Some of the participants in the discussion seem honestly not to understand how this could have any ramifications in the real world. And that disturbs me even more than the revelation of Essjay’s deception.

—Josiah Rowe

I too am especially offended Wales’ response. You know this guy:

Is he really this phony and arrogant? Or have I misjudged him?

Larry, you’re a philosophy man. You probably have already thought about Ralston Saul’s notion that corporations are amoral. Wikipedia is much the same. It seems to think that the standards of morality that apply “outside” simply don’t apply “inside”. Its processes often reflect a disregard for decency that wouldn’t play in the outside world.

Does Jimbo really think it’s okay to lie about your credentials if you are a big contributor? Does he think it’s all right to try to give weight to your arguments on the wiki with your false doctorate? I can understand and appreciate the notion that arguments, not degrees, should prevail (a reason I think your project is a bad idea, all in all; professors are not always right, even though they are on the whole going to be righter than most). But Essjay has more than once used his fake academic credentials as a tool in wikisquabbles, and as has been noted, as a means of impressing a real academic, who did want their charges to cite the wiki in their papers.

Jimbo’s comments on the matter just don’t make sense. “Dr Zen” is a pseudonym. “I have a doctorate in divinity” is a lie. There is a difference. I *really am* Dr Zen. It’s not the name my ma and pa gave me, but that’s because I want to be anonymous. “Ryan Jordan” would have stuck with Essjay, and no harm is done. But he didn’t. He didn’t just use a false name. He created a whole false identity. And lied about why (he was not receiving death threats when he began to claim a doctorate — he wasn’t even an admin, let alone a figure of hate; besides, WP doesn’t have that many whackos to share out among admins that a not particularly controversial gnome would attract so many).

Jim and the hive will say anything to protect the inner circle of admins working for him.

He says,

“Can you expand on the point of “casts a shadow not only upon himself but on the project”? In my view it does more to cast doubts on other projects such as Citizendium whos models depend on the work of experts than it does to cast doubt on this project. I’ve never seen any study which showed any significant dependence on disclosed experts on Wikipedia. –Gmaxwell 04:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Community_noticeboard&diff=112005298&oldid=112004969

If someone attempts to impersonate a real person, and is found out, not only will we instantly ban the person, we will help with any legal cases against the person engaged in identity fraud.

Furthermore, we will do our best to prevent this from ever happening–consistent, of course, from having a reasonably open project in the first place. By automating the registration system better than what’s now in place (we’re now spec’ing it out), we can make the whole process both fairly reliable and efficient.

I dropped one of my word-bombs again, if you have time:

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000329.html

You know what? Read the whole thing. Your headline is profoundly inaccurate…

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=112282076&oldid=112281864

Jimbo claims he did not understand this matter to be one “of violation of people’s trust” and that his “past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on”.

Oh c’mon.

And this seems to point to something indicate otherwise: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=112282076&oldid=112281864

And when Jimbo claims he did not understand this matter to be one “of violation of people’s trust”, which “people” is he talking about? Only Wikipedians who may have been bluffed by a pull of false credentials? Apparently so, which only confirms the insularity of the system.

Does Jimbo feel Essjay violated the trust of The New Yorker reporters to whom Essjay lied? On this he is silent and it speaks loudly. How about to The New Yorker’s many, many readers? Again, on this he is silent and it speaks loudly.

I fail to see anything of real substance in Jimbo’s talkpage response that would falsify Larry’s assertions here.

It turns out he is very much against the faking of credentials; he had been in India without reliable Internet access and it turns out he was only given half the story. He knows the whole situation now, and is ashamed.

Personally, I am not particularly impressed by his reply.

Admins such as Essjay ran goon squads targeting, blocking, harassing, editors who knew too much. The checkuser system was handled by this fraud. Has anyone looked into whether this guy had any knowledge nor skill to verify sockpuppets. This proven fraudster was trusted with handling private info. When he lost some argument and risk being exposed, he would claim the opponent was trolling and get his goon squad to block/ban him. Essjay used irc (primarily) to communicate and scheme to bump off his opponents. In order to avoid radar and any potentially bad publicity, he got his loyal crew (which he presumably) had a hand in promoting to admins to do the ‘dirty work.’ One such member of his enforcement crew/goon squad is Steel359 (I am not sure if he/it is a sockpuppet Essjay). Efforts to delete his history is part and parcel of this group to hide their connection to this exposed fraudster. [