Jimmy Wales’ latest response on the Essjay situation
As you might know, I haven’t interfered with Wikipedia’s “internal affairs” for a long time. But the Essjay situation isn’t just an internal affair, because this is an existential, standards-defining, precedent-setting event that could affect Wikipedia’s reputation for years to come. So on this, we need to hold Wikipedia’s feet to the flames, and make sure that they do the right thing.
The latest is that Jimmy Wales has posted a clarification in which he requested that Essjay “resign his positions of trust within the community.” Overall, Jimmy’s statement answers few questions.
I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false credentials in content disputes. I understood this to be primarily the matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and not a matter of violation of people’s trust.
All right, perhaps it was only this morning that Jimmy saw evidence that Essjay used his false credentials in content disputes. But why is evidence necessary? Why else would someone claim to have advanced degrees, as opposed to making up some other story? It is quite obvious in itself that someone who claims to have impressive credentials that he hasn’t got intends to use them to get ahead. No one needs to see the “diffs.” And so it ought to be evident on its face that claims to have advanced credentials is a “violation of people’s trust.” Particularly when the liar has risen through Wikipedia’s ranks, the reasonable assumption is that the claimed credentials played a positive role in Essjay’s rise. This is, again, something that needs no special evidence.
More fundamentally, Jimmy’s statement implies that the only thing that occasions his request for Essjay’s resignation–just ten days after appointing him to the Arbitration Committee–was his newfound knowledge that Essjay “used his false credentials in content disputes.” That apparently is the only thing that would ”violate people’s trust.” Since Jimmy declared he didn’t “have a problem with it” to The New Yorker, it seems Jimmy finds nothing wrong, nothing trust-violating, with the act itself of openly and falsely touting many advanced degrees on Wikipedia. But there most obviously is something wrong with it, and it’s just as disturbing for Wikipedia’s head to fail to see anything wrong with it.
In his most recent missive, Jimmy doesn’t mention another violation of trust, one that Jimmy most certainly did know about before this morning. Essjay lied to The New Yorker and to Pulitzer Prize-winning Stacy Schiff. But, as Jimmy told them, “I don’t really have a problem with” the fact that Essjay made up his credentials. That seems to mean that Jimmy has no problem with a Wikipedia administrator’s lying about his credentials to one of the most influential magazines in the world.
It seems Jimmy still doesn’t think it’s a big deal. Here’s more from his statement:
…I advise (as usual) that we take a calm, loving, and reasonable approach. From the moment this whole thing became known, EssJay has been contrite and apologetic. People who characterize him as being “proud” of it or “bragging” are badly mistaken.
But the last we have heard from Essjay does not seem “contrite and apologetic”:
I was, until this morning, under the impression that in my initial post on this subject (in response to a question from Dev920 made some weeks ago) I had made an apology for anyone who felt they were hurt by my decision to use misinformation. In speaking to various different people, including Jimbo, I did make it known that I was sorry that anyone felt hurt by my actions, and I believed I had done so in my initial statement. … I *am* sorry if anyone in the Wikipedia community has been hurt by my decision to use disinformation to protect myself. I’m not sorry that I protected myself; I believed, and continue to believe, that I was right to protect myself, in light of the problems encountered on the internet in these trying times. I have spoken to all of my close friends here about this, and have heard resoundingly that they understand my position, and they support me. … That many people feel hurt by my decision pains me greatly, and to them I am genuinely sorry. To the stalkers, the trolls, and the vandals, I am not sorry; they are abusive, hateful people, and they have done far worse things than those whole of the Wikipedia Community, myself included, have ever thought about doing.
This is a non-apology. If anyone ever tells you, “I am sorry if you were hurt by my decisions,” it isn’t usually an apology: it is usually a declaration that he is saddened that you feel as you do. It’s often more condescending than apologetic. The point is that you can feel “sorry” about how someone feels without admitting that you have done anything wrong. Indeed, nothing Essjay has written evinces the slightest hint that he believes he did something wrong. He did not say: “I’m sorry I lied. I know that lying is wrong.” Not: “I’m sorry that I misled a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The New Yorker in an hours-long interview. That was amazingly wrong.” Not: “I’m sorry that I used my lies to gain positions of authority among you; I realize that this shows moral bankruptcy. I know I’ve let you down. I’m leaving now.” Instead, in what is supposed to be an apology–a second try at an apology, mind you–he declares that he’s disappointed “if anyone in the Wikipedia community has been hurt by my decision to use disinformation to protect myself. I’m not sorry that I protected myself.” And he concludes:
I have no doubt that others will continue to debate this matter; I have no intention to say anything further, as I have made my statement complete. If anyone needs me, look where the work of keeping the encyclopedia running is being done, and you’ll probably find me there.
Essjay has not apologized: one cannot apologize without actually admitting wrongdoing, which he clearly has not done.
Also, you wouldn’t know this from Jimmy’s statement, but there is a reason Wikipedians have said Essjay has “bragged” about his lie to The New Yorker. He wrote last February 6:
Actually, I did six hours of interviews with the reporter, and two with a fact checker, but I was really surprised that they were willing to do an interview with someone who they couldn’t confirm; I can only assume that it is proof I was doing a good job playing the part.
This is from the person who Jimmy now defends as being “contrite and apologetic.”
Indeed, something about Jimmy’s own story–that he is shocked and saddened to learn that Essjay used false credentials to win content disputes–just doesn’t add up at all. It just doesn’t ring true. It appears that Essjay was hired to begin at Wikia on January 8. Presumably, Wikia needed to know Essjay’s real identity before that because, unlike Wikipedia, the IRS does kinda care about real identities. This means that Jimmy hired someone who he had to have known perpetrated a fraud on the Wikipedia community. Jimmy knew about Essjay’s fraud three months ago. Jimmy would do well to explain why on Earth he felt it was a good idea to hire someone who had lied so outrageously to the community. But let’s suppose that Jimmy is just a very forgiving kind of guy. He now requests Essjay’s resignation from his positions of trust because Essjay used his false credentials to win content disputes. But evidence of such wrongdoing, of course, isn’t at all hard to find. Did Jimmy and Wikia simply neglect to do their due diligence? That seems unlikely, because, as I said, it’s obvious that someone who makes up impressive credentials will use them to get ahead. The reasonable conclusion is that Jimmy and Wikia simply didn’t care whether Essjay used his false credentials to get ahead. If they had cared, and they believed there was anything morally suspect about Essjay’s admitted duplicity, they would have found out right away about Essjay’s abuse of his false credentials, and not hired him.
But, far from checking into the morally questionable aspects of Essjay’s behavior, Jimmy actually went out of his way to appoint Essjay to Wikipedia’s high tribunal, the Arbitration Committee, on February 23. This appointment was made after the morally questionable aspects started getting noticed by Wikipedians (in early February), and after The New Yorker asked for a comment from Jimmy (since the comment itself was published Feb. 28–it’s unlikely The New Yorker got the comment from Jimmy just five days before it appeared on the desk of Radar Online).
Jimmy evidently didn’t realize that the news about Essjay’s duplicity, or his own concise defense thereof (in The New Yorker), or his appointment of Essjay to Wikia and to Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, would matter to the rest of the world. He didn’t think anyone would notice or care much. Well, why not? Because it’s a small internal matter? No, because, for Jimmy, nothing really wrong was done: if it’s just a matter of making up some credentials, “I don’t really have a problem with it.”
Hence, in the coming days, look for one of two things. We might see a sincere apology from Jimmy (and, maybe, Essjay), that admits, somehow, that he simply hadn’t thought through the full moral implications of his own actions, or of Essjay’s. But I’d say–knowing Jimmy as I do–you shouldn’t count on that. We will probably see further declarations of ignorance or stonewalling. I don’t know what will happen after that, but I doubt it will be pretty.
Obviously, I care very much about what’s going on here. How Wikipedia, and the world at large, responds to this debacle will determine to a great extent how much I personally support Wikipedia in the future.
UPDATE: it is a sight to behold, watching Wikipedians falling all over themselves in their haste to approve of Jimmy’s sage judgment on his talk page and on the WikiEN-L mailing list, and in their desire to get all this business behind them. How different this is from the drubbing Jimmy took in the last few days. There’s something deeply fascinating about the difference.
UPDATE 2: Essjay has resigned. Without, of course, admitting any wrongdoing.
UPDATE 3: here is the last comment I’ll be making about this situation. I promise. — Erm, not quite. Sorry!
[…] Jimmy Wales has asked Essjay to resign. But little else is […]
Pingback by Citizendium Blog » Wikipedia firmly supports your right to identity fraud — March 3, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
I’m sort of shocked no one managed to head this off weeks ago and handle it semi-quietly.
Comment by ZachPruckowski — March 3, 2007 @ 6:54 pm
It would appear that Essjay has removed himself from Wikipedia.
Comment by ZachPruckowski — March 3, 2007 @ 7:16 pm
“But evidence of such wrongdoing, of course, isn’t at all hard to find.”
I disagree. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits, he has almost 19,000 edits. Sure, someone who’d debated with him before might be able to refind evidence quickly, but that’s a big haystack. And it really is the “hitting other people’s heads over with your (false) expert status” that is the true crime here.
Should Jimbo have come out more strongly after the initial revelations? Absolutely, because faking stuff on the user page, even if never used in debates, isn’t a good sign. And was Jimbo in a position to know more earlier? Quite possibly, but how many Wikipedians are there? Just because he’s Grand Poobah doesn’t mean he has everyone’s user pages memorized; this Mr. Jordan seems a consummate liar, and by simply “acting casual” he may well have skated past the fact he told the New Yorker something else and there must have been some misunderstanding. Hindsight is 20/20; while Jimbo definitely loses points on his competence meter for not picking up on this earlier, it’s not necessarily him knowing and not caring. (If it really was, then yes, he’s not fit to run Wikipedia, but that’s not clear.)
But Jimbo’s recent response seems proportionate. And frankly, even if Essjay never gave a personal and heartfelt apology, this is where it’s reasonable to smile, pretend he apologized, then perma-fire him. It’s done by businesses all the time to try and smooth over fraud. Jimbo was late, but I don’t see much to disagree with from his last missive.
-Not normally a fan of Jimbo Wales
Comment by Quiet One — March 3, 2007 @ 7:52 pm
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/03/03/essjays-third-transgression/
Comment by C.M. Jones — March 4, 2007 @ 12:56 am
[…] universum beschouwt, en they must think the sun shines out of his arse, en tralala, tralalie. En The Usual Suspects die met ongetwijfeld meer dan gewoon leedvermaak commentaar geven, natuurlijk: ‘t is precies […]
Pingback by Retired — Michel Vuijlsteke's Weblog — March 4, 2007 @ 4:49 am
Quiet One - much though I respect your opinion and reasoning, I’m inclined to disagree. Wales should have better known the Essjay situation, because Essjay wasn’t one of a million wikipedians. He was ex-ArbCom Chair, bureaucrat, and a Wikia employee. On any sort of organizational chart of the Wikimedia/Wikia/Mediawiki conglomeration, he’s invariably in the top 20 or 30 people.
Also, can someone who can read Dutch* or whatever language that is tell me out of whose arse the sun shines? Because I’m kind of curious now.
Comment by ZachPruckowski — March 4, 2007 @ 10:44 am
Jimbo’s brazenness knows no bounds. Check out the latest self-serving rubbish on his talk page.
Two statements stand out:
1. He was “several days in a remote part of India with little or no Internet access”
2. He says he couldn’t appraise the situation because he “was on a journey to India, visiting slum schools to learn how our work might or might not be helpful to people strugging to get an education in adversue conditions”
These statement contradict each other. Where exactly was he in India? Even Wikipedia’s article on Slums says that slums are in cities and towns. Usually large ones. There is internet access in cities and large towns in India. He seems to be using an outdated preconception of India in order to excuse his behavior. I think he’s telling tales.
Where exactly was he?
Comment by Naveed — March 4, 2007 @ 11:29 am
Naveed, let’s not focus on the minor points. I’d be more interested to hear how he could reconcile hiring someone he knew to have falsely claimed to be a professor, how he could promote such a person (even after Wikipedians started making noise) to the ArbCom, and how he could have “no problem” with such a person lying about his credentials to the New Yorker. I couldn’t give a rat’s patoot where in India he’s been!
I’m back to CZ work now–where you’re going to see some solid progress in the next few weeks, including a launch (right, Jason? ha ha).
Comment by Larry Sanger — March 4, 2007 @ 11:48 am
I’ve just discovered he was in Chennai - India’s fourth largest city. Of course, it has excellent internet facilities in all large hotels. This must be where Jimbo was when he said he was for “several days in a remote part of India with little or no Internet access”. Another lie exposed. How long can he keep his position?
Comment by Naveed — March 4, 2007 @ 11:48 am
Larry, we posted at the same time. My point was he was continuing his lying to cover up for his initial lies. I agree with your points about promotion etc.
Comment by Naveed — March 4, 2007 @ 11:50 am
I feel partly responsible for this incident. Jimmy ran the names of the two users he was thinking about appointing to the arbitration committee past us. I could have spent some serious time investigating him and his edits, perhaps I would have discovered this. I had known about claims that he was a tenured professor of theology, etc, and worked “14 hours a day” on Wikipedia. That, on its face, is obvious crap, it was kind of in the background for me, and I was mislead by his current behavior which was unremarkable. Part of this is that Wikipedia is just getting too big to really know everyone. They have a page Requests for Adminship, I seldom know even one person who is up for nomination, so have little to say. So, just as a question, how do you determine who you can trust? By formal qualification? By experience with them and if so, how can that scale to thousands of people? The answer that Citizendium is small is not an answer, even a modest success will soon involve us with thousands of people.
Another problem, which still remains, is that Jimbo was the only person with the authority to directly and promptly address the issue, so even temporary absence was a problem.
Comment by Fred Bauder — March 4, 2007 @ 12:16 pm
As a Wikipedia administrator with no academic credentials to speak of, I agree with everything you’re saying here. In fact, this is the first time I’ve seriously felt that a Wikipedia “scandal” could seriously affect, in my mind, its credibility and continued status as a valuable community effort. What we have here is not an isolated vandalism issue that gets noticed by the wrong folks, but a complete disregard for the truth on the part of Wikipedia’s high-ranking officers and the top banana himself.
Comment by Andrevan — March 4, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
@ZachPruckowski:
“Giving yourself a different identity on-line is one thing. Passing yourself off as a professor, with degrees and experience up the wazoo, is quite another thing. And throwing those degrees and that experience around in discussions to prop up all sorts of arguments from authority (”I can’t tell you how often I’ve had to explain this to my students”, “surely *I* should know”, that kind of stuff), is a whole different kettle of fish altogether.
And in the end it’s the same old story–the happy few at the top that consider Jimbo Wales to be the centre of the universe circle the wagons, and they must think the sun shines out of his arse, et cetera, et ceteree.
And, of course, The Usual Suspects commment with more than the usual schadenfreude: this is just the kind of thing that Sanger cum suis have been warning about for a long time.
Nah, Wikipedia gets ickier and ickier. On the surface it’s not that bad, but dig a little deeper and you get exactly the same shenanigans, both the good and the bad, as in any similar volunteer-based initiative.”
Something along those lines.
Comment by Michel Vuijlsteke — March 4, 2007 @ 4:23 pm
Fred Bauder - I certainly don’t think you should feel responsible. The issue isn’t that people didn’t notice the problem, it’s that people didn’t care about the problem. If Jimbo had simply been fooled, we’d probably laugh at him for a minute or so, then we’d go back to bashing that lying guy. The problem isn’t that people didn’t do thorough enough checking (and “ran it past us” don’t compel you to do an indepth background check on the guy), it’s that people were fine with him claiming to be someone he wasn’t.
And as to your last point - that’s going to be true anywhere. Even here, if there was an issue with a member of the Exec Board, it’d be Dr. Sanger’s call.
Oh, and a quick retraction - apparently he was ex-Mediation Chair and on the ArbCom, not ex-ArbCom Chair. My apologies. Point remains, he was a bureaucrat, a checkuser, and had oversight. That’s the 3 big guns of Mediawiki privilege levels*, and he had them all. I don’t doubt that in a year’s time, had this not been discovered, he could have made Board of Trustees or something.
* = (Steward is not an official MediaWiki privilege level, it’s a hacked-on thing that Wikimedia does)
Comment by ZachPruckowski — March 4, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
Zach wrote: “Even here, if there was an issue with a member of the Exec Board, it’d be Dr. Sanger’s call.”
Some corrections: there is no Exec. Board, there is an Executive Committee. What you say may be true now, Zach, but it won’t be for long. We aim to adopt a Citizendium Charter, I hope by this fall, which will specify nothing like a sovereign monarch as Wikipedia has (in effect), but at least two, or three, persons and/or bodies that are distinct, nonoverlapping, independent in their areas of authority, and which act as checks on each others’ authority. Furthermore, I am committed to stepping down, as I have said, in 2 or 3 years (at most) in order to set a good precedent. And when I step down, I really will step down, I won’t continue to make appointments and pretend to speak on behalf of the whole project to the media.
If you were to say I seem to have a certain model in mind, you’d be right.
Comment by Larry Sanger — March 4, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
A few comments. I’ll keep it simple.
* Essjay so-called “apology” is insulting. I’ve never understood why it’s so hard for people to admit their wrongdoings.
* Jimbo knowingly appointing Essjay despite his fraudulent claims is the worst part of this whole situation, in my opinion.
On the flip side:
* It does not appear like Essjay used his false status to further some agenda. On the contrary, he has made thousands of worthy edits. I think he’ll go down in history as the Pete Rose of Wikipedia. Both great, but with tarnished legacies.
* Essjay has resigned.
Comment by Gabriel — March 5, 2007 @ 1:27 am
Per Mr. Wales talk page, he has apparently pulled out a Bandaid from his box.
Comment by Stephen Ewen — March 5, 2007 @ 2:40 am
Correct, I miswrote Board for Committee. My apologies. I think however, that regardless of formal structure, it’s more or less human nature to default to “Cover-your-Ass” and “Pass the Buck”. I’ll freely confess to having done that once or twice in my life.
Oh, and thanks Michel Vuijlsteke for the translation.
Comment by ZachPruckowski — March 5, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
[…] that removed all doubt on a certain point, which placed things into a clearer perspective. I know I said I wouldn’t write anything else about the scandal, so I’ll be […]
Pingback by Citizendium Blog » One last, brief comment on the Essjay scandal — March 5, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
Wikipedia itself doesn’t run on “who has the degree” or “who knows more,” it runs on truth. If Essjay ever used his “degree” to sway and argument or force something into an article, I doubt that it would have worked (and will not believe it until someone provides me with the diffs to it), because whether or not you have a degree in Theology or not, it doesn’t change what the truth is or is not. Therefore, I don’t think that the fact that he lied about his credentials is a big deal. Consider this: You invent a pseudonymn to use online. You are a bit egocentric, so you give him some hefty credentials. You comment on them a bit in the beginning so no-one questions you, and then you leave them be. Later, you realize it might have been a bad idea to invent this pseudonymn, but you can’t drop it because people already know you by this person and it would be painful to the community if you were to “come out”, so to speak.
Then, the NY Times wants an interview. Well, either you destroy your reputation and tell them the truth, or you continue the lie that is commonly accepted as truth. The lie doesn’t hurt anyone, while the truth would hurt you along with anyone who trusted you. So you lie, even though it’s snowballing into something you don’t want. But what choice do you have? So you lie to the NYT.
Bam, you’re caught, and in big trouble because you didn’t come out yourself, someone else forced you out. You resign from the ‘pedia and ‘a, etc.
That’s basically what happens. While it might not have been the best course of action, it is an UNDERSTANDABLE course of action. I think, anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GofG
Comment by John Wittle — March 5, 2007 @ 6:34 pm
“I doubt that it would have worked (and will not believe it until someone provides me with the diffs to it)”
Whether it works or not doesn’t matter. It’s wrong to even _try_ to pull this. Wrong, period.
And um, Wikipedia “runs on truth”? When people go to great lengths to distort the “truth” about themselves, and use their new-found “truth” in content disputes, can there be any meaning left to the claim that Wikipedia “runs on truth”?
Lies, excuses, and more lies. We don’t need Stephen Colbert to crash Wikipedia, because Wikipedia’s own defenders can easily do it themselves.
Comment by bi — March 5, 2007 @ 11:35 pm
[…] The black eye suffered by Wikipedia is not so much to process as it is to general respectability, and it provides another outstanding piece of ammunition for those who are already critical. As Brock Read writes over at the Chronicle, “the incident is clearly damaging to 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.” The Telegraph: “Deep down, though, we all knew it wasn’t that reliable.” Larry Sanger, long a critic of uncredentialed encycloping finds the initial shrug from Wales and Essjay’s “non-apology” to suggest that the moral keel of Wikipedia administrators is a more than a little uneven. […]
Pingback by a thaumaturgical compendium » Blog Archive » Wikipedia editor abased — March 7, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
[…] Wikipedia ed ai suoi metodi di gestione. Molto critici sulla condotta di Wales sono Larry Sanger (co-fondatore di Wikipedia) e Seth Finkelstein sui rispettivi blog. A molti non è piaciuta la […]
Pingback by 100iso.it » Blog Archive » Wikipedia controllerà le credenziali degli editor — May 19, 2007 @ 1:35 am