There is a long article in Informationweek about reputation. I read it with much interest. It covers most of the ground. The question that I do not find answered is, what does reputation buy me and, why would I care for an on line reputation.
My reputation is a consequence of the things that I have done. Some of the things I do have made me recognisable, I learned at a Wiki meet that my standard salutation, "Hoi" made me the first person that was recognised as an individual by someone who is working hard to understand the Wikimedia Foundation. This is my 250th entry in this blog, a growing group of people read this. I have written tons of articles in Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Commons and am now particularly active in OmegaWiki. But my reputation as I have it is a consequence of what I have done. It does not give me necessarily credibility; in Doctor Sanger's eyes it won't as he advocates certification in stead of reputation.
Much of the talk about reputations is defensive in nature; it is about vandalism, about pretensions, about why we should trust a resource and to what extend. This negative emphasis is self defeating because it does not value how a reputation helps in achieving goals. The cost of this absolute negative appreciation is that after a controversy a person like Essjay is no longer considered. He was once one of the most valuable Wikipedians and this was based on the good work work that could be observed.
The biggest problem that I can see with looking at reputation in a negative way is that you do not allow people to be wrong and the consequence is that this does frighten people off. People with a stellar reputation find it necessary to write under a pseudonym in Wikipedia because they are fearful of their reputation. When people are to be identified it does prevent people from contributing.
It is valuable to know what things are wrong. Scientific publications are a celebration of the positive discoveries. The dark side is that the discovery of things that are wrong is not as readily published, known. Many,many experiments are repeated over and over again because the fact and the proof why something is wrong is not published.
To me, a person gains his reputation by the work that he does. The more work done means the more opportunity for issues to arise it is however only the people that do that make mistakes. The people that allow themselves to be wrong should be celebrated. They are the giants on whose shoulders we can see further.
Thanks,
GerardM
2 comments:
The interesting question is: how can I verify Mr. Sanger's credentials? He writes online. If it's so bad to write online he should use paper. Funnily, he does not. In Italy we have a saying about the people who "spit in the dish that is feeding them" :)
But even outside the net... I know of a number of well reputed politicians who were elected because of well verified credentials that eventually proved... false. Same applies to doctors whose paper diplomas stamped in gold stood well in sight in their cabinets. Same applies to Enron and Parmalat published accounting certifications. They were endorsed by extremely well reputed companies that specifically deal with credentials verifications. Once again, Sanger has but a roaring silence for all this :)
Why I am not surprised? Hmm... is it because of Mr. Sanger's own reputation as a public troublemaker who makes a damn good profit by all the quarrels he can stir up? :) Maybe ;)
Anyway, here we have an interesting case of parasitism. A man once was in a successful project, then he left but he still makes money out of the memory of what he once was. The only way he has to have people talk about him is this. Yet it works and it must be pretty rentable, since he keeps using it.
So let’s drop one more coin to poor begging Larry and never mind what he says (or his funny "reputation"). Charity is a Christian Quality, isn’t it? One more link and one more blog reaction will give him traffic and some more advertising cents. Here, take my dime Larry, go buy yourself shoes :)
Not what Essjay did was bad, but what they did with Essjay. In my opinion a person should valued on his or her intentions and contributions, but not on their education.
Essjay had good intensions and contributions. He stated to have better education to defend himself from others that only respect a person with a university degree.
I think it's not a very nice way to do so, but we should respect it.
Further, peoples like Sanger are false when he says that only experts can give good contributions. Sometimes it needs the perspective of peoples that don't understand a topic (well) to show what should be better/easier explained.
A thing that I've learned while editing Wikipedia is that I tend to explain things very complex and abstract, just to get respected by the "experts" that are trying to undo each article that is not written by experts.
Its a very bad thing to do so, but sometimes a need.
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