I thought my request for clarification was valid, and I thought pointing out saying 'Doesn't this look silly?' instead of stating what the problem was, was valid, especially as the original post had links for the first two examples, which no longer exist, and which I assumed you had removed. Yes, I know how to look at edits and diffs, though I sometimes have difficulties, but for the most part have the hang of it. That said, I can no longer reference specific diffs/edits, as I can no longer see the history. This may be an error I am making, but I've gone to archived pages before, and been able to see the history, and now I can't, so it may have something to do with the archiving process, I don't know.
• Through your link to the history, I was able to go back, and though you may have thought you had put the tilda/signature to your post, the page shows posts of Gwen Gale's to either side of it, as shown HERE
• When I posted, and asked for clarification, I made reference to the first two citations that had live links, and said I didn't think they were silly. I then asked if that wasn't what you were referring to, could you please make it clear what your question was. Your response, in the face of my asking politely and non-sarcastically or with any agenda, was in my opinion, somewhat rude, when you said you couldn't make it any clearer. I'm not always the sharpest crayon in the box, but I think my post was reasonable in asking for clarification, and was sound in pointing out that your post asking 'Doesn't this look silly?' wasn't terribly clear (especially given the two live links that are no longer there).
• I was somewhat bothered for a number of reasons: Your example showed a 'Notes' title with a list of citations, which is NOT the in-line clutter that you had been talking of previously, and it included two live links, and a question looking for, I presume, people to agree with you, that it looked silly. I didn't think it looked silly, but I realized I may not understand exactly what your point was, so I asked. I was met with a less than polite answer, you could have just said you meant it to refer to in-line clutter, instead, as if 'being silly' for not agreeing with you, I know had the 'I don't know how I can make myself clearer.' as your opening remark of your clarifying post, when in fact, 'Doesn't this look silly' is hardly clear, and I was not asking for anything terribly difficult to provide. Finally, the two live links were removed, I presumed by you, in all honesty I dont' recall if I looked it up in the history or not, and I'm not going to now, but they were removed at the time that I responded with reply of 02:52, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
• As I showed above by linking to it, there was no indication that I could see to " The fact that I placed the footnote indicators directly before my signature ". IF it was referring to the post you made at Casey Abell 15:16, 16 March 2007 (UTC), then I would like to point out that there were 17 intervening posts between that post talking about in-line clutter, and my post of 17:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC).
• Possible misunderstandings on both sides may be caused by a number of factors, including examining diffs, but I do think I've made clear the areas I found un-clear or problematic, and my reasoning as to why.
• This probably could have gone to a personal talk page, however the reason I replied at all was that I was uncertain about the original example, and when I asked for clarification I didn't even know who posted it (I could see no signature to the post on the talk page, and I hadn't gone to look at the history) but thought it might be Gwen's. I was uncomfortable with your response, and told you so, because by that time the links I had made mention to in my post asking for clarification had now disappeared, and because I disliked that a polite request for clarification about what I considered an ambiguous statement "Doesn't this seem silly?" and an answer that said it couldn't be made clearer, together seemed to have an implication to me, that I was either dense or difficult. Finally, though I see now that I should have indented, your post being upset that I was meaning all your posts weren't signed, or that I was somehow unaware of the history, etc. suprised me, given that I felt my posts made it clear that I was speaking about a very specific question about (what turned out to be your post, at the time I didn't know who wrote it), and about the deletion of the live links (that I had presumed you made, since I now knew it to be your post) and your less than polite response to me. Yes, this is tediously long and specific, but given the misunderstandings to date, I thought it best to word myself carefully, so as to acknowledge my viewpoint/assumptions, and possible unseen errors, as well as to try my best to make clear why it wasn't a trivial matter for me (neither is it the most important thing going either, but I am trying to be a good Wikipedian from the start, to strive for best practices in myself and others, and to weed out the worst bad habits in myself and others). Cordially. -- Kavri 06:19, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll keep my reply much shorter. Frankly, I found your comments that I hadn't signed a post ("First off, you never signed your post") and that I was being disingenuous by "retro-editing" ("Second, I think saying 'I don't know how to make myself clearer' is disingenious when I specifically stated what the confusion was...and that you then edited the original post, again not signed, removing the links, which is retro-edit that makes my post seem strange") to be unfair and unfounded, as the complete list of my edits to this talk page makes clear. If you're going to make such comments about established editors, please back them up with specific diffs. You provided no diffs to support your comments, because no such diffs exist.

I don't understand how offense could be taken over my statement: "I don't know how I can make myself clearer." I have stated my position on what I see as the main article's footnote clutter, and I have offered specific examples of what I'm talking about. I'll say it again: I don't know how I can make myself clearer.

I am signing this post, as I have signed all my posts on this talk page. I am not engaging in any disingenuous "retro-editing", and I have never done so on this talk page. And this will be my final comment on the matter. Casey Abell 06:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

The New Yorker interview

• I created a separate section for the information that is not directly related to the interview. It was reverted without discussion.

The sentence starting with... When Ryan Jordan was hired by Wikia in January 2007, he reportedly made changes to his Wikia profile and "came clean on who he really was".[14] ...is not part of The New Yorker interview. I recommend it have its own separate section. The entire paragraph could be titled something like Identitiy revealed which is reasonable. This is a no brainer (at least to me). If no Wikipedian objects with a valid reason other than saying "I don't like it" we can add the heading back in. Any suggestions. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 20:39, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I will add the title Identitiy revealed back in since no objections have been made. Thanx. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 19:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Having seen both versions come and go, I prefer the inclusion of the 'Identity Revealed' section and its title. If it became a dispute, I'm somewhat neutral, but would at least want to hear a supporting reason for taking it back out. -- Kavri 03:04, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

How about sub-factoring it? Gwen Gale 03:04, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I would like to hear a valid reason for sub-factoring a section which is not related to the interview. They are different. One is The New Yorkor Interview and the other section is about the Identity revealed. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 07:36, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

They are wholly intertwined. None of this would be notable if not for the New Yorker interview and subsequent correction note from them. Gwen Gale 07:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

You have not explained how they are intertwinded. Based on your logic everything is intertwined and we can have one large section. The interview is about the interview. My logic is to organize the article and keep each topic separate. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 07:52, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

It's like this: The New Yorker wasn't by any stretch of the imagination the first party to notice this information. In fact, they didn't know until someone told them. But it did not become a controversy widely discussed in the media all over the world until AFTER The New Yorker published its editor's note. That is why the "revealed" section is not any more than a subsection of The New Yorker section. Risker 07:54, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Again, the interview is about the interview. The identitiy revealed is about the identitiy revealed. I have made a good faithed effort to organize the article. I really don't understand the point of clutter in the article as in the past. At first, a lot of editors disagreed with me but I have managed to keep it in good shape. A little organization is acceptable. I would like to hear specifically how each sentence in the identity revealed section is about the interview. My logic is when someone has an interview it is an interview. This is a no-brainer. The revealed part is a specific topic and was not an interview. Lets, hopefully, move along (please). :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 08:26, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Quack I did explain it and now Risker has helpfully done. You can't skive this from the New Yorker article. You can't skive this into a wider attack piece on Essjay or Wikipedia (which by the bye would sooner or later throw it straight back to AfD). Essjay might likely still be working for Wikia if he hadn't lied to Schiff. Gwen Gale 08:06, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Stop. Unless you post it HERE, the talk page, You should NOT be making major content/format changes

Please stop edit waring, put your arguements in the talk page, not in change summaries. Thanx. -- Kavri 20:34, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• 1) I noticed you did not say anything when another editor made the original change to the quotes.

• 2) There is a saying around here called be bold.

• 3) I would like to here what Risker thinks about my edit. Thanks. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 21:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

QuackGuru,

I of course didn't post after one or two times, because that isn't a problem necessary, but as it becomes clear from the number of times, and the comments in the summary, that there is disagreement, it should be taken to the talk page. So, your first point is meaningless.

As I mentioned in my reply to your comments on my user page, 'be bold' doesn't mean ignore the fact that something is being bandied about in edits and summaries, and not being talked about in the talk pages. So, your second point is irrelevant.

You are more than welcome to hear what anyone says about your edit, or to comment to others, I'm just trying to be part of a driving force to get more discussion on the talk page, where it belongs, than on edit wars/edit summaries/edit summary wars/etc. As you must have already noticed, another section was made below for discusson on the quote format...why you ignored that to put your comment about wanting Risker to see your edit above, I have no idea, but I've made the titles for the quote format section a bit more noticeable...please take the quote format discusson there. -- Kavri 02:04, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Put quotes back to quote block

I've changed the quoteboxes back to <quoteblock>. Unless someone has a format policy that they can quote me/refer me to, I'll change it back everytime I see it. From my understanding of style, the proper form is a quote block. __ Kavri 20:34, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

QUOTE FORMATTING

...as it pertains mostly to quote format, then in the section about putting discussion in the talk section, not edit summaries...ie trying to reduce edit squabbles. -- Kavri 21:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• I have tranfered two comments from two different editors from another section above.

I see you were actually doing this at the same time as I was writing, no problem in the great scheme of things. I don't have a problem with placement of the timeline, though I'm not too fussy on the boxes around the quotes, which have the effect of giving them undue weight. (On the other hand they make for a visual break that may be needed.) Any other perspectives? Risker 19:58, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. I did not make myself clear. I believe the timeline box position is better placed at the top right hand side. It looked odd in the middle right hand side of the page. And it was hanging over a quote and moving all the sentences the "Wikipedia community" section over to the left. Another editor added the quotations to the article. I agree, it makes for a visual break that is needed. Thanx. :) - Mr.Guru (talk/contribs) 20:06, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I would like other editors to weigh in on this about the different style of quotes. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 20:52, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think proper format should be changed just for 'visual break' purposes, but if that has to be done, I'd much rather see this kind of quote:

“ example ”

Than to see grey boxes. -- Kavri 21:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

PS- What other suggestions/ideas are there for more visual content, than to resort to grey boxes? -- Kavri 21:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

You may have a point. I would like to see your suggestion in the article.

“ The Visual Look ”

. Can someone put the different quote style in the article so we can all take a peak. Be bold. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 21:36, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

QuackGuru, the rush to keep changing things in the article is a bit tiring. The whole point of the talk article is to 'talk'...not to talk and then quickly scoot off to make changes. Okay, so you like the example, fine. I personally don't, I think regular blockquote is the appropriate and proper format. However, if it had to be done differently, I'd rather the large quotes than the boxes. There is no need to 'peek' at what it would look like at this time. You have the example of the quotes here.

The whole point of my earlier section was for people to discuss instead of things getting changed a kazillion times and/or edit squabbles/wars. It's not about being 'bold' to change something currently under discussion, especially when it has been stated, that unless you have a 'good' reason for change, then leave it alone. What praytell, is a reason to change to big quotes? Blockquotes are proper format for a larger quote. Please stop urging for things to be changed constantly, unless you have sound reasoning for it. -- Kavri 23:30, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

It is ironic that the one point in this whole article where we have people popping in from out of the blue is to highlight/de-emphasize/rearrange quote sections - format issues versus the actual content. I'm inclined to leave them as they are right now, someone is bound to suddenly appear in the next few hours to do something completely different that none of us have even thought of. Risker 22:55, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

...at least its gone down to arguments over format than content *crosses fingers* -- Kavri 23:30, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

My take: Quote arrangements can alter the PoV and spin of an article. Personally, I loathe those big docking graphical curlycue thingies, they truly bend narratives out of shape. I'm ok with wherever consensus leads on this but I do have strong thoughts about it. Gwen Gale 02:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

As I've hoped to make clear, I see no need for anything other than a standard blockquote. Gwen if the consensus is for some sort of stand out, would you rather have the grey boxes then? I wasn't sure from your comment, and I was only suggesting the graphical quotes as at least they are still quote marks (as opposed to a big grey box, which I think is inappropriate for the quotes in this article). -- Kavri 02:56, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I tend towards hard core plain text with simple paragraphed block quotes if there are more than 3 lines or so. The grey boxes are kind of ok but they still look like Moses on the mount or whatever and can give some readers a misleading hint that the quote has more sway in the wider narrative. Graphics do play an interpretive role and I think words should speak for themselves in a neutral format readers are already familiar with. Gwen Gale 03:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Seems that the boxes aren't very popular. Those grey boxes were put in by a drive-by editor whose edit summary was "ridiculous" - and I didn't catch it until much later. As I say, the only thing to be said for them is that they add visual variation, but I am afraid that the boxes just add too much weight to what is said in those quotes. Risker 03:14, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Current guidelines on quotes are here: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotations. I personally would follow the Chicago Manual of Style where there is ambiguity. And, for what it's worth, I prefer boxes or nothing to those oversized quotation marks. -- Avi 07:06, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Notes, References, Related Links, oh my!

I've changed 'References' to 'Notes' as a title, as that is the proper title (along with 'Footnotes') for a section that has inline citations. Since it's on the interernet, 'Notes' is preferable to 'Footnotes' which refers to the 'Foot' of the page.

I haven't created a 'Reference' section, as there is nothing to put there yet, but it was my thought that some of the spots that have a number of inline citations all in a row for the same piece of information, that the best/strongest could stay, and the others put down into a created 'Reference' section.

I also realized, that there may be some articles in the 'Notes' section, that instead of going into a 'Reference' section, could actually be put in the 'Related Links' section. As it stands now, the only related links are internal ones.

Though this was slightly bold (changed without discussing), I've put my reasoning here, and am more than fine if someone feels it needs to be reverted. Cheers. -- Kavri 04:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

List of more related materials and links

Other editors are welcome to perhaps move this to a sub-page or whatever. I've rm'd the blogs, they're generally not citable. Gwen Gale 05:09, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Hasn't this already been on the talk page before? This bit is getting rather crufty... I'd almost prefer that it was deleted all together. (→Netscott) 05:12, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok that's two. Anyone else? Gwen Gale 05:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I have no problems with its removal, as QuackGuru has already said he has the information, and as well, one could always go back in the history, so it's not like it will be lost. My reply to QuackGuru got bumped by the two of you posting, but was basically to say for him not to get his hopes up that tons of material will suddenly be included. The changing the section name to 'Notes' and mentioning a possible future 'Reference' section and the possible expansion of the 'Related Links' was actually in preparation for paring down the in-line citations, and possibly moving some/all of the ones not used inline, to those two spots. The emphasis, in my intent, was to help in organizing the citations, and possibly in lessening where feasible. -- Kavri 05:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. Gwen Gale 05:23, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• Again, pairing down in-line citations in the forseeable future would be a mistake. References are good. More references are better. Johntex\^talk 05:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• I tend to agree with User:Johntex. The only paring down that shoud be occuring is sources that are superceded by more accurate/reliable sources. (→Netscott) 06:58, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• Yep, it's far too soon to be shedding citations. Gwen Gale 08:54, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Stylistic options

Sometimes there are various stylistic options that one might wish to propose whether on quotes or other things. It is entirely appropriate to make those changes and then revert yourself and here on the talk page to link to that reverted version to offer an option to be considered. WAS 4.250 06:15, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning, that is a nifty idea. I would have never thought of doing that, but it does work well for a large change of text that might set off alarm bells, or for more visual/format edits that are more difficult to describe. Great idea! -- Kavri 06:48, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Just be careful that if a consensus is reached for the older version, that changes are made to the current one, instead of reverting back to the old one, as this article is still extremely fluid and any number of changes could have been made in the interim . -- Avi 08:27, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Identity Revealed - keep but make to a sub header?

I'm fine with 'Identity Revealed' being its own header, but there are others that want it removed completely. Gwen Gale suggested a compromise of making it a sub header. I've made an edit with it this way, and then reverted, so that without changing the current article, people can still take a look at what it would like here. -- Kavri 06:53, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Works for me, as a reasonable compromise. Risker 06:56, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I've done it then (but if I was too rash pls do as you like). Gwen Gale 08:53, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Reference duplication

The Cite.php template allows for multiple in-line citations to link to the same entry using named references. I am seeing a whole bunch of duplicates here. I am paring them down, but it may be a good idea for people who wish to add a reference, to check the Reference list at the bottom of the article to see if the citation already exists, and use THAT reference, instead of duplicating the same entry twice in the list. -- Avi 07:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Avi for cleaning up behind all of us. I suspect much of that duplication was caused when sentences and paragraphs were being rearranged. Risker 18:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem; it's a particular part of wikignoming I enjoy--checking, editing, and streamlining the citations, but its even better when the article is editied with that in mind :D. Thanks -- Avi 06:58, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Th'art a helper to the lazy! :) Gwen Gale 07:00, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

controversy? what controversy?

Is "controversy" really the right name for this article? What is so controversial about this? It should be moved to Essjay scandal, in my humble opinion. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 00:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, neutrality was a factor in coming up with the name and Essjay's MUD CV has stirred up all kinds of controversy. Gwen Gale 00:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I see. But doesn't the representation of the "affair" as it appeared in published media outlets justify the idenifier "scandal" rather than what we think it may be? Controversial sounds so much like systemic bias. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 00:58, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

"Scandal" sounds like systemic bias to other editors (I'm neutral). What's in a name? A MUD CV by any other name is as mucky :) Gwen Gale 01:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

(ec) Well, it seems the media has also latched on to this description Wikipedia founder speaks on the Essjay controversy and ITWire article Risker 01:16, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I wonder which order that came in? Is the media using the name due to this article, or the other way around? --tjstrf talk 05:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

It's likely. Lots of folks mope about WP but keep using it endlessly. Gwen Gale 05:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I remember something similar coming up on the village pump once, where a neologism some columnist made up was written about in Wikipedia, and subsequently gained enough notability to survive under policy based on later mentions derived from the Wikipedia article. In other words, a case where an article existed whose factual lead would have to read, "X is a term coined by RandomMagazineGuy and popularized by the Wikipedia page you are presently reading." A good reminder of why we aren't a publisher of original thought: compellingly written original thought on a high profile website such as this can become attributable through mere circular referencing, then come back and bite us later when it turns out to have been ludicrously wrong and someone traces it back to us. Which is why we need to be so anal about sourcing everything on this page rather than simply citing the primary sources and using our own eyewitness perspective of the events, writing history in the process. --tjstrf talk 08:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

You're probably right, nevermind. I just had to get it off of my mind. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 01:17, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest that we *can* use Wikipedia to write articles about the *history of Wikipedia*, of which this article is an example. Articles about events within Wikipedia can be sourced to historical pages within Wikipedia, but not to main articles, since these can change. That's my position on the matter. The New York Times, can use it's own archives on itself, to write about itself, and so can we. Wjhonson 20:47, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

No consensus equals pictures must remain

There has been no consensus either way. Therefore, the pictures must be kept in the body of the article. Discussion has continued back and forth for a long time now. This demonstrates there is interest in the images. Further, when arguements for the removal of pictures are not quite remarkable -- this proves the pictures will be stay. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 02:07, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Image has NOT reached Consensus...You are jumping the gun there a bit QuackGuru. The Consensus section [|here] has exactly three opinions so far: 1. exclude 2. include weak/neutral 3. exclude weak/neutra. With you added (and you didn't even put a post in the consensus section) that makes it an even tie so far. Also, it hasn't even been 24 hours yet. So, four opinions, only three in the consensus section (and who knows how many others spread here and there that hven't been put in the consensus section yet) does NOT make consensus. -- Kavri 02:18, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

If you take a look through the archives you will see many editors have already expressed their interest in keeping the images. I have already posted my thoughts on this before. Look through the archives. How many times do people have to continue to express their interest in keeping the pictures. Several Wikipedians want the images to be in the article. A straw poll is not consensus. Over time, such as looking at the history of the talk you will find many editors want the images. Please take a look and count all the votes if you will. I took a look and was following the image discussion. There already has been many thoughts expressed over a period time. You have not counted all the votes. (Please. No repeats of Presedential Al Gore Florida Debocal. *grin*:) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 02:49, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Quack, you clearly do not understand consensus. It is not, repeat NOT a vote. Risker 03:08, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

At least as many editors have expressed a lack of support for including these images. Gwen Gale 03:01, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

(ec) No consensus, Quack, means that they cannot be added - they are not there now. On top of that, we now have a BLP tag on the article and MUST follow the related policy, particularly the section on non-public persons. Consensus is now not required to keep the photograph of Essjay out of the article. Risker 03:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The link you directed me to is about bios on living persons. If you believe this is about a living person then the categories for Wikipedians would fit quite well.

If all the people who expressed interest in the images were presented from the archives then we would see all the pictures in the article. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 03:19, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

BLP overrides people's desires. Risker 03:36, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Essjay's MUD character (or public persona if you like) was known overwhelmingly through online text and even his contact with Schiff was a faceless telephone interview. For this reason, while the photo does have entertainment value its encyclopedic value seems low to me. I'm strongly against the screenshots since they support almost nothing related to the article. For me, the avatar pic is in itself neutral, but I see evidence it's being used in a wider attempt here to wedge the article with extreme PoV. Evidence for the existence of this extreme PoV directly amplifies the sway of WP:NPOV#Undue weight and WP:BLP. In other words, Quack, the more editors like you seem to rally for edits which could turn this article into an attack page, the more elements like this picture stop being inocuous and start being editorial tools of PoV and as such, they stray from WP:NPOV#Undue weight and WP:BLP. Hence, in this context, I must say I'm against including Essjay's picture in the article. Gwen Gale 04:00, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

QuackGuru, I know consensus is not a 'vote'...but a section was set up, in part because I think its taken some time to even settle if the pic could be used, and then to hash out what people thought on it...I maybe didn't frame it well, and I did mention the other people that hadn't posted to that section yet...but the evidence suggested to me that it was far from the 'this proves the picture will stay' stance. Along with Wikipedia is not a NewsMagazine, it is also not the tabloid press...information is gathered, discussed, and weighed...to write the best NPOV article that is able to be written by a group of people...it doesn't HAVE to include everything gathered or brought to light to be a fair, balanced, and informative entry. Please try to work with the group...no one will always have a controversial article exactly the way they, as an individual, wants it ...either for content or format. -- Kavri 04:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• The photo should remain. The fact that it was uploaded by Essjay is not in doubt. The fact that it was released under GFDL is not in doubt. The fact that he claimed it was a photo of him is not in doubt. The fact that it has been used by the mainstream media is not in doubt. Removing it only dilutes the usefullness/informativeness of this article. It should remain. Johntex\^talk 04:34, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I will point out that there was no consensus when the photo was inserted in the middle of a discussion on this page, and was removed because of that. There was no consensus then, and there is no consensus now. I am removing the photo because you are inserting it without consensus. The applicable section of the BLP policy is this: Non-public figures. You can take this to dispute resolution if you wish. Risker 04:47, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

The first change to an article does not need consensus. If it did, then no article would ever develop. It is reverting the change that requires consensus. You don't own this article. In the absense of a verifiable consensus either way, then neither version is more correct than the other. You can't presume your version is better. Johntex\^talk 04:55, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:BLP has sway here and there are a significant number of editors who see no need for the image. Gwen Gale 04:58, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

That is a red herring. There is nothing in BLP that says we can't use the photo. The photo has been used by mainstream media sources already. Johntex\^talk 05:09, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• I'm still waiting for an explanation of how BLP should be used to keep out a photo that has already appeared in the mainstream media. Johntex\^talk 08:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

"Misrepresentation and Honesty" per the Arbitration Committee

So doing my own research on the Essjay thing I found this interesting tidbit from 2005 -- it seems Essjay started an arbcom proceeding against someone named User:Rainbowwarrior1977 and had him banned from wikipedia, one of the charges being that he claimed he had a law degree. Check out the opinion here: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Rainbowwarrior1977, esp. the "Misrepresentation/honesty" subsection. So is that binding precedent for everyone else? If so, then the arbcom or Mr. Wales erred when initially overlooking Essjay's misrepresentations. Hallibrah 02:23, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Arbcom does not make policy. WAS 4.250 05:02, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Arbcom deals with behaviour. Gwen Gale 05:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

So does that mean their decisions in one case are not binding to others in similar circumstances? Hallibrah 23:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

There is no ArbComm case against Essjay, who is now a retired Wikipedian and has no special privileges. None of that has anything to do with this article, which is about the controversy that arose when a specific editor/admin (etc) was found to have claimed credentials he did not hold. I suggest if you wish to pursue this further, you go to WP:CN or another forum. Risker 23:34, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

(Given I agree with Risker's take above...) Mind, I can't speak for arbcom but yeah, they do say they're not a court and I've never heard of an arbcom decision being cited as a precedent in any reliable sense. Think of it this way, the community (with Jimmy Wales' ultimate permission, guidance or whatever) makes policy. Arbcom scolds editors who have taken WP:BOLD way too far too many times. Lastly, Wales in his management and public roles simply isn't under the same rules (observation, not criticism). Whatever he said about Essjay, whatever mistakes he made, whatever helpful things he may have done, have aught to do with editing the wiki under WP policy. Gwen Gale 23:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

See also: ex cathedra. Regarding the Arbitration Committee, it could be said that they are effectively the constructors of policy within very specific areas such as de-adminship and formal banning. Arbcom doesn't write policy, but it is the sole body of enactment for certain rules so its actions (or trends therein) are those policies. (This is aside from the fact that since our arbitrators are all highly respected members in their own rights they can exert quite a bit of personal influence as normal policy page editors.) --tjstrf talk 00:32, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

• But don't they decide or at least more specifically define what the rules are? Like when they said "misrepresentation of qualifications is unacceptable" back in 2005, there was NO policy regarding that at all. If they didn't mean their statement to be binding, why even bother specifically ruling on it? Hallibrah 02:37, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

• • You have good questions, Hallibrah, but this probably isn't the best place to get them answered; as far as I know, none of the people regularly editing this article are members of ArbComm. You might want to try the talk page for the Arbitration policy, where members of ArbComm are more likely to see your questions and respond with more accuracy than any of us could. I hope this is helpful. Risker 02:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok I'll move this thread to WP:ANI for now, thanks, Risker! Hallibrah 03:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

WIkipedia history template

When did this get pulled out? - Denny 02:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Quack pulled it out with his little edit blitz, I am afraid. I would be happy to see it back in, if you are so inclined. Risker 02:19, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Essjay_controversy&diff=116421910&oldid=116421377 I already put it back in way before both of you commented here. I was pasting and moving the links and see also section. As soon as I realized it was out I put it back in. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 02:23, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Simplification

I replaced "made false claims" with "lied". This is functionaly and morally equivalent yet it is a simpler sentence structure. We should chose the more straight-forward structure for ease of comprehension. Johntex\^talk 08:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, "lied" is a heavily loaded term and makes a strong moral judgment that "made false claims" does not. I would similarly disagree with saying he "posted inaccurate statements" for the same reason in the other direction as it would be white-washing him. Please see Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Terms that are technically accurate but carry an implied viewpoint. --tjstrf talk 08:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I stongly oppose this change. Simplification is not as important as remaining neutral. The word 'lied' is loaded and has connotations of disaproval. News sources can express themselves that strongly but Wikipedia needs to include balanced content. WjBscribe 13:49, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The word lied is not helpful. One must also remember the context of Essjay's misrepresentation: It began as a MUD avatar with a CV to go with it (not cool but rather wonted on Wikipedia back in the day, maybe still) and he got a bit trapped. WMF breezily gave Schiff his phone number and he made a so very weak judgement call in confirming the MUD CV but as these things go, since neither WMF nor Schiff did their own due diligence, almost egging him on, it's not fitting to use the verb "lie" with all the hints and baggage that word carries. Gwen Gale 14:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree... let's make absolutely sure everything has every impression of NPOV here. - Denny 14:06, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

How that letter of his to a professor claiming wikipedia has credibility because Ph.D.s like him are involved can be seen as anything but an outrageous lie and contemptable fraud is quite beyond me. WAS 4.250 14:57, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Well that's your opinion. Others disagree. That's why we have a policy requiring us stick to neutral writing in the first place... WjBscribe 14:59, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

outrageous lie and contemptable fraud? First, this is wanton editorialization of the supported facts, which is deprecated by WP policy. Second, aside from straying from WP:BLP and WP:NPOV, it smacks of WP:OR. I'd like to see a single citation from an independent source using those strong, sweeping adjectives. Gwen Gale 15:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

We should use the same label that the reliable sources uses, and nothing else. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:26, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that's a dangerous approach to take. Imagine applying the same approach in biographies about celebrities who get a lot of media attention. Reliable sources often express themselves strongly- more strongly than Wikipedia can. We are not required to use the same phrasing as our sources and indeed that can be a bad idea where the source is making editorial comment as well as reporting fact. WjBscribe 15:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Let me rephrase that, we should limit ourselves to labels that can be attributed to a reliable source. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:31, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:NPOV and WP:Verifiability helpfully explain the use and weighting of sources. Gwen Gale 17:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

HighInBC: You'll notice that we do that in the article already, attributing the statements such as "plain and simple fraud" to be the opinions of specific critics. --tjstrf talk 17:46, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

'False claim' vs 'lied' - 'false claim is more accurate and NPOV, and is not OR

First off, are there any sources besides Essjay that can confirm the letter to the professor? I haven't heard of any, therefor I don't think it should be included, and definitely shouldn't be considered when discussing the use of 'lied' vs 'false claim'. A simple Google of 'lie definition' will give anyone a good overview of the two terms. For 'lie' here are a few definitions:

tell an untruth; pretend with intent to deceive;

a statement that deviates from or perverts the truth

A lie is a statement made by someone who believes or suspects it to be false, in the expectation that the hearers may believe it.

For 'false' here are a few definitions:

not in accordance with the fact or reality or actuality; "gave false testimony under oath"

arising from error; "a false assumption" erroneous and usually accidental; "a false start"; "a false alarm"

deliberately deceptive; "hollow (or false) promises"; "false pretenses"

Regardless of what we might individually think/believe, or is even supported by observation, the fact is that Essjay himself said that he made a pseudonym for protection, that he thought others knew it wasn't true, and that he meant no harm by it. Therefor, using 'false claim' supports what Essjay has claimed, while also making it clear that his information on his user page was not true, and by the definition of false, it could also be that it was deliberatively deceptive. If we go with lie, we lose NPOV, because we then discard all the claims of Essjay about his motive or reasoning, and use a word that implies deception and preverting the truth.

I think that by stating what actions happened and when, the readers and other Wikipedians can decide for themselves what they want about the case. Whether he lied to be deceptive and fraudlent, or whether he made false claims to protect his identity. There is enough information in the article to support both views, it is not the place of Wikipedia to give one version more weight than the other, and to do so would be OR or NPOV, if not both. Can the call for using 'lied' be laid to rest now? -- Kavri 19:47, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Integrity

Thank God I've been using my real name . . .

I've also tried carefully not to inflate my level of professional expertise or accomplishments, but I have occasionally called myself "highly skilled" or "one the best" at software development. But I hope I never claimed a higher title than I was given: I "led a project" once but my title then was "senior programmer/analysit", not "project manager".

And I'm a ten-time college dropout. I don't think I'll ever get that sheepskin. :-(

But let's not be too hard on EssJay. While his deception is not justified by his accomplishments, it still may be evaluated in light of them.

It's just a shame that people (not just him!) feel that the only way to get a voice in this world is to stake a claim. Would that we would all simply respect each other and listen to each other as human beings. --Uncle Ed 17:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

P.S. My real name is not "Uncle Ed" of course but "Ed Poor". --User:Ed Poor 17:09, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

EssJay's archived user page

This link might be useful [6] I got a better idea what this story was about by reading EssJay's self-description. I'm not sure it should be in the article or where it would fit. 194.125.86.152 18:05, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

That's the one we've been looking for. If only I knew how to take a screen shot.... -- Kendrick7^talk 18:09, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Umm, no it isn't. We would need to have the one that was on display when Stacy Schiff was researching for the article; we don't know the timeframe. This one is obviously much earlier, because it refers to the Arbcomm elections of January 2006. I cannot imagine Essjay leaving that on his user page for six months. Risker 18:18, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Well the focus of the article seems to have changed beyond just his lying in the interview since we last discussed this issue. The lead now introduces his lying on his user page itself as a main component of the scandal. This seems to be the best example we have of this so far, since it includes the complete credentials. -- Kendrick7^talk 18:58, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The Essjay section of Criticism of Wikipedia footnotes this version of Essjay's user page from the Internet Archive. This, too, is probably not the version in place at the time of the Schiff interview, though Criticism of Wikipedia doesn't make that claim. The article only uses the archive to document Essjay's false assertions about his credentials. Nobody has contested the inclusion of this footnote in Criticism of Wikipedia, to my knowledge. But the treatment of Essjay in that article has been much less controversial than here.

Full disclosure: I suggested on the talk page of Criticism of Wikipedia that we cut down the article's coverage of Essjay once Essjay controversy stabilizes. That should take a while (wink). Casey Abell 19:19, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Oops, just checked. The version from Criticism of Wikipedia is the same as the version previously linked to in this section. Anyway, linking to it caused no trouble on that article, but things might get stickier over here. Casey Abell 19:24, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Tidbits

Radar Magazine poked fun at The New Yorker over the issue, stating that it "..only took the magazine's vaunted fact-checking department seven months.." to discover the identity of their interviewee.

Here is an interesting tidbit above. I think it belongs in the article. I will discuss it here first. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 19:24, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

See also section

The section has the link to the Reliability of Wikipedia. This article is about a controversy. It seems it was put in this article by mistake. Comments. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 18:22, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The controversy is about the reliability of Wikipedia, what more sensible see also link could there possibly be? --tjstrf talk 18:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, I think most of the links that are in the "See also" section were put in after another editor (C.m.jones, I believe) recommended that additional information about Wikipedia be included in the article. I think he had suggested a paragraph in the article; the compromise position was to include links to issues that were identified in various media articles, "reliability" being one of them. I'm neutral about the inclusion of this section as a whole; but if one goes, I think all of them should, at least until there is a policy or guideline in place with respect to credentialling. Risker 18:31, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I overviewed the Reliability of Wikipedia. It is not the same as a controversy. These are two different topics. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 18:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The criticism we are targeted for as a result of the Essjay controversy is a criticism of our reliability. It's another aspect of the same issue. --tjstrf talk 19:04, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The controversy is about false credentials, the interview, proposed policies, etc. It is about the controversy. It has aspects of criticism too. I do not see the article being about the reliability. The Reliability of Wikipedia does not mention the Essjay controversy because it does not belong there. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 19:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it does belong here. All of the 'controversy' is rooted in wikipedia being unreliabe, in that we have editors lying about credentials... - Denny 20:35, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The article in the see also section is not called Unreliability of Wikipedia. It is rooted in unreliabiliy? That said, the Reliability of Wikipedia is a different article. Just because someone thinks "I like it" is not a reason to leave it in this article. In the near future, there will be lots of proposals for credential related policies which will be in this article. This is about a controversy and soon enough its outcome. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 20:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

An article about reliability on Wikipedia is by definition also about unreliability, since we cover both sides in one article per WP:NPOV. An article titled Unreliability of Wikipedia would be an illegal content fork. --tjstrf talk 05:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Please point me to the section that fully covers the Unreliability of Wikipedia in the Reliability of Wikipedia article. The Criticism of Wikipedia covers the unreliability of Wikipedia which is most certainly not a content fork IMO. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 05:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The sections you seek would be:

1. Reliability of Wikipedia
2. Reliability of Wikipedia#Areas of reliability
3. Reliability of Wikipedia#The Wikipedia editing model
4. Reliability of Wikipedia#Assessment
5. Reliability of Wikipedia#Accuracy of articles
6. Reliability of Wikipedia#Comparative studies
7. Reliability of Wikipedia#Subjective expert opinion
8. Reliability of Wikipedia#Librarian views
9. Reliability of Wikipedia#Academia
10. Reliability of Wikipedia#Editors of other encyclopedias
11. Reliability of Wikipedia#Other
12. Reliability of Wikipedia#Removal of false information
13. Reliability of Wikipedia#Coverage
14. Reliability of Wikipedia#Broad assessments
15. Reliability of Wikipedia#References
16. Reliability of Wikipedia#See also
17. And finally, Reliability of Wikipedia#External links

In case you didn't catch on, the article covers both parts side-by-side, your question indicates you are either being purposefully dense or didn't read it. --tjstrf talk 05:31, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

IMO the Reliability of Wikipedia article does not "fully cover" the unreliability of Wikipedia or a controversy. In this regard, it is really addressed in the Criticism of Wikipedia. But if people like it in this article that is what is called consensus. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 05:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

"Detailing, Organizing, And Moving Forward"

1) I noticed the wikinews boxes are in need of serious repair.

2) The Essjay's letter to the professor is gone because of the continuous rearrangment of sentences.

3) The Justin Timberlake tidbit is worth mentioning in the article which was identified in a previous discussion on this talk page.

4) The New York Times link does not link to the article. I will use a link to the direct article piece.

5) I believe the Notes title should be changed back to the References title because they are references. I do not understand the title change.

6) I will update the related links section and add an article and put the wiki boxes there.

7) The response by Stacy to the interview is not mentioned. It may be worth mentioning.

8) The lead sentence is missing the "L" word which is backed up by three solid references.

9) The See also section was modified and shortened which is below par at the present time.

10) I do believe more detail is needed in a few areas of the article for completeness, accuracy, and above all else neutrality.

11) At the top of the Reaction's section I still believe an introduction sentence is a good idea.

12) I would like fresh eyes to view the Identitiy revealed section to determine if a separate section is better or the bolder sub-factored section is better.

13) There is still ongoing discussion about a particular image for the article.

Let the talks begin. Regards, :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 01:47, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

These are not arguments- they are statements. You need to persuade other editors that these changes are necessary. WjBscribe 01:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, let's review, Quack.

• Those Wikinews boxes were modified by a very experienced editor who does a lot of those sorts of modifications. I understand that is something done when possible, and there is probably a complicated technical reason that I don't know about. They did not change the quality or content of the article, and improved the use of space in that area of the article.
• Not sure where the "letter" stuff went, but it is unclear to me right now exactly where it would fit in the article. I am neutral on adding it, but it would have to be carefully placed so that it is in the proper context.
• Yes, Essjay edited the Timberlake article. They were vandalism reverts. Do you really want to raise the ire of the entire RC Patrol by adding that?
• I see what you mean about the NYT article(s). It is not a "free" website. We may need to re-source those statements, which is better than a WebCite.
• I understand that the thinking of using the term "notes" was to permit inclusion of other news stories that weren't being used directly as references. I am neutral on the idea, either way.
• What were you planning to put in "Related links" - and why move the Wikinews boxes?
• Andrew Lih's blog is, well... a blog. Blogs are generally not considered WP:RS. Stacy Schiff has never publicly come out and said that to any other source that anyone has brought here, including The New Yorker, where one would expect it to appear.
• The sentence where you want to include the words "and lied" currently says "made false claims." Exactly what difference to you see in those two expressions? They mean the same thing, and there are sources for the current expression too. We cannot have both in the sentence; that is grammatically unsound.
• The "See Also" section was not shortened, it looked smaller because of the combination of the two Wikinews boxes.
• Yes, the article may continue to need tweaking for some time to come, particularly if and when a new "credentials" policy is approved and reported in the media. But given the level of interest and the degree of contentiousness of this article, each addition should be talked through now. The article is not a stub, and there is no essential information missing.
• Why don't you write an introduction to the "Reaction" section and propose it here on the talk page? I think you might have a point here, but again careful wordcrafting is important.
• Several different editors have been through this article in the last two days, including some who haven't done significant edits for at least the last several days. None of them have felt the need to change the "Identity revealed" (note spelling of "identity") to the level of a full header.
• There are serious BLP issues in adding the photo. The other images that have been bandied about, the user page screenshots, clearly are not of benefit to the article as they do not reflect the information discussed in the article.

I suggest that we just take any changes very slowly and with thought and discussion beforehand. The article will never be "finished," but right now it is relatively stable. One step at a time. Risker 02:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Quack, I've checked out that different NYT link that you picked up on, which is for A Contributor to Wikipedia Has His Fictional Side (reference #19), and this seems to be a live link. If you can get it into the cite.php format (I admit to being technologically challenged), I think it would be good to insert it in place of the link that is there now for this article; the current link takes one to a screen that requires registration to access. Perhaps you can also find a similar link for reference #6, the other NYT article used as a reference? That would be excellent. I don't foresee any controversy in providing live links to the actual articles in place of the existing restricted ones. Risker 04:20, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

13) The image clearly should be added back. There is no valid BLP-related reason not to use the photo. Most biographies here do have photos when a freely-licensed photo is available (as is the case here). The photo has already been used by mainstream media so there is no BLP issue at all. Johntex\^talk 06:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

13) The image adds nothing, especially not in the gallery formatting Quack has curiosly insisted upon (on his user talk page, among other places, he has adamantly stated that the image "MUST" go in a gallery section). This is not an article about Ryan Jordan, so why add a photo of some guy alleged to be Ryan Jordan? If Essjay had uploaded a photo of some scholarly looking middle aged tenurial type then an argument of relevance could indeed be made, but it's not. So no compelling argument for inclusion exists. --tjstrf talk 07:09, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

13) I disagree. This article is about the Essjay controversy. That controversy began around the question of who Essjay is and claimed to be. Essjay has claimed to be the person in the photo. The question of where it should go should not interfere with our adding it to the article. I have always maintained it should be in the section related to Wikia since that is the time-frame when it was uploaded. Johntex\^talk 08:21, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Johntex, I think the challenge with the photographic image actually revolves around determining what this article - and ultimately the story - is about. There are those who feel that this story is about one person who rode roughshod over Wikipedia using false credentials. But what the media reports tell us is that the story is the perception that there are no checks and balances to ensure that people do not fabricate entire personas and essentially "role-play" when editing Wikipedia. Essjay did not break a single Wikipedia policy by pretending to be someone he wasn't. A few hours of hard digging would probably turn up several more people with questionable credentials (like the "loyer" whose userpage I looked at the other day) - Essjay's persona is not unique. So...if the perception of independent reliable sources is that the controversy centers on the lack of a Wikipedia credentialling verification process - that is what the controversy is about. While there are lots of other controversies within Wikipedia about this whole situation, including that information is nothing short of navel-gazing without reliable external sources. Essjay and his actions are simply the "hook" in the story, he isn't the subject of it. Wikipedia is. Sticking a picture of the one guy who's been publicly outed doesn't help the story; would we start adding any available images of other Wikipedians when their "fake" credentials are discovered? Now, if you were to suggest an image of one of the Wikipedia symbols, I wouldn't have any problem with it. Risker 18:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

13) Does anyone still think there are BLP concerns regarding the photo. Essjay uploaded the photo and the media has used it. Therefore, no BLP concerns apply. 2) I will add the Essjay letter tidbit back to the article since people are neutral on that. 1) The wiki boxes have been modified and look a little odd. There has been a lot of rearragement of info. I do think the article could have better detail still. We are not quite there yet IMO. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 05:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Quack, as people on WP:ANI told you, you should wait 24 hours at least. Your idea of concensus is not everyone else's. You can do whatever of course, but if someone RVs you... well, waiting never hurts. You need to give people in all time zones time to respond/digest to work with them. - Denny 05:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Very well. It has been over 24 hours for people to digest the information. Since people are neutral on the Essjay letter, I will add it in. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 01:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia community

At the top of the Wikipedia community section it jumps into a quote. I believe an intro summary would fit well at the top of the section. A brief summary of the events would greatly improve that section.

The collaborative online encyclopedia site, Wikipedia, has been hit by the Essjay affair, after one of its editors used false credentials as part of a pseudonym persona and in an interview, made false statements to Stacy Schiff of The New Yorker. There has been broad discussion within the scope of proposing credential verification and policy changes.

Here is a start to have an introduction summary for the Wikipedia community. Any suggestions. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 07:48, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

There's a complete chronological account of the controversy (including the New Yorker and the false credentials) just before the "Wikipedia community" section. Not to mention the lede, which also recounts the entire matter including the New Yorker and the credentials, and the Timeline, which also goes through everything, again including the New Yorker and the credentials. I don't think a fourth recap of the controversy in "Wikipedia community" is necessary. Casey Abell 12:46, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Identity revealed

Before his identitiy was known to the ''The New Yorker'', Essjay sent a letter to a college professor using his persona's credentials, vouching for Wikipedia's accuracy.<ref name="Guardian"/> "It is never the case that known incorrect information is allowed to remain in Wikipedia."<ref name="Guardian"/>

This information above is fully referenced. Click on the reference here. This is reference #7 currently in the article. ^ a b c d e Finkelstein, Seth (March 8, 2007). Read me first. Technology. The Guardian. Retrieved on 2007-03-18. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 02:40, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

What I saw was text about that letter for the academic and a mirrory cite to webcitation.org. Gwen Gale 02:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

We are talking about the fully referenced text above which is fully sourced. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 02:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm talking about the self-referenced citation that snuck in with it.Gwen Gale 02:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

This discussion here is also about the fully referenced sentences above. For the other text with the reference, if it does not meet your satisfactory I could search for another reference to meet verifiability. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 02:58, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) Yes, the Guardian reference includes that information; you might want to work on the wordsmithing first. The way you have written it up above in this section doesn't flow properly, having a sentence quoted without reference to who said it. I was going to kill that webcite-y thing too, which was an incomplete copy of the email referring to the letter (e.g., the dates had been cut off), and it was certainly not going to cut it as a citable source. Risker 03:09, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Before his identitiy was known to the ''The New Yorker'', Essjay sent a letter to a college professor using his persona's credentials, vouching for Wikipedia's accuracy.<ref name="Guardian"/> In the letter he wrote in part, "It is never the case that known incorrect information is allowed to remain in Wikipedia."<ref name="Guardian"/>

I will add it to the article and everyone can make the necessary adjustments if needed. Of course, take a quick overview first. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 03:17, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay..first off, it's "identity" not "identitiy". I'm also a bit hesitant for the conditional phrase. We don't know when the letter was written; the cited source does not say whether it was before the interview or between the interview and The New Yorker finding out about the credentials. We have to be careful not to imply more than the cited source says. Risker 03:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Is there any verifiable support that it was ever sent? (only asking) Gwen Gale 03:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

We have the cited reference(s). :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 03:55, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

It is easy to know the letter was sent before the controversy happened. I understand your concern. He would of never sent the letter if The New Yorker knew about his identity and false credentials. This is clear. But to ensure verifiability I will make the necessary adjustments and add it to the article now. Thanks for your help. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 03:55, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

You know, Gwen, I've wondered that right from the start. We only had Essjay's word that he had sent it until Finkelstein mentioned it; unfortunately that little bit of OR wasn't cleaned out of the article before Finkelstein picked up on it, although he could have read about it on several other WP pages as well I suppose. Incidentally Quack...someone else had a Website link at one point too, except that one showed the date of the letter, which was some time im 2005, long before the interview even. We can't put that into the article because of a lack of proper sourcing, but at the same time I don't think it would be appropriate to even vaguely imply it happened between the interview and the editor's note. Risker 04:01, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I made the necessary adjustments. Thanx. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 04:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe Finkelstein is the only citation I've ever seen so far for any notion Essjay indeed posted the letter and truth be told, Finkelstein on this is a bit thin, as if he picked it up from an early version of this article. I don't think there's enough support to say Essjay "sent" the letter. Gwen Gale 04:05, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I see Quack is edit warring and has put it back in. I've already rm'd it once, I think it should be rm'd again. Gwen Gale 04:08, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

We already discussed it here and Risker identified the adjustments that were needed. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 04:10, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:Verifiability: The only support is ambiguous wording from a single journalist. Gwen Gale 04:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

If ever anyone needs evidence about the hazards of sticking primary sources into an article...well, here it is. Finkelstein is vague; and in fact the document itself says it was sent as an email rather than a letter. To me, that is a pretty big difference. The info in the original document indicates that it was written shortly after the Siegenthaler controversy, which was in September/October 2005. With that in mind, the conditional clause at the beginning of this entry really does have to go and I will take that out. Quack, have you found any other references at all that talk about the letter? Risker 04:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I have just read through all our cited sources, as well as the ones on Quack's user page, trying to find another reference to this letter. There is none in anything collected here to date. (Incidentally, no pictures of Essjay either, except for two 1.5 second distorted shots on the ABC news report.) Given there are over 40 sources altogether, a single vague (and somewhat incorrect) mention probably doesn't cut it to meet WP:BLP and WP:RS standards, let alone notability guidelines. Risker 05:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I do agree. The only independent source I've ever seen for that letter having been sent has been that Guardian article it looks like a reporting error. Gwen Gale 05:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Essjay claimed the letter was valid. That was picked up by both the community and Finkelstein. Finkelstein's comment on it was picked up by others. We don't know if he sent it. We do know this was part of his representation of himself to the wikipedia community and part of the reason his claim of "protecting himself" was known to be a lie. Sorry - "false claim". WAS 4.250 07:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, WAS 4.250, the problem is that Finkelstein's comment wasn't picked up by anyone else. The exact words from Finkelstein: There was a letter sent to a professor, in which his phony credentials were used as part of an endorsement of Wikipedia's value and accuracy: "It is never the case that known incorrect information is allowed to remain in Wikipedia." Nobody else even bothered to mention the letter - but of course it wasn't a letter, it was an email. And given that anything that seems to have to do with those professorial credentials was essentially malarkey, it's entirely reasonable to question whether or not it was ever sent. Risker 11:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

By "others" I was refering to this: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/03/head_wikipedian.php WAS 4.250 22:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Media reaction? Potential GA?

The Essjay controversy has been reported in many newspapers. Although newspapers which are worth their salt generally strive to be factual, neutral and unbiased in their reporting, surely some of them have expressed their views on the controversy? Perhaps we should add a section with quotes of criticism from (highly reputable and notable) newspapers?

Once the article stabilises, do you think it would have GA potential? I intend to nominate it in a few weeks.

Sorry if I just stirred up a hornet's nest (if I did, feel free to remove this section, stating so in the edit summary).

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

There is already a peer review request up for this article, but there hasn't been much movement yet on it. every article should be built with the end goal of full FA status, so no reason we shouldn't shoot for that here over time. - Denny 14:35, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Tidbits

Radar Magazine poked fun at The New Yorker over the issue, stating that it "..only took the magazine's vaunted fact-checking department seven months.." to discover the identity of their interviewee.

Here is an interesting tidbit above. I think it belongs in the article. I will discuss it here first. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 19:24, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I have tranfered my comment view toto from the archives. It has been more than 24 hours for people in all time zones to overview. Since people are neutral on this tidbit, I will add it to the article. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 16:25, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Snarky comments are not encyclopedic. This is an article on the Essjay controversy and not a critique of the new yorker. It is factually in error since their fact-checking department did not discover the identity of their interviewee, but instead Brandt badgered several people at that magazine into a public retraction. Badgered? Formal letters to people's bosses insisting on their doing the ethical thing or else. WAS 4.250 16:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

"Verifiability, not truth" -- now where have I heard that? -- 85.225.171.211 17:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It is a misunderstanding of how wikipedia works to object to the use of original reserch to determine accuracy (truth?) for use in making editorial descions like not using a source for a particular claim. WAS 4.250 01:38, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

WAS 4.250, I believe you are in error; just because a comment is 'snarky' does not mean that it does not belong in an encyclopedia. Furthermore, I do not know whether or not the quote regarding the New Yorker's "fact-checking department" is true (if it isn't, it is reason to not include the quote), but, if it is, then this quote conceivably has a place in this article. For one thing, this quote would make the point that, "If it took an acclaimed magazine seven months to find out this administrator is lying, how long would it take a bunch of volunteers on a website like Wikipedia?"

Also, Risker, your edit information criticizes (presumably) user Mr.Guru for "[adding] without regards to comments on the talk page..." and yet it appears that no one had any opinions regarding his proposed change--there were no comments which he could disregard. 100DashSix 04:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see the thread below 100DashSix; it appears that several threads created over the past few days have disappeared from both this page and the archives. I remember reading comments on this very issue from at least two editors, who were not supportive of inclusion. I will point out that the article already has a sourced sentence dealing with how The New Yorker came to find out about the situation - they were advised by Daniel Brandt. This article is contradictory. It seems to me that we can either look at the Radar Online as "tongue in cheek" or we can eliminate the existing sentence, since both pieces of "information" seem only to exist in single reliable sources. Risker 05:03, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, perhaps that explains it, though I can't find information regarding this particular discussion in the link from the topic below. Even without this, however, based on the source that contradicts the Radar Magazine article, I'd have to conclude that this tidbit should not be included in the article. It's unfortunate, as a point something like "the false information wasn't even discovered by the New Yorker--it took an owner of a self-described watchdog site to discover the truth behind this user's persona" would be valid and relevant, and could illuminate potential difficulties in the nature of Wikipedia. If anyone has seen this point raised, consider including it. 100DashSix 05:19, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

(Copy of the comment on my talk page, regarding Mr.Guru's proposal for the sentence in its current form.) I think that, if this information is included, it should focus less on this source's perception of the New Yorker and more on the fact that it took seven months for the magazine to discover the problem, including the author's apparent idea that it's a very good magazine. I'm not sure I can support this view based on that article, so I won't edit the sentence. I'm not convinced it should be there, and I certainly feel that it shouldn't be worded in its current form--the comments that were made above are right with regards to this being an article about the controversy, not the New Yorker. 100DashSix 04:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Tidbits Revisited

According to Radar Magazine, The New Yorker was informed that about the true identity of their interviewee after seven months.

I believe we are missing the 7 month time period when and how (specific details) The New Yorker finally realizing the real identity of their interviewee. I am neutral on any sources used for the article about the 7 month duration tidbit. Thanx. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 05:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

If you check the main article, it says that the New Yorker was informed by an outsider sixth months after it published the article; a month later they issued their correction. These statements are already supported by detailed sources, and, as such, I don't think we need another--especially not one that states that the New Yorker determined the error on its own. If the seven month issue is to be more clearly expressed, perhaps the following changes could be made (in italics): "Daniel Brandt then reported the Essjay/Ryan Jordan identity discrepancy to The New Yorker.[14] In late February 2007, seven months after the initial article, The New Yorker issued a correction." If there is support for this change, I recommend someone else making it, or I can do so next time I check the article. 100DashSix 05:43, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Reverted "Effect on donations" section

Wikipedia daily donations for the first 81 days of 2007 through March 22 (source: Wikimedia)

I agree entirely with the reversion of the "Effect on donations" section. The section and its accompanying graph were misleading in the extreme, because the first part of 2007 prior to the Essjay controversy was purposely omitted. The complete graph of daily contributions for the first 81 days of 2007 through March 22 clearly indicates that the Essjay controversy had little if any effect on donations. The overwhelming trend is downward for the entire year, as the last fundraiser ended and the usual pattern of small daily donations (with occasional random upturns) took over. The Essjay controversy, which erupted about day 60, didn't alter the trend at all. Casey Abell 15:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I too concur. Not only was the information incomplete - it should also have had comparative values for the prior year, as was pointed out when that graph was discussed on another website - it is a definitive example of WP:SYN. Risker 15:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Here is another version which may better demonstrate the diminishing donations effects prior to the Essjay incident.

Wikimedia daily donations including linear and log trendlines

-- Avi 18:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I've tagged the original image for deletion. (→Netscott) 22:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

This stuff is OR and looks useless. For it to have any value even on a talk page there has to be some hypothesis testing, not just pretty graphs. It just doesn't belong here. 64.160.39.153 00:02, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Correct. It's not eligible for the article, it just shows graphically that the Essjay incident really had no effect and that the drop-off in donations was a trend that was in existence since at least 1/1/07. -- Avi 00:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It really doesn't show anything about anything. The linear fit, for example, suggests that donations will cross zero soon and Wikipedia will start sending money out to donors instead of the other way around. 64.160.39.153 02:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Which is why I show a log fit, since linear does not make sense when there exists a pre-determined asymptote, namely 0 People like to see straight lines, and understand the concept of linear trend better. Also, it still shows the net downward trend beginning way back. Perhpas I'll try and aggregate some 2006 data and see if the pattern extended further back. -- Avi 11:36, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The very fact that it "shows nothing" is significant in that it shows there was no effect. A blank photograph when you were looking to find something does have significance. --tjstrf talk 02:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Out of interest, what caused the small increase in donations around day 40? Does that coincide with the time that Board person announced Wikipedia would shut down in four months if it didn't get more donations? – Qxz 10:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Good catch! I was wondering about that small uptick myself. It does seem to coincide with Florence's doom-and-gloom in early February, which would have been right around day 40. The reverted section tried to link the small uptick to Essjay's appointment to ArbCom, which I thought was ridiculous. A reaction by donors to Florence's comments looks like a much more likely explanation. At any rate, the Essjay hullabaloo doesn't appear to have affected the overall trend in donations in any way. Casey Abell 12:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

And to make any claim that it does or doesn't is original research unless one of us gets this published in a reliable source; I'm not holding my breath . -- Avi 13:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

All very interesting, but unless such information is presented by a reliable source we cannot use it, even then we should only use their interpretation of the information. What we have here is known as a novel synthesis of information from multiple sources to put forth a new idea(one source says controversy happened on X days, another source shows donations over that time, new idea: The effect on donations from this scandal was Y). ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:17, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

As Avi already noted, nobody's suggesting we use the information in the article. These comments and graphs are only presented to justify the reversion of the unreliable and misleading "Effects on donations" section, which attempted to show a link between the Essjay rumpus and contributions to Wikipedia. Casey Abell 12:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

So in other words, "My OR refutes your OR"? I wonder what policy says about using that as a removal reason? --tjstrf talk 21:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

No, more like "OR is OR and does not belong. But while we're on the topic of OR, let's use a little common sense here in talk pages" or something like that :) The initial reversion is justified as OR, and needs no further support. -- Avi 01:00, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

missing threads / archiving time

It might be time for turning off the archive bot as things have slowed down. Also, a number of threads from the last few days have disappeared [7]. -- Kendrick7^talk 19:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for saying that Kendrick - I remembered this thread clearly but could not find it earlier. I understand there may be some sort of server problem? I also could not get the history for the article for any edits after March 11th earlier today; it seems fine now. Risker 20:02, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Two issues here. Page histories can be a little eratic at the moment- seems to be a fault with the mediawiki servers. Also, at the moment all threads older than 48 hours are archived. If there is a concensus here for a different timeframe a request can be made at User talk:Misza13. WjBscribe 20:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I've extended the archival delay to 5 days given comments. Lets see how that works.... WjBscribe 02:40, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Another source

Another article discussing Essjay, out today. - Denny 02:01, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

This is an article discussing Wikipedia vandalism and its control. There is one sentence about Essjay in it. There is also one sentence about Steve Irwin. About half of the story consists of an interview with admin Theresa Knott, discussing how she and other Wikipedians fight vandalism. It is an interesting article, however. Risker 02:37, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Restarted peer review

I restarted the peer review and added it to the Community Portal. People have made comments here, which you may wish to read. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 11:22, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed some basic formatting issues that need correcting, but beyond that, can anyone consider any compelling reason why we should not nominate for FA? The edit wars have died down, every sentence is referenced, and there is little press coverage any more we need to keep an eye out for. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 21:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe start with GA? - Denny 22:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

...Why? If it's good enough for GA, we may as well put the little effort in to reach FA, no? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 22:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

If the peer review is favourable, then I agree with trying for FA. If it fails FA we can always fall back on GA. --tjstrf talk 22:21, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Good points, nevermind me. :) - Denny 22:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Um ... Essjay controversy is not going to become a mainpage featured article, for obvious reasons that I truly hope I don't need to adumbrate here. It was considered inappropriate a couple of weeks ago even as a "Did You Know" item. Newyorkbrad 22:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Can it have FA status bestowed by the community while not being on the front page (hypothetically)? - Denny 22:31, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, yeah, but there's no reason it can;t be featured, is there? I like to think that the lack of feedback on the peer review indicates there's not a lot to say. :) Shall we get someone from the League in to copyedit, I'll fix the formatting I referred to, and then go for it? I think everyone here has done a fantastic amount of work on it. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 22:28, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Articles can be Featured, but never be on the main page. Prodego ^talk 22:33, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Raul says he keeps a list of FAs that he will never put on the front page, which seems justified. It would be incredibly narcissistic to put up Wikipedia for example, when it eventually passes again. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 22:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Even though it will never make front-page this will still be a rather momentous occasion seeing as it has not only been built at max-level citations from the ground up, but hammered out between a coalition of meta-editors and trolls. --tjstrf talk 22:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Um ... remind me again why this is a good thing? Newyorkbrad 22:59, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) Because most FAs are written by one or two people and this article has truly demonstrated the power of crowds that Wikipedia was created for? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 23:05, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking it would help discount the opinions of the WP:1FA-type people who think Wikipedia space editors aren't capable of writing good content so they just sit around and argue all day instead. --tjstrf talk 23:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

New screenshot of User:Essjay available

This one shows the entirety of the academic claims discussed in the article. The image is at Image:User-Essjay.png. -- Kendrick7^talk 17:47, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

...I think that would be workable. - Denny 17:52, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I concur. It is usable. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 17:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

No no no. It is from six months before the article was published, and we cannot tell how many times it was modified in between. We have no evidence that this is the user page the journalist referenced when writing the article. It also is a low quality image; nothing can be seen unless people click on the image and then know how to work through the wiki-world to actually view the image in a legible format. It is also a primary source, when we have already fully included the information from secondary sources. The image adds nothing to the article, and moves it back to being an article about Essjay rather than the controversy. Remember that the controversy we are reporting is how the world outside of Wikipedia reacted and observed things. When the controversy arose, this was not the user page on display, either. Incidentally, it is not a "new" screenshot, it was removed from the article three weeks ago for these very reasons. Risker 18:10, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes. It is the user page of Essjay. Enough said. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 18:13, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't doubt it is a screenshot of his user page on one particular day. You have not responded to my points, Quack. There are at least four different screenshots of his user page around that I have seen; each one is different. None of them are contemporaneous to the article. That still doesn't answer any of my points, which are:

• No evidence this was seen by the journalist
• Poor quality image that is very user-unfriendly
• Primary source, when relevant information already covered in the article from reliable secondary sources
• Changes focus of article from the controversy to Essjay personally

As soon as this article reverts back to what it was in the days following the start of the controversy - that is, an article about the actions of one specific individual - we are back at AfD and quite rightly the article is no longer viable. Quack, please stop trying to insert personal information about Essjay into this article. Risker 18:22, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The article as currently scoped says, in the first sentence, that the controversy is about the lies he told on his User page. These are them. -- Kendrick7^talk 18:37, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Risker's claims are ridiculous. He is just trying to keep stuff out he does not like. Remember these:

• Edit in which Essjay claims to a user that he had a PhD and students under his charge - archive at WebCite.
• Essjay's apology - archive at WebCite.
• Letter by Essjay to an academic in which he falsely claims academic credentials and accomplishments. - archive at WebCite.
• User:Essjay/History1 - archive at Google cache. Additional archive at WebCite. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by C.m.jones (talk • contribs).

I've compromised the issue in the same way that Criticism of Wikipedia handled Essjay's deleted user page. I have footnoted the Internet Archive version of the user page, to show the actual claim of the false credentials. I hate to add more footnotes to the article, but I'd like to settle this controversy. Casey Abell 13:11, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I've also added a link to Essjay's archived Wikia user page of 1-1-07, alongside the Martyn Williams footnote about how Essjay "came clean." Otherwise, the reference might be somewhat unclear. If we keep this stuff in footnotes, I think we can compromise the controversy about including the material while still informing the reader completely. Casey Abell 13:45, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

this footnote was just added. Shouldn't we web citation it in case someone at Wikia inappropriately removes it? - Denny 13:43, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

As I said, I added the footnote to show how Essjay identified himself as Ryan Jordan. This Wikia user template been blocked from The Internet Archive but is available directly (go figure). I misspoke slightly above - Essjay's actual Wikia user page with the (supposedly) correct information on his background has been deep-sixed and protected from web crawlers. I can't find a copy of it anywhere. Casey Abell 13:59, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, there is a copy of it on Wikipedia Watch, but there's no way I'm going to footnote that. Casey Abell 14:02, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Redirect for deletion

Folks who've been editing on this article should be aware of this redirects for deletion discussion. (→Netscott) 20:49, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

"a" Wikipedia founder

The result of the debate was: Stop arguing. The issue of Sanger's eligibility for founder status has nothing at all to do with the subject of this article, never has, and never will, so it really doesn't matter how many references are provided one way or the other or who is in possession of the WP:TRUTH. Quackguru, you are on the wrong page to be arguing about this. Period. So drop the subject. Larry Sanger has his own article, and his own talk page. Argue there and stop bothering us, we are trying to write about the Essjay credentials controversy here, not the Wikipedia foundership controversy. --tjstrf talk 06:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
It was already discussed at length on the talk page here. I was going with consensus. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Essjay_controversy&diff=next&oldid=114862436 Here was the compromise discussed at length on the talk page. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Essjay_controversy&curid=9875104&diff=119150768&oldid=119148917 Here is a controversial edit along with the controversial edit summary. Any suggestions. :) - Mr.Guru (talk/contribs) 23:45, 30 March 2007 (UTC) Quack... what the fuck is wrong with you? No, really, what the fuck is wrong with you? Pull your head out of your ass and stop making everything a damn problem. (and to everyone who wants to yell WP:CIVIL at me, shut up, it had to be said). I am surprised at how patient everyone has been with you, Quack, but don't you be surprised when other people start breaking down like I just did. -- Ned Scott 23:53, 30 March 2007 (UTC) WP:CIVIL!! Seriously. If you've got a problem with him, take it to the proper channels. --Kickstart70-T-C 23:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC) Stop now, Ned, or this will go to ANI. Quack gets on my nerves sometimes (sorry, Quack) but this is beyond the pale. Stop now. - Denny 23:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC) No, put to ANI. That is beyond hostile, sorry. - Denny 00:00, 31 March 2007 (UTC) Not to justify Ned's outburst, but I too find Quack's POV-pushing an annoyance. The correct appellative for Wales is "Wikipedia founder" -- not "a", or "one of" or "co-". This is how he is listed by the Wikimedia Foundation (which Wales also set-up) [8], and how news reports list him. This article isn't the place to argue to origination of Wikipedia.--LeflymanTalk 01:04, 31 March 2007 (UTC) You are argueing this point at this article. Before 2004 Wales never disputed - he as the co-founder. I will add more refs in the future if needed. For now I will add the agreed upon compromise for this article and revert the misleading edit summary. :) - Mr.Guru (talk/contribs) 02:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC) You again are incorrect. As I pointed out previously, Wales has specifically stated, "I have never agreed that Larry should be called co-founder and have contested it from the time when Larry awarded himself the title." Please stop deliberately re-introducing mis-information into the article. --LeflymanTalk 03:13, 1 April 2007 (UTC) O.K. Lets overview: First: Consensus was agreed upon which you are ignoring. Second: It does not matter what Wales' opinion or Sanger's opinion is. Third: What is th definition of founder. A person who established Wikipedia. Fourth: Two people worked togther to establish and build Wikipedia from the beginning. Fifth: When two people work together and start a project from the very beginning they are both called co-founders. Sixth: There was never a disputed when Larry Sanger was still part of this project. Seventh: Mr. Jimmy Wales has never given any documented evidence for his new version (since 2004) of reality (revisionism). Eighth: At the risk of repeating myself, Wales never disputed his co-founder position before 2004. Ninth: I have provided strong evidence (references) to color the picture. Tenth: Here are some references for Wikipdians to get to up to speed on the facts and the history of Wikipedia. Eleventh: Articles must be written from a neatral point of view. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/technology/24online.ready.html?#ex=1293080400&en=431aff478b00239e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss Early Media Coverage http://www.larrysanger.org/roleinwp.html Links and more links http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia&dir=prev&offset=20040119212409&limit=500&action=history Early versions of Wikipedia pages http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Wikipedia&dir=prev&limit=500&action=history Early versions of Wikipedia pages http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_Sanger&dir=prev&limit=500&action=history Early versions of Wikipedia pages http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jimmy_Wales&offset=20040909053247&limit=500&action=history Early versions of Wikipedia pages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases/January_2002 Official Wikipedia Press Release of 2002 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases/January_2003 Official Wikipedia Press Release of 2003 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases/February_2004 Official Wikipedia Press Release of 2004 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WIKIPEDIA_FOUNDERS?SITE=NCASH&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/18/164213&tid=95&tid=149&tid=9 http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/19/1746205&tid=95 http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/02/12/bias_sabotage_haunt_wikipedias_free_world/?page=4 http://news.com.com/Wikipedia+co-founder+plans+expert+rival/2100-1038_3-6126469 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,222922,00.html http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia/ Wales and Sanger created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001. The initial purpose was to get the public to add entries that would then be “fed into the Nupedia process” of authorization. Most of Nupedia’s expert volunteers, however, wanted nothing to do with this, so Sanger decided to launch a separate site called “Wikipedia.” Neither Sanger nor Wales looked on Wikipedia as anything more than a lark. This is evident in Sanger’s flip announcement of Wikipedia to the Nupedia discussion list. “Humor me,” he wrote. “Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes.” And, to Sanger’s surprise, go they did. Within a few days, Wikipedia outstripped Nupedia in terms of quantity, if not quality, and a small community developed. In late January, Sanger created a Wikipedia discussion list (Wikipedia-L) to facilitate discussion of the project. At the end of January, Wikipedia had seventeen “real” articles (entries with more than 200 characters). By the end of February, it had 150; March, 572; April, 835; May, 1,300; June, 1,700; July, 2,400; August, 3,700. At the end of the year, the site boasted approximately 15,000 articles and about 350 “Wikipedians.”[9] Yours Cordially, :) - Mr.Guru (talk/contribs) 03:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Ever still, this is not the place to dispute the petty and semantic "who founded Wikipedia" thing. There are two supportable PoVs on this although I must say, hired employees are almost never regarded as founders. This is not meant to diminish Sanger's widely documented sway and influence at the early Wikipedia but it was Wales who turned on the switch and made the ongoing decisions to keep the lights lit, so to speak. Gwen Gale 04:07, 1 April 2007 (UTC) FYI, We go by reliable references for open source publishing on Wikipedia and not your opinion. So your arguement is irrelevant. Thanx. :) - Mr.Guru (talk/contribs) 04:13, 1 April 2007 (UTC) You have misunderstood my post. Please review WP:NPOV#Undue weight. Gwen Gale 04:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Another policy to pay attention to would be WP:THISARTICLEHASNOTHINGTODOWITHSANGER. Why even bring it up? It would be like bringing up arguments about the existence of God in an article because it had a quote from the book of Psalms in it. --tjstrf talk 05:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Ah, thanks, tjstrf, I was just going to bring that up. As new editors have come to the article, consensus has changed, Quack. Remember to keep focus on what the article is about, not peripheral issues that are addressed in the article to which there is already a WP link. Risker 05:11, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Both of your comments are excused to have your new version of reality which does not meet the threshold for NPOVing on Wikipedia. Here are some editors who agreed to "a" founder. BTY, it is about verifiable and not your opinion. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Essjay_controversy&diff=next&oldid=114862436 The compromised version by Mr. Colt. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Essjay_controversy&diff=prev&oldid=114872942 Risker agreed to this too (oh my). http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Essjay_controversy&diff=prev&oldid=114875941 "I say leave out the word founder altogether but I'm ok with Denny's way too." Note: Some editors who agreed to the compromise are now having a new perception (changing of opinion) of reality (revisionism). Any suggestions -- to the maintainance of a neutral point of view (upholding the standard for a good quality article.:) - Mr.Guru (talk/contribs) 05:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Well, Quack...my position was that if arguing about this didn't stop, we should take out the Sanger reference entirely. I am fine with that. Is that your preferred method of dealing with this issue as well? --Risker 05:45, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Note to Risker. I am refering to Jimmy Wales as "a" founder issue. You are trying to twist things up here now. You did not say take out Jimmy Wales from article. That speaks volumes. :) - Mr.Guru (talk/contribs) 05:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Of course I didn't say take Jimmy Wales out of the article, Quack. Jimmy is still a part of Wikipedia, and was widely interviewed and quoted about this controversy. None of those points can be said about Sanger. Taking references to Wales out of the article would leave a hole the size of a Mack truck. Taking Sanger out would leave a hole the size of a skateboard. --Risker 06:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Second note to Risker. This discussion here is about adding an "a" to Jimmy Wales. I do not follow your logic. In fact you previously agreed to this. I have provided many references, statements, and arguements which most or if not all of you have intentionally ignored. :) - Mr.Guru (talk/contribs) 06:12, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
The above is an archived debate of a really tedious subject that had nothing to do with this page. Nothing to see here, move along. Please do not modify it.

Futher discussion can be found at Talk:Larry Sanger. Any edit warring over this will cause you to be blocked for disruption. --w^{L<speak·check>} 21:55, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand the logic of this move/merge. Most of the discussion was about whether Wales has an official title or not, why is that relevent to the Sanger article? Second, can you stop threatening people with blocks for discussing a legitimate topic. David D. (Talk) 23:48, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The point is quite clear: the discussion was resulting in massive disruption of an otherwise stable article, while the subject of the discussion has nothing at all to do with the scope of this article. Therefore, there is little or no benefit to discussing it here while there is great harm to doing so. We do not get to decide what Wales and Sanger are or are not on this talk page, so we don't need to be talking about it except at the minimum necessary level. --tjstrf talk 23:55, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

My point was why didn't it get put on the Jimmy Wales talk page? 95% of those sections were discussing Wales ONLY. David D. (Talk) 00:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Because Wales founding Wikipedia is not disputed. Sanger founding Wikipedia is. And we don't have a Talk:Wikipedia foundership dispute. --tjstrf talk 00:23, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Did you read the sections? It was discussing his role and title in wikipedia NOW. Just knee jerk moving sections with the word founder and WALES in is not going to work here unless you read for context. Note, the discussion is continuing below, still. Is that also a disruption or a valid attempt to find a solution to this issue? David D. (Talk) 00:29, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Based on the above discussion closure, Sanger is at the heart of the matter. But if you feel its more about Wales, then transfer it to that article. I do not need to repeat the disruptiveness of the edit war about identifying Jimbo. --w^{L<speak·check>} 00:27, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Not in the sections you moved. And it continues below. i think this is valid discussion. David D. (Talk) 00:29, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Reverting

As a follow-up note of policy, as it pertains to myself, TJstrf, Bramlet and DuckGuru: please be mindful of not violating the Three Revert Rule. This is a pretty strict requisite to avoid edit-wars, which is what has been set-off here due to the differing positions of particular individuals (myself included). So at this point, please take a breather from further reverts. Thanks, --Leflyman^Talk 01:48, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

• And just as things had settled down for a moment, yet another participant, DXRAW (talk · contribs), has joined the fray to antagonise the matter. I think I count three reverts DXRAW has made now, too.--Leflyman^Talk 06:18, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

And why was protection removed from the article again? --w^{L<speak·check>} 08:29, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Why is this an article?

Is wikipedia more like AP and reuters or more like an encyclopedia, can someone explain why this is in main space? As time goes on wikipedia seems more and more like a newspaper. David D. (Talk) 07:22, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Because it earned major publicity and is a notable event. Read the AfDs and archives for our exhaustive lists of sources that have mentioned this. --tjstrf talk 07:24, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Exactly it was an event. Is this type of news really encyclopedic? There appears to be massive activity in wikipedia documenting day to day events. To me it seems that wikipedia is losing its focus. David D. (Talk) 07:37, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. -- Ned Scott 07:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

It would seem to me that an event that directly impacts processes on one of the top-10 most referred-to internet sites would be noteworthy enough for an article here. To be sure, the final fall-out of this event hasn't been determined. Perhaps now that the article is in a relatively stable, NPOV form, those who objected to its existence/deletion because it was biased (on both sides of the issue) just find it boring. Risker 07:48, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I personally think that anything we can write an informative and accurately attributed article on might as well be kept, so you're not getting any sympathy for deleting breaking news type articles from me. The first couple days I agreed that it didn't need a page, but then it made the evening news which sort of blew that idea out of the water. --tjstrf talk 07:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not refering to this article particularly but Portal:Current_events is far more newspaper and far less encyclopedia. I wonder how many of the nearly two million articles here represent newspaper-like stories. May be that is our role here? But that debate should be held somewhere else. David D. (Talk) 08:14, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Contemporary events can be encyclopaedic, even when they involve Wikipedia. See also, Seigenthaler_controversy and Blocking_of_Wikipedia_in_mainland_China. In this case, the EssJay controversy has become a touchstone for the use and dangers of anonymity on large-scale collaborative projects such as this one. Plus, it has been now been extensively covered in the media. --Leflyman^Talk 07:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

WP articles do read more like a collection of news articles intended for other Wikipedians than solid introductions to topics for people who really need one. It does not have to be so, however. See this version of this article. - C.m.jones 00:00, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

That version was rejected as being highly POV, sensationalist in tone, reading like a tabloid, and demonizing Essjay. We aren't reinstating it. --tjstrf talk 00:18, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

When you refer to we, who are you referring to? C.m.jones 02:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The commentators at /Archive 5#Major problems with article rewrite and several other topics on that page. --tjstrf talk 03:27, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I guess that settles it once and for all, especially since the version remained up for what, 3 minutes, thus making it so page viewers (you know, at article space where lots of people see it so some real consensus can then build back here in talk) were oblivious to it? And let's definitely ignore Leflyman, for sure. C.m.jones 06:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not quite sure how to take that last sarcastic comment, but since you brought my name into this discussion: What TJ is trying to get across is that your version, whatever merits you may think it had, wasn't encyclopaedic-- it meandered all over the place, discussing unconnected issues, making questionable claims, using sophomoric language. It was in a word, bad. Sorry.--Leflyman^Talk 07:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

C.m.jones, yes, that version was only on the screen for 10 minutes. That is because it was your own personal article, completely ignoring every word of discussion, consensus building and editing that had taken place involving dozens of editors in the previous six days. Not a link to your sandbox, where you had obviously developed it. The cavalier way in which you introduced this version was in opposition to just about every Wikipedia policy I can think of. As to Leflyman, he is one of the editors whose work you proposed to overwrite; he was working on the article before I was. Risker 07:23, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

FYI - Four forks nominated for MfD

I've nominated four forks of this article, which I found in userspace, for nomination at WP:MfD. Everyone is, of course, welcome to comment. Sorry if it looks a bit messy, there were slightly different criteria and I've never done an MfD nom before, let alone a multiple, so someone might well come along and clean up the links. Risker 03:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Requests for Comment: Essjay controversy

This dispute is about the foundership of Wikipedia and how it has weight on this article. 08:39, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Statements by editors previously involved in dispute

Comments

Reprotection

If you are calling about the Essjay controversy protection, please note that it was first put on to avoid the edit war. Since unprotection, the only edits made were the same warring ones. An RfC has been opened on the talk page. Please come up with a solution before I even consider unprotection. User:AzaToth (the person who protected it first) is aware of this protection. --w^{L<speak·check>} 06:43, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Small point concerning references.

Can I please point out to everyone (and I'm especially looking at Quackguru and other edit warriors) that footnotes come after a punctuation mark, usually the full stop/period. Additionally, only one footnote per sentence usually suffices. Please stop adding or proposing sentences that have five footnotes after one apparently random word: it looks crap. Thank you. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 23:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Request

"Identity revealed"

Please add this tidbit to the beginning of the identitiy revealed section. Everything is fully sourced. All references are already in the article. We do not have proof Essjay sent the letters but we have proof Essjay "claimed" he had sent the letter.

Tidbit >

At some point, Essjay claimed he had sent a letter to a real-life college professor using his invented persona's credentials, vouching for Wikipedia's accuracy.<ref name="Guardian"/> In the letter he wrote in part, "It is never the case that known incorrect information is allowed to stay in Wiipedia."<ref name="Guardian"/>

< Tidbit

"Removal of cited information and solid references"

An editor continues to remove references, undo my edits, and make disingenuous edit summaries.

1. [10]
2. [11]
3. [12]
4. After Ned Scott had been advised his behaviour is "grossly inappropriate" and to "stop," another editor has made a comment to encourage him on be stating: "You're my hero." Risker 04:25, 31 March 2007 (UTC) Good advise will help but encouraging an editor by stating "You my hero" does not help. We should not reward this kind of behaviour. I request this edit I have identified be reverted for the reinstatement of all solid and fully sourced information be put back into the article. Everything is fully referenced. References are a part of verifying the content of articles. The references were removed without validity. Further, the edit summary does not explain any reason for the removal of text or references. Moreover, the editor is unwilling to engage in a discussion in a normal manner. Cordially, :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 15:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Quack, this appears to continue to be an area of dispute; the last time the issue was raised, it was removed by another editor, and discussed at this section above. [13]. Perhaps we have two areas that need to be hammered out in the RFC that WikiLeon would like people to contribute to. Risker 16:16, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

• Quack is further confused about appropriate use of sourcing. Just because a blog author is quoted about his opinion does not mean the blog entry is sourceable for facts. The Guardian piece by Seth Finkelstein is based on his blog -- it is an editorial/opinion, not a news report. Furthermore, Wikipedia does not cite itself (nor, for that matter, other Wiki-like sites) which is what Quack wishes to do. Finally, whatever additional claims Essjay made about his faux-identity-- among which was that he had been a department head, and multi-honorary degreed, etc. -- are meaningless; the article isn't "Lies that Essjay told", it's about the controversy surrounding the use of a fictitious identity, and the fallout thereof.--Leflyman^Talk 23:57, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Essjay used his fictitious identity to vouch for the accuracy of Wikipedia. He claimed he had sent a letter. The Guardian is already accepted as a source for articles on Wikipedia. Thanx. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 00:26, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Not everything published is worth including. In the scale of reporting done surrounding this controversy, that was practically a trivia point. --tjstrf talk 00:32, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

• Duck continues to try the patience of the community. At this point, I can only take the denseness of his responses as misplaced criticism intent at disparaging Wikipedia and its participants. I would suggest that an RFC on user conduct will likely be an outcome, considering the misuse of his User space which appears to be ongoing.--Leflyman^Talk 01:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

One of the difficulties I have with including mention of the letter is that even if it was sent (which I wouldn't bet on), there isn't a university professor who would have accepted any encyclopedia (online or hard copy) as a reference source in an academic paper, let alone one recommended by someone who used a pseudonym. The fact that many at Wikipedia seem to feel the letter is so very relevant now, despite relative indifference from the independent third parties who commented on this entire situation, makes it seem more like self reference than the other claims. Risker 01:29, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}. As long as this page is protected, it would be inappropriate for anyone to make significant edits. CMummert · talk 22:56, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Essjay is/was a board member...?

Essjay is a board member?

• 03:22, 4 March 2007 Drini (Talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:Essjay@enwiki from boardvote to boardvote
• 03:21, 4 March 2007 Jon Harald Søby (Talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:Essjay@enwiki from boardvote, bureaucrat, checkuser, oversight, sysop to boardvote

What is that? If he was a board member I don't think we mentioned it? - Denny ^(talk) 20:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Boardvote permissions are for the use of election officials during the elections to the foundation board. Essjay, along with several others, was an election official with access to vote information not visible to the rest of the community. As it turned out, he went on an extended break during the 2006 election process and was not so actively involved in the election work. Other boardvotes were added to cover the work involved. (see Election officials 2006 and Resolution:Election officials) NoSeptember 20:18, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Got it, thought that meant board voting as in on the board. Wonder why they didn't remove that bit, when he asked for them all to go... - Denny ^(talk) 21:19, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

The explanation is here - NoSeptember 21:32, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

The Essjay Letter Confirmation

Cbrown1023 deleted the letter on March 4, 2007, providing the following reason(s): "Essjay's Request"

1. http://www.webcitation.org/5N2MZaMWP < A genuine copy of the letter
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cbrown1023/Archive_6#Deletion_of_User:Essjay.2FLetter
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ANeutrality&diff=112600657&oldid=112598358
4. http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/03/head_wikipedian.php
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Essjay_controversy&diff=next&oldid=113513642
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Essjay_controversy&diff=next&oldid=113511998
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Essjay_controversy&diff=prev&oldid=113510636
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=112282076&oldid=112281864
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Community_noticeboard&diff=112278999&oldid=112274795
10. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=prev&oldid=112279901
11. http://66.218.69.11/search/cache?p=Essjay+Letter+Wikipedia&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-501&vst=0&vs=en.wikipedia.org&u=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_noticeboard/Essjay&w=essjay+letter+wikipedia&d=GTfD7RIeOeR2&icp=1&.intl=us
12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay/RFC
13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay/RFC#Outside_view_by_CyclePat
14. http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-501&p=Essjay+sent+a+letter+to+a+college+professor+credentials+Wikipedia%27s+accuracy.&u=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_19&w=essjay+sent+letter+college+professor+professors+credentials+credential+wikipedia%27s+accuracy&d=VFEMfRIeOfqb&icp=1&.intl=us
15. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Essjay/Letter&oldid=112598051 User:Essjay/Letter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
16. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=47360865&oldid=47360559

Identity revealed

At some point, Essjay sent a letter to a real-life college professor using his invented persona's credentials,<ref name="Blog Insights: Wikipedia's great fraud"/> vouching for Wikipedia's accuracy.<ref name="Guardian"/> In the letter he wrote in part, "It is never the case that known incorrect information is allowed to remain in Wikipedia."<ref name="Guardian"/>

1) References #7 in the article > ^ a b c d e Finkelstein, Seth (March 8, 2007). Read me first. Technology. The Guardian. Retrieved on 2007-03-18.

2) Reference #27 in the article > ^ a b Blacharski, Dan (March 6, 2007). Blog Insights: Wikipedia's great fraud. ITworld. Retrieved on 2007-03-18.

Foremost, I have provided evidence that the letter did exist. Further, many Wikipedians within the community have actually read the letter. Even Essjay said in his own words it was a letter. Therefore, the references are verifiable. Cordially, :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 08:08, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Are any of those references external to Wikipedia itself? By which I do not mean you rehosting it somewhere else either. If not, then it's not a notable occurrence. --tjstrf talk 08:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2028328,00.html

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/nlsblog070306/

Here are the external references. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 08:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The ITworld reference quotes the Guardian reference; that really tangles things up quite a bit. I am not convinced this needs to be there, particularly the selected quote. Given the large number of published sources that reported the controversy, and the fact only two referred to this particular issue (and one of them was quoting the other), I am hard pressed to see how adding this isn't giving the "letter" undue weight. Risker 18:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The letter was sent to a real world professor, vouching for Wikipedia accuracy using the false credentials. The usage of the false credentials is a major part of what this article is about. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 18:25, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Please respond to the "undue weight" concern, Quack. Two sources out of hundreds of published sources - one quoting the other. More sources referred to any number of other things (number of edits, which articles were edited, etc) than this "letter." Risker 18:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Undue weight is a straw man here, I think. The letter is sourced and extremely relevant to the controvery at hand. What does counting of sources have to do with its relevance? —Doug Bell ^talk 18:32, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

There is no undue weight concern. The letter is part of the events of the online persona and the false credentials. The letter was sent to vouch for the accuracy of Wikipedia using false credentials. "A central issue." :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 18:37, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I do understand your perspective, Doug - clearly I am having difficulty expressing my concern. The article is about the external reaction to the discovery of the false credentials. We have to go with what our external sources think are the issues of concern. The letter is a much bigger deal internal to Wikipedia than it was externally - and justifiably so. But dozens of respected reliable sources didn't feel it was important enough to even mention in passing. In particular, none of the articles in which academics are interviewed mention this letter - the exact place where one would expect to find a reference to it. Risker 18:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with one of your assertions. The article is about the controversy, not the external reaction to it. The external reaction may be what makes it notable, but the purpose of the article is to present a neutral description of the events. The letter is sourced and is centrally relevant. It deserves mention in the article. It does not deserve undue weight in the article, but it should be there. —Doug Bell ^talk 18:57, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Very well then. I will add the letter tidbit. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 22:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I gave extra time for commentary and suggestions. The letter is fully sourced and relevant. I will add the letter tidbit now. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 02:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I've again removed Quack's insertion of unsubstantiated material -- the "source" for the ITWorld blog was Seth Finklestein's own blog entry at http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001157.html . As a blog post, this is not a citeable source. Just as much of what EssJay has claimed about himself has been admitted to be false, no published account has demonstrated that he actually wrote any such letter to anyone, college professor or not. --Leflyman^Talk 03:45, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I have provided documentation the letter did exist. Both references are solid and both references are already in the article. :) - Mr.Guru (^talk/_contribs) 04:06, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that we don't have any source that the letter was actually sent. However, we do have sources for Essjay's claim that he sent the letter, so a discussion of his claim should be OK. —Doug Bell 07:11, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

• Quack, you seem to be under a grave misunderstanding about how to cite claims to verifiable, published sources. You simply have not been on Wikipedia long enough to get a handle on the concept of No Original Research -- which is what you are trying to insert into the article. I'll repeat again: no matter what Finkelstein wrote in his blog entry, there is no actual source that says any such letter was really sent. Making a claim based on an unsubstantiated blog posting fails Wikipedia standards. But it seems you really don't care how accurate this article is, so long as it makes EssJay, Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia come off badly. Could you perhaps explain what your purpose in editing here is, as apart from an early interest in pseudoscience, nearly all the contributions you have made since last month are connected to the topic of how Wikipedia sucks.--Leflyman^Talk 06:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh for goodness sake. The refs are already in the article. Saying "claimed" he had sent the letter will resolve this discussion. And, I agree with Doug Bell's assessments. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 16:30, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Blogs can be used as sources for Wikipedia articles if we are using them to show what the blog/blogger said. It would be perfectly OK to say "Blogger X stated on her blog that she recieved a letter from Essjay in which Essjay..." Johntex\^talk 04:53, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I suppose it might be appropriate to quote a blogger's statement that she personally received correspondence from anyone; some of that would depend on the reliability of the individual blogger, and does not speak to the weight such a statement should be given. That isn't the case here, of course. Risker 05:19, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Editors have expressed there support for the Essjay letter claim. Further, Essjay used his invented identity, vouching for the accuracy of Wikipedia. He claimed he had sent a letter to a real world professor. The Guardian is already considered a reliable source since it is used in this and many articles on Wikipedia. There are two solid references to use for the Essjay tidbit. Moreover, the letter is highly relevant. Essjay used his fictitious persona and his false credentials in this case. I am neutral on the wording of the letter tidbit. Any suggestions. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 19:26, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Here is another suggestion. We do not need to use the reliable ITWorld reference. The solid Guardian reference is more than plenty. This reference is currently in the article. Therefore, it is reliable and verifiable.

At some point, Essjay claimed he had sent a letter to a real-life college professor using his invented persona's credentials, vouching for Wikipedia's accuracy.<ref name="Guardian"/> In the letter he wrote in part, "It is never the case that known incorrect information is allowed to remain in Wikipedia."<ref name="Guardian"/>[14] Regards, :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 19:50, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not sure how many different ways one can say "No" before it sinks in that unsubstantiated POV claims about a letter are not going to get into the article. Continuing in this Wikipedia-bashing campaign under the guise of selective quotation is not going to work-- and will likely end at RFC. --Leflyman^Talk 20:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

The letter claim is fully sourced using an exisitng reference, currently in the article. Respectively, :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 20:07, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• Repeatedly restating the same claim is not a winning strategy. See: Proof_by_assertion--Leflyman^Talk 20:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• Sorry, Leflyman, but it looks to me that is what you are trying to do. You have not shown any evidence that the informaiton about the letter is unusable. To the contrary, it is backed up by a source that is already considered reliable enough to be cited within this very article. Johntex\^talk 21:34, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• With all due respect, John, please review the discussion prior to jumping in; the only "source" is an opinion piece by Seth Finkelstein based on his blog entry, which he expanded into an editorial in The Guardian. He is singlular one among all the references to even mention the letter, and he erroneously claimed as fact that such a letter was actually sent by EssJay-- who already admitted to making up everything about his fictitious persona. The only purpose in inserting the discussion of "a letter" is to further a particular POV, bash EssJay and by extension Wikipedia. --Leflyman^Talk 21:45, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you Leflyman, but with all due respect, please do not assume I have not read the discussion. If you check the logs, you will see that although I do not come here daily I have been involved with this topic from the very beginning. I can assure you I have read all the discussion. An editorial by Finkelstein in the Guardian is certainly notable and countable as a viable source if we attribute it as such. There is no problem there. There is also no proble with the fact that others have not repeated the claim. So what? The reader is free to judge that for themselves based upon us only citing on source.

Finally, I will thank you not to insinuate that my purpose is to "further a POV, bask EssJay, and by extension Wikipedia". that is completely uncalled for. My only motivation is to continue expanding the article with something this fact that I consider sourced and notable. Perhaps you need to investigate your own motives? Johntex\^talk 00:06, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

• Not your purpose; you aren't the originator of this particular bit of POV through selective quotation. And to reiterate a point I made earlier: Individual editorials are fine to be sourced for the opinion of the author; they should not be sourced for claims of fact-- that's what news articles are for. --Leflyman^Talk 00:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Everyone knows I've heavily disagreed in the past with Quackguru--hell, I've reported him to ANI. On the matter of the letter, it needs to be in there someway. We have the sourcing, we have the documentation, and it was a key little part of this messed up story. - Denny ^(talk) 23:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• How is it a key part of anything, as opposed to any of the numerous other false assertions Essjay made about himself? Again, this article isn't a litany of all the falsehoods Essjay told; it's about the controversy created by his lying (by omission or commission) to the New Yorker, not the specifics of every fictional thing he said to other Wikipedians.--Leflyman^Talk 00:05, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

While I agree that the issue of the letter is very important internal to Wikipedia, and resulted in strong reactions here, that fact has never been reported by independent, reliable sources. This may be one of those unfortunate situations where the authors of the article know more about the background than the sources we must use. It is certainly not as significant as the discussion about credentials, or the reaction section. WAS 4.250 has suggested a compromise position here[15], and perhaps this would be the best solution. The fact isn't important enough for its own section, it doesn't really fit anywhere else in the article, and this may satisfy the desire for inclusion while not giving it undue weight due to its sparse discussion outside the walls of Wikipedia. Risker 00:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Request

I request this tag be added to the article. Tag: {{totally disputed}}

The neutrality and the factual accuracy of this article is now "disputed." Just read many of the above discussions. I have provided solid references to verify the facts which some editors are still unwilling to accept. I added the facts about the letter tidbit using existing references that are already in the article. I added the facts about co-founding while adding attributable references. The references where reverted too. No valid explanation was given for removing the references. The content disputes remain unresolved. Therefore, the tag is more than appropriate. Thanx. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 01:34, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it makes no sense to edit a protected page to add "totally disputed". It obviously is if it is protected due to content disputes. If you have a simple improvement suggest it. Prodego ^talk 01:51, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Request

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Essjay_controversy&diff=prev&oldid=120159876 I request these references be added back in. All the references are solid. This will improve the article. Simple enough. Thanx. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 02:02, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Quack, this is exactly the issue for which this article is currently protected. Risker 02:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Well Jimmy is a founder - not the since he isn't the only founder -; I don't see any difference between "a founder" and "one of the founders", ect. Basically it does not matter in this article. Can't something more relevant be disputed? Considering the topic there must be something. Prodego ^talk 02:50, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

May I recommend the 'Jimmy section' be left as is and Sanger's section reworded to

• Larry Sanger, former Wikimedia staff member, currently Editor-in-Chief of online encyclopedia Citizendium.

How is that? Prodego ^talk 02:57, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Works for me. I expect it will take a day or so, what with time zones and all, to see if there is consensus. Risker 03:04, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

It needs to be reworded, you can't have 'former' and 'currently' describe the same subject. It is either formerly, or current. But I will leave you to sort out the wording. Prodego ^talk 03:16, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually I like it better as is. Let me see... Prodego ^talk 03:28, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

One step at a time. First, let us all agree on adding the references back in. Eveything in the article should be fully sourced. That is the Wiki way. Regards, :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 03:45, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Quack, you've been warned multiple times about this situation specifically. This is disruptive and you need to stop. -- Ned Scott 05:34, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a disingenuous edit summary. Further, everything in an article should be fully cited. The editor who removed the solid references never had a valid reason for removing the references. The talk page is for discussion. This is not disruptive. This is the way people talk and discuss things on Wikipedia. This page is the discussion area for the Essjay controversy article. You need to stop with your interference in attempting to stop me from discussing the article. This is about talking to other editors who are involved in the content dispute. The information that was reverted was fully sourced. Additionally, the Essjay letter tidbit is also fully sourced. I believe both infos/edits belong back in the article. The Essajy letter tidbit is relevant and the reverted information is fully sourced which is part of NPOVing th article. It is normal editing to fully cite any unsourced info. Therefore, the refs should be put back in the article. The letter tidbit is part of using the false credentials and invented persona. Respectively, :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 17:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not asking you to stop using the talk page, I am asking you to stop pushing the same issue that has been rejected (at least give it some time before bringing it up). It's one thing to just talk about the issue and another thing to continue to insert the content in the article over and over again. -- Ned Scott 01:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm assuming that the letter in question here is the one that Essjay wrote to a professor in defense of Wikipedia. I really don't understand how that letter doesn't apply here and why it shouldn't be included. I'm sure it's been explained before, but that should just make it easy to present a concise, persuasive argument. And don't just bring up citing policy -- try to include at least a little bit about the substance of what's involved. --Dookama 14:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Protection will expire soon - no more edit wars please

Folks, can we please avoid any further edit wars on the Wales/Sanger issue. AN/I and the editors above are quite correct, this is an incredibly lame excuse for an edit war. The current descriptions are correct, even if they may not be as complete as some people would like. Let us accept this as a compromise position, and move on.

As to the letter - Quack, the letter is so incredibly unimportant to the real world that only one blogger even editorialized about it, and was later quoted by another one. Two bloggers - that's it. Neither of them picked up on the real concerns about the letter and what it illustrated, but maybe if you stop worrying about getting it into the article and spend some time thinking about the real problem with it is, you might learn a bit about Wikipedia. Since we have pretty good evidence this article has been mined by bloggers and journalists for their reports, I will invoke WP:BEANS instead of explaining. Risker 04:35, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Finding descriptions without using the word "founder"

(un-indent) I see that the article has been unprotected. Before anyone does anything else to the descriptions of Wales and Sanger, I strongly urge everyone to (a) discuss on this page and (b) avoid at all costs the use of the word "founder" (or any related term) in suggesting an appropriate way of describing these two men in a way that makes sense to this article.

David D. had a good point in the moved conversation about the wording now in use not providing sufficient information about Wales' current role at Wikipedia, and when last our heroes were discussing this, the term "de facto leader" was being bandied about. One of the very new references used this description, and could be used as a reliable source. Does this work for everyone? --Risker 00:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I just made an edit that attempts to address exactly that([16]) by a combination of description and equivocation.

The edit described Wales's current status by saying he has "an ongoing role overseeing the operations of the Wikipedia community", which I think is pretty accurate (albeit unsourced). And while it still says "Wales, Wikipedia founder", because of the grammar in the sentence it is intentionally unclear whether he is the only one or not. Similarly, Sanger is described as "a founding staff member", which because of the different meanings of the word founding can either mean he was simply present at the beginning or that he was a founder in sense of inventing the site. --tjstrf talk 00:16, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Anything but founder should solve this whole issue. I think with the recent reference found by Risker this is a legitimate title and actually much more descriptive. David D. (Talk) 00:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Trying to contrive ways to describe Wales without calling him founder misses the point of the foundership dispute. The dispute is not if Wales founded Wikipedia, the dispute is if Sanger also founded Wikipedia. If there were a dispute between them in which Sanger was claiming that Wales did not in fact found Wikipedia, that would be one thing and leaving out the mention would be proper to avoid discussing unresolved arguments and maintain NPOV. But that isn't the disputed claim. Not saying Wales founded Wikipedia because there is another guy who may also have founded Wikipedia isn't NPOV, instead it's the common NPOV-resembling fallacy of thinking that treating subjects equally is the same as treating them neutrally.
Here's an example of what I mean: let's say there was a tournament for some sport in which the final placings were determined by score (rather than elimination). Two men in the tournament do very close to equally, to the point that they seem like they are tied for first place. However, when the final judgments are being made there is a disagreement over the rules of the game: one interpretation would say that only man A has placed 1st in the tournament, while the other interpretation would say that both man A and man B have placed first. Notice that there is no dispute over man A's first place position, only man B's. This means that by NPOV, we can give an unqualified report that man A has first place, but not man B.
In the Wikipedia foundership dispute, Wales is man A and Sanger is man B. In articles that cannot go into depth on the details of the foundership dispute, Wales can be described as being founder without qualification because all interpretations of the situation say that he is founder. Sanger cannot be described as founder without qualification because only some interpretations of the situation say that he is founder.
This article has nothing to do with the Wikipedia foundership dispute in the first place and must therefore gloss over all the details in favour of minimal statements (per WP:NPOV#Undue weight). So long as we do not call him sole founder, Wales can be described as founder here because it is not disputed. Sanger cannot. (This is also why we cannot call Wales "a" founder, because it directly and unequivocally implies that there is at another one.) --tjstrf talk 00:48, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Unless I misinterpret David D.'s point, which made sense to me when I read it, the issue isn't about who founded Wikipedia six years ago, it is about how the people involved relate to Wikipedia today. My work involves a charitable organization, and neither the founder nor the Chair Emeritus of the Board have the authority to ask an individual volunteer to step down; yet nobody doubted Wales' authority to do that very thing. This is the relationship that would be unclear to many readers. Hence the proposed description. Sanger could likely be described as Wikipedia's first and only paid editor (paraphrasing from the article about him), if we can find a reference source other than his article that uses this sort of description. Risker 00:56, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

This misses the point of the discussion relevent to THIS page. What is the title of this Wales guy, from the wiki foundation, that got involved in the dispute. Obviously he is the founder, or "a" founder as some wish (and justifiably from the references they have cited) but that is incidental to the point in this article. Worse it looks likes this has been a major dispute on this page for ages. Why not do the obvious (from my outside perspective) and remove this trivia from the article. Then you can continue editing in peace? David D. (Talk) 01:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Not saying that he founded Wikipedia would be rather like referring to George Washington as "military commander and husband" when his far greater claim to importance is that he was the first president of the United States. We wouldn't attribute one of Mark Twain's many famous witty quotes to "Sam Clemens, steamboat pilot", nor would we say Charles Darwin was a clergyman and neglect to mention his work as a naturalist. Basically, since Wales's foundership of Wikipedia is his primary claim to notability in the real world, not mentioning it when we introduce him in the page is absurd. More directly as it applies to this article, his founding the project is the reason that he has the "god-king" role now. --tjstrf talk 01:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

tjstrf, I'm not trying to be a smart arse but this does not even stand up under partial scrutiny. I went to the GW page you link to above. I looked at what links here. Clicked on the American_Revolutionary_War and found the that the first sentence to mention GW read as follows:

"Seeking to coordinate military efforts, the Continental Congress established (on paper) a regular army in June 1775, and appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief."

And this makes sense because in the context of the article that is the relevent information. Since his name is hyperlinked those that want more info can click read more at his own article, likewise with Wales. Just to check i am not cherry picking here are three others.

Articles_of_Confederation

"At times, this left the military in a precarious position, as George Washington wrote in a 1781 letter to the governor of Massachusetts, John Hancock."

Alternate_history

"He also co-authored a book with actor Richard Dreyfuss The Two Georges, which postulates what would have happened if the United Kingdom had retained the American colony, with George Washington and King George III making peace. "

Apocrypha

"For example, the Parson Weems account of George Washington and the cherry tree is considered apocryphal"

Judging from that the GW example the norm would appear to be no introduction at all. David D. (Talk) 02:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

George Washington is a bit more well known than Jimmy Wales, to say the least, so he may not need an introduction to show why he is relevant to an article. But what about someone like Brian Jacques, who is notable in his field but not immediately recognizable to anyone with a Western education? Mentioning him in an article without introduction, or only saying that he worked as a radio host rather than that he writes a popular series of children's books, would be quite the oversight. --tjstrf talk 03:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm mystified why you think being founder is so much more important than running the show given they are subtle differences for Wales in the context of wikipedia. On the other hand you contrast Darwins naturalist role to his religious training, or Redwall author with local radio show host which are much less related. The equivalent for Jimmy Wales would be to argue about whther we introduce him as founder of the Bomis search engine vs his roles in wikipedia. But these examples are distractions from the argument at hand.

The quetion is are you willing to compromise and mention his current role (de facto head or similar) rather than his historical role (founder). Here are four reasons to consider dropping any mention of founder.

1. From the perspective of this article the first one (using his current role as head of wikipedia) makes more sense (See Riskers analysis above).
2. From an avoiding the founder controversy perspective, the first one makes more sense because then the issue of whether he is 'a' founder or 'the' founder is avoided.
3. From the perspective of not fanning the flames of the founder debate, which does not appear to be disappearing soon, the first one is better, again since the founder issue is avoided.
4. The alternative appears to be to let this article get pulled into the founder debate repeatedly over the next year which will cause you all to waste even more time rather than securing a stable article.

Why don't you outline the positives for including founder in this article? Or propose an alternative compromise that will prevent this article from continuinmg to be unstable? David D. (Talk) 06:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

So there are no positives? David D. (Talk) 03:05, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I see you are all still fighting over "a" founder, co-founder or just founder. What are the positives again? You seem to be smashing your collective nose to spite your face. David D. (Talk) 16:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Article Community ban proposed

I have proposed a community ban from this article for Quackguru, who I think has disrupted this article long enough. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 20:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• I'd suggest and would support an RFC for user conduct --Leflyman^Talk 21:15, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
• Ah, it's withdrawn already.. I would have supported it too. Quack Guru continues to "not get it", and something needs to be done. -- Ned Scott 01:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Ned, let's work with Quack on viable compromises rather than just revert any change he makes. Saying things about another editor like they just don't "get it" is rarely helpful, in my opinion. Please remember we "comment on content, not contributors". Johntex\^talk 01:36, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Johntex, I'm not sure how familiar you are with this situation, but Quack Guru has been undeniably disruptive on this page and a few others. Something needs to be done about it. -- Ned Scott 02:41, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not at all familiar with his work on other pages, but I have read all the discussion on this page and most of the archives and I don't think that he has given any worse than he has gotten. The fact is that until/unless he is banned from editting this page, we need to keep working with him, and that means avoiding blanket reverts of his changes when they are not overtrly problematic. Johntex\^talk 03:07, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/QuackGuru, just started. Any help in setting this up would be appreciated. -- Ned Scott 02:45, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone been keeping track of the credentialling issue?

Given the various quotes with respect to ongoing consideration of the credentialling issue, I am curious to know if there has been any policy change related to it at this point. I confess that I've lost track. If a course of action has been decided, it would be good to try to find a way to include it in the article. Risker 02:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Almost a dozen proposals were put forward and all were firmly rejected except:

1. a be honest guideline got a bare majority (not enough to become a guideline)
2. for OFFICE to know the real identities of checkusers was overwhelming approved, but the community lacks jurisdiction as that is a Mediawiki Foundation paid support staff activity.

Jimbo's response was to suggest credential verification could be a voluntary activity not covered by any guideline or policy, so people wrote up stuff about that as an essay. In short it is dead. WAS 4.250 11:07, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The letter

User talk:QuackGuru suggests on my talk page that my two cents might make a difference here. So my two cents is that the Essjay letter is relevant, sourced, and important. Exactly how it is included in the article is not too important. May I suggest putting all talk of it in a footnote? I mean, I don't think it should go in a footnote, but sometimes that is a workable compromise. I suggest we all accept this compromise and move on to other issues. And if you implement this idea and Quack still quacks, then I'll side with you guys on deleting it altogether; so Quack if they go for this then take your vacation from wikipedia or at least from this article, ok? WAS 4.250 19:15, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• I also think the letter is relevant and should be included. Johntex\^talk 21:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I have supported this suggested compromise in my post above.[17] Risker 00:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I would support this postion if L and Q do. Johntex\^talk 00:25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I support including the letter, too. Relevant, &c., &c. --Dookama 10:10, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Of course it is relevant! C.m.jones 23:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The reference to the letter has been added in accordance with the proposal above. Risker 01:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

More "co-founder" edits

I am sorry to report that, despite what appeared to be a detente in the "who founded Wikipedia" edit wars relating to this article, it seems that Tom has decided to continue on his single issue edits here.[18] Why do I have the feeling he has made this edit more times than even Quack has? As far as I can see, his last contribution to the discussion on this issue was March 14th, so it doesn't appear he is interested in consensus.

Any suggestions on how to re-achieve consensus on this issue, when one of the parties in the edit war apparently has no interest in finding a middle ground? Risker 16:51, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

We shouldn't need to get consensus on the facts. On one end, we have countless sources regarding the two as co-founders. On the other, we have Jimbo asserting that Sanger was simply an employee. I think we need to simply go with what's verifiable. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you should ask yourself that question first, Risker. Anyways, I will not revert again. Also, why is SO important to NOT mention Wales as co-founder?? --Tom 16:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Because he isn't co-founder? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:58, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Based on...? --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:05, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 17:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, and no one else. Bramlet Abercrombie 17:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Wales is not a reliable source. Lest you forget, there is a way to avoid this whole argument, at least from this page, which is controversial enough without this argument too. David D. (Talk) 17:24, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. Verifiability, not truth - dozens of sources referencing co-founder, one guy who wishes it wasn't the case. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:22, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) In answer to your question, Tom, I really don't care too much what we call them; there are good sources that contradict each other, so appeal to authority is not effective in this case. My issue is that the description not be incorrect, and that the edit warring stop. Given the subject matter of this article, it is pitiful that the biggest bone of contention is whether or not Larry Sanger co-founded Wikipedia six years ago. Frankly, if this continues, I would be in favour of eliminating the Sanger quote from the article entirely, and substituting one from another respected observer. Risker 17:19, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not really sure why this is an issue. There's tons of sources describing them as cofounders, so why keep changing it back? .V. _[Talk|Email] 17:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The issue is not significantly relevant to this this article so the issue should be finessed. Many fine and useful suggestions have been made toward this end. Reasonable people do not spend unlimited time on such issues. WAS 4.250 18:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't get it either. The most/longest stability we'd seen was when we just called them both individually founders. As in, founding father. We don't fight over whether Jefferson or Washington were co-founders. They both helped found a country. Wales is a founder. Sanger is a founder. RS supports that, and neither 'person' can bitch about it, and both gets credit. If Wales in turn says, "no, Sanger isn't a founder," then get some secondary sources to support that to the degree that secondary sources say Sanger IS a founder, and we can call it contested. - Denny ^(talk) 18:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

(moved from my talk page and responded to here)

To keep our conversation unfragmented, it is important to comment at the same place, IMHO. Furthermore, I would appreciate it if you reviewed the references because you mentioned: "The sources contradict each other."

Here are some references for your review.

1. Mitchell, Dan (December 24, 2005). "Insider Editing at Wikipedia". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-04-14.
2. Mehegan, David (February 12, 2006). "Bias, sabotage haunt Wikipedia's free world". Business. The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-04-14.
3. Bergstein, Brian (March 25, 2007). "Sanger says he co-started Wikipedia". ABC News. Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-04-14. The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim doesn't seem particularly controversial - Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, isn't happy about it. — Brian Bergstein.
4. Poe, Marshall (September, 2006). "The Hive". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2007-04-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
5. "Early page of Wikipedia which explains two people founded Wikipedia". Wikipedia. October 16, 2001. Retrieved 2007-04-14.

With all due respect, please enlighten me with your expression of what you mean by: "The sources contradict each other." According to your research, which sources did you find that contradict the above sources -- if you will. Thank you very much. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 18:49, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

(Please note - as identified below, I had done this move last night, but it does not show up in the page history so I am repeating my actions). Quack, when I say the sources contradict each other, I mean that there are lots of sources that refer to Jimmy Wales as "the" founder of Wikipedia. While I can see that this issue is of burning interest to many people, this isn't the article to debate the issue. There are many acceptable alternatives that meet the WP:RS and WP:NPOV standards. It is the job of the editors of this article to find a solution that meets standards and will end the edit war. At this point, I am starting to feel sorry for Larry Sanger, since so many people seem to feel the most important thing in his career was the time he spent at Wikipedia. Risker 19:08, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

What the article says right now

WALES: Jimmy Wales, a Wikipedia founder and president of Wikia[10] who also has an ongoing role overseeing the workings of the Wikipedia community...

SANGER: Larry Sanger, currently Editor-in-Chief of online encyclopedia Citizendium,[25] but also a founding staff member and former community manager of Wikipedia...

Is there anything factually incorrect right now with respect to this issue? Can everyone live with what is on the page right now? Perhaps we can answer this over the next 24 hours to allow editors in other time zones the opportunity to chime in. Risker 18:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I think an NPOV version would be: Larry Sanger, currently Editor-in-Chief of online encyclopedia Citizendium,[25] but also a founder and former community manager of Wikipedia... - unsigned

That would be the *most* NPOV version. The Jimbo sentence is fine. - Denny ^(talk) 18:20, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we are going to agree on anything better, so I am 100% behind the wording at the top of this subsection. WAS 4.250 08:25, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Ned_Scott&diff=prev&oldid=122257247 Edit summary: reply

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Ned_Scott&diff=next&oldid=122257247 Edit summary: my talk page is not your soapbox, shut up

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Risker&diff=prev&oldid=122804133 Edit summary: review

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Risker&diff=next&oldid=122804133 Edit summary: remove Quack's questions, now moved to article's talk page and responded to there

Two Wikipedians were contacted on their talk page and are not interested in directly communicating with other Wikipedians on this matter for others to really understand their point of view. For example, I tried to no avail for Risker to explain her/his reasoning on this issue. Risker said the sources "contradict each other" and Risker is unwilling to provide sources to back up that statement s/he made on her/his talk page. I am neutral on 'a founder' or 'co-founder.' At this time, I would like to try Denny Colt's proposal to the previous compromise endorsed by Risker and other editors. Thanks. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 17:36, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, this is weird. I moved your question over to this page last night, and responded here, as I noted on my talk page. Well, I am not going to try to explain the inner mechanical workings of Wikipedia, I will just re-add in the appropriate place. Risker 18:54, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• As this continues to be edit-warred over here-- as well as in other Wikipedia-related articles-- I'll expand on what I just wrote to one POV warrior's talk page:

The well-sourced "fact" is that Sanger refers to himself as "co-founder". The simple equation is this: Wales + intention + money = Wikipedia. Sanger was hired by Jimmy Wales for the job of being editor-in-chief of Nupedia which led into developing Wikipedia as a "feeder project". After he became increasingly annoyed with dealing with what he described as "trolls" and the funding for his job ran out, he left the project after one year in March 2002. Even according to his own account, at the time, Sanger described himself as "chief instigator" or "chief organizer", and admits that it was Wales who had the ultimate say-so. He has acknowledged that it was Wales who wanted an online encyclopedia that anyone could edit. His exact words: "To be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine, and the funding was entirely by Bomis. I was merely a grateful employee; I thought I was very lucky to have a job like that land in my lap." [19]

It doesn't make one a "founder" to suggest what software achieved Wales's intention. (And it was, in fact, Wales himself, not Sanger, who installed the Wiki software, ran the servers and paid for the domain.) As much as it may gall you to imagine, Sanger is pumping up his very short stint as an employee of Boomis into "co-founder of Wikipedia" for promotion of his competing "expert" encyclopedia, Citizendium (as likewise he did at his previous attempt, Digital Universe) -- even though he hasn't even been tangentially involved in Wikipedia in five years. No matter how many times Sanger may want to repeat it, as an employee, he gets no "founding" or "originating" claims. See, for an explanation, Work for hire.

Sanger's claims to founding Wikipedia just have no place here; he may be described as original community leader or even by his own "chief organizer" designation, but should not be called "co-founder" simply because he really, really wants that title to be able to keep getting press coverage.--Leflyman^Talk 18:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Multiple editors have agreed that Jimmy and Larry are both the co-founders. We have also attempted on a compromise as 'a' founder. I suggest we put this behind us now and move on. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 23:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• I don't see you having agreed to the consensus on this topic, nor compromised on anything, other than promoting Sanger to a self-proclaimed role. So no, until you desist in disingenuous, tendentious editing, the issue will not be "put behind us" -- this sort of behaviour is precisely why there's a current RfC open, which you are apparently ignoring. --Leflyman^Talk 00:25, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

First off. What do you think the consensus is? Second, neutral editors have attempted to compromise. Third, will you agree to consensus or 'a' compromise? :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 00:41, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Unprotected again

I have unprotected the article again in hopes the participants in previous scuffles have settled down. Any edit warring will result in blocks without warning. So please behave. Picaroon 22:33, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Timeline

I think its silly the timeline doesn't have when he first posted the information on his page, it makes it hard for people (like myself who don't know much about what happened) to understand the sequence of events. The only external source I can find for when he first did it is a screen capture apparently taken several months after it was put up, in any case it proves the info was at least put up in 2005 and that should probably be mentioned in the timeline, afterall it is the instigating act of this whole contraversy. http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/essjay5.png and obviously I do not know if peoeple would consider that source valid.--Dacium 22:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I concur with your assessments. These are the facts and this is where the whole story began in the first place. I will add this bit of info to the timeline. Thanx. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 01:49, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Controversial Edit

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Essjay_controversy&diff=126292979&oldid=126291876

An editor has removed footnotes without discussion. This was quotes from the references which is part of the story. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 01:56, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

We don't have to discuss every change on the article, especially straight forward ones such as this. -- Ned Scott 03:28, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow, does that mean I can straightforwardly replace this whole article with one that actually reads well and includes the whole story plus context and background? C.m.jones 17:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

If it actually does as you say, and follows applicable guidelines and policy, then be bold. -- Ned Scott 18:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

misleading edit summary

This is a disingenuous edit summary because it makes it appear as if the footnote is off topic when it is one of the major steps for the New Yorker to issue a rare correction. The edit does not match the edit summary: rv, this tidbit is way off topic

“Veteran Wikipeida [sic] critic Daniel Brandt of wikipedia-watch.org first dug up details of Jordan's bamboozling of both Wikipedians and the New Yorker, leading to the magazine running a correction this week, admitting it had been had.”

This is as straight forward as you can get. This tidbit is on the mark and on topic. FYI, Daniel questioned Essjay on his talk page about his profiles don't mesh. Then we all know what he did next. He contacted Stacy or her staff and the editorial note was added and now we have an article on this whole incident. I have given plenty of time for the person who removed the facts to explain his behaviour. I will add back in the relevant info removed without validity. Regards, :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 02:16, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I have given extra time for an explanation on the "blanking incident." The Wikipedian in question has not responded. I will add the tidbit back. Please discuss before removing the facts next time. I hope the article will be stable now. Thank you. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 19:19, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey, here is a tip, let me know you have asked for my input and I will respond a lot faster. I am not sure what your complaint is, the edit summary reflected my understanding of the edit. I may have been incorrect, but please don't attribute dishonesty to me, because it was a good faith edit. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:53, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

We finally have a conclusion to the Essjay situation

The Essjay situation resulted in Jimbo calling for a credential policy which resulted in this straw poll which resulted in the community rejecting every policy proposal except "This is a proposal to ask the Foundation to make it a formal policy that checkusers' identities are known to the OFFICE. It is said that they are but it is not formal policy." titled "meta:Talk:CheckUser policy#Real name policy". Which up to now has only resulted in the change of Jimbo's proposal into an essay. We now we have an actual policy change in that its contents match the policy approved by the community. Kat Walsh announced May 1 that the board approved a Resolution:Access to nonpublic data on April 11 that requires "all users with access to non-public data covered by the site's Privacy Policy to provide identification to the Foundation. This includes checkusers, oversights, stewards, and volunteers on OTRS. In addition, all users holding these positions must be 18 or older, and also of the age of majority in whichever jurisdiction they live in." People with existing access have 60 days to get their ID data to the foundation. WAS 4.250 01:45, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Continued discussion in media

It seems that this controversy may indeed continue to follow Wikipedia. This is an April 24/07 article from New Zealand. This was just a 2-minute google news search that pulled this up; I haven't done any real research on continuing references in the media. Do other editors feel that this should be mentioned in the article? Risker 00:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for Page Move to "Essjay controversy of Wikipedia"

The current name makes Wikipedia seems to make its universe too self centric. WatchingYouLikeAHawk 21:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Good move. It works for me. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 22:12, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

It's somewhat awkward. If there is consensus that the name needs to be changed, "Essjay controversy (Wikipedia)" would be more consistent with current naming conventions. Not 100% sure it needs to be changed, though - "Essjay controversy" is the name many media have used in describing this event. Risker 22:24, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Uh? Please let us know when you are 100% sure. I am confused by your statement. (He said while scratching his head.) :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 22:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The parenthetical disambig would only make sense if there were multiple Essay Controversy articles. I don't see why the name had to be changed. -- Kendrick7^talk 22:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I mean, Quack, that the argument given to this point is not sufficient to convince me that a name change is necessary - and that if it was, then someone better come up with a better title than that proposed (and immediately applied) by WatchingYouLikeAHawk. With only three people weighing in right now, I would not consider this consensus. Thanks for that explanation, Kendrick7 - with that in mind, then I do not think that the name should have been changed either, and should be reverted to "Essjay controversy." Risker 22:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Risker, your argument is insufficient for anyone to revert the name change. Lets wait for time to pass for more editors to weigh in on this. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 22:42, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted it because the name as it stood was unambiguous and accurate. We have Whitewater (controversy), Watergate scandal, the rest of Category:American political scandals, etc. We don't need to specify in the title if the name is unambiguous. There's no other Essjay, let alone any other essjay controversy. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:50, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The current naming is the most apt, saying of Wikipedia would only help of there were other Essjay controversies. Quadzilla99 23:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Was it unambiguous? The examples you provide are national American scandals. In other words, people will have a sense of reference when you mention Watergate or Whitewater. No matter how those here at Wikipeda care about this, no one will understand what you mean when you talk about the "Essjay controversy" on the street. Thus, this is a protologism of Wikipedia WP:NEO. In fact the main usage of the word "Essjay controversy" outside of Wikipedia was used in a NY times blog "what Wikipedia itself calls “the Essjay controversy.” http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/wikipedia-to-check-ids/ All other references outside of the Foundation to the Essjay controversy have Wikipedia in their titles. The current name is indicative of a major potential problem at Wikipedia where editors feel the world revolves around this encyclopedia. This hurts Wikipedia credibility. WatchingYouLikeAHawk 01:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

There is no need for disambiguation when there's only one thing reasonably called by that name, even if the thing in question is obscure. "Essjay controversy of Wikipedia" is terrible grammar anyway. Keep it here. --tjstrf talk 02:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Which grammatical rule was violated? WatchingYouLikeAHawk 09:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

It's just really awful word arrangement, and you made Wikipedia the subject of the sentence. Compare it with a proper use of the format, "(the) ongoing controversy of (rising) gas prices".

"Controversy of X" means that X is the controversy being discussed. "Essjay controversy of Wikipedia" is therefore a nigh-meaningless phrase in which "Essjay" describes "controversy" and "Wikipedia" is the controversy being discussed. Wikipedia is not a controversy, so it's just plain wrong.

A possible corrected form would be "the controversy of Essjay's actions", but that is clumsy and not a good title either. --tjstrf talk 09:53, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose -There were, and as is noted below continue to be, numerous non-trivial articles from independent sources reporting on and indentifying this controversy outside of Wikipedia. On another note, the proposed name just doesn't sound or look very good.--RWR8189 09:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• I agree with the above. The current title is fine. Trebor 18:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Essjay controversy and Category:Internet hoaxes

[Originally posted to Quatloo]: You removed the category tag, commenting: "Does not meet Wikipedia's own definition of what a Hoax is". But see: "A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real." In this case the "something false" was Essjay's credentials. I'll note that Google gets 15,300 hits for Essjay+hoax. Example: "Wikipedia's Wales Reverses Decision on Problem Admin": "Wikipedia is not built on credentials. That Essjay occasionally pointed to his hoax bio when editing articles may have influenced other editors, but did not gain him special privileges." So this is hardly an anomalous usage of "hoax". -- Ben ^TALK/_HIST 07:08, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

This is clearly not like the other hoaxes in that category; I removed the cat. +sj + 04:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Fraud vs. Hoax

I am reverting the addition of category "Internet Hoaxes." This is the response I left on the relevant user page:

By selectively quoting only a small snippet from the hoax page to make your argument, you left out the further elaborations of what distinguish a hoax from a fraud. The Essjay controversy is a fraud, not a hoax. The underlying motives are inconsistent with a hoax. By your reasoning all frauds are hoaxes, and that is absurd. Quatloo 09:44, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

No, Quatloo, what distinguishes fraud is that it is done for financial gain. When Essjay was hired for Wikia, he told them the credentials had been false; the earlier deception of his fellow Wikipedians and then of the New Yorker had no monetary aspect. This was a hoax and not a fraud. -- Ben ^TALK/_HIST 05:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

See also Wiktionary's fraud and hoax. -- Ben ^TALK/_HIST 05:52, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

No, again you are selectively misusing definitions. Fraud is done for gain, and it need not be financial gain. The very definition you point to says that. Essjay used his fraud to increase his power and position, and to further his arguments. The requirement that the gain be financial is a requirement you have invented yourself. He did not use his deceptions for activities traditionally associated with hoaxes. From Hoax, "a hoax is often perpetrated as a practical joke, to cause embarrassment, or to provoke social change by making people aware of something." There is nothing remotely hoax-like about the Essjay scandal. It is a case of fraudulent use of credentials. He had no purpose other than that. Quatloo 06:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

"Often" suggests a frequent but not a necessary or defining motive, otherwise the word would have to be "always". The fact is that a hoax can also have mercenary motives, as did the hoaxes perpetrated by Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Lee Siegel, Binjamin Wilkomirski, Laura Grabowski, Gerd Heidemann (of the Hitler Diaries), and Clifford Irving's fake Howard Hughes autobiography. Hoaxes can also be frauds. Put another way, the absence of financial motive is not a defining feature of hoaxes. -- Ben ^TALK/_HIST 06:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

This again has you arguing the absurdity that all frauds are hoaxes. This is a case of simple credential falsification. There has to be a larger picture for it to be a hoax. That larger picture is lacking. Quatloo 06:36, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Please cite where "There has to be a larger picture for it to be a hoax." -- Ben ^TALK/_HIST 06:43, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

"...the absurdity that all frauds are hoaxes." Well, look at Wiktionary's fraud (1): An act of deception carried out for the purpose of unfair, undeserved, and/or unlawful gain, esp. financial gain. Wiktionary's hoax: Anything deliberately intended to deceive or trick. Now how exactly is it "absurd" to observe that the set "fraud" is a subset within the set "hoax"? -- Ben ^TALK/_HIST

It seems to me to be both a fraud and a hoax. I agree that fraud need not require financial gain, and it's obvious that Essjay perpetrated fraud. However I believe he also perpetrated an internet hoax by creating a fictitious persona. If you look at the category of internet hoaxes you'll see Kaycee Nicole and Lonelygirl15, both false personas created to infiltrate (perhaps needlessly pejorative, but nonetheless accurate) and trick an internet community. Anchoress 06:59, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

On the basis of this independent third opinion, I would have restored Category:Internet hoaxes, but I see Tjstrf has already done so, the act of an independent fourth opinion. -- Ben ^TALK/_HIST 08:19, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

You (User:Ben) are engaging in a fallacy. Because the wiktionary definition of hoax is an act "deliberately intended to deceive or trick" it does not follow that all such acts are hoaxes. The cultural definition of what a hoax is cannot be squeezed into so few words. You asked for a citation, and I will give this [20] from the Museum of Hoaxes (published in their book as well). It is not optimal (I am not at a library at this moment), but it is better than what Wikipedia has. The piece as a whole gives a better flavor of what might be required for a hoax. By illustration of a counterexample, one cannot call an attempt, witnessed only by the participants, to shortchange a cashier a "hoax", yet that is precisely what you are doing. Back to the Musuem of Hoaxes definition: "outrageous, ingenious, dramatic, or sensational act of deception." I argue that the Essjay controversy lacks all of these criteria because they were not part of the original motivation of credential falsification. The controversy did "capture the attention of the public" but it was never Essjay's intent that it do so. Quatloo 07:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

According to your own cited source, "Hoaxes, as a broad category, can encompass a broad variety of phenomena. In particular, the term 'hoax' is often used to describe specialized forms of deception such as cases of fraud, pranks, and tall tales." (Emphasis added.) That seems to settle whether a hoax can also be a fraud. As to "capturing the attention of the public", Essjay's hoax did that, whether or not he intended that. Your own source continues: "Often, but not always. The crucial distinction seems to be that only when these forms of deception attract enough public attention, do they begin to be referred to as hoaxes. In other words, 'hoax' is a label that an act of deception is given if, and only if, it achieves a certain level of public notoriety." As the AfD discussed, the Essjay controversy achieved that. So it meets these criteria for a hoax. -- Ben ^TALK/_HIST 08:16, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I never said that a fraud cannot be called a hoax, you are putting words in my mouth. I am saying that this particular fraud ought not be called a hoax because it lacks the most important qualities of a hoax. And no, a hoax is not a deception that attains notoriety. That is a deliberate misreading of that source as well. A hoax must attract public attention, yes, but you are omitting the most critical part, that it be "outrageous, ingenious, dramatic, or sensational." That is the part lacking here -- the very essence of what a hoax is. Some frauds qualify as hoaxes, certainly, but this is just a simple fraud. Quatloo 09:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)