User:Dzubint/Credentials Talk

here is my ( Thomas Dzubin Talk) two cents:
 * I'm not an admin...just a regular user/editor. I've been lurking here and there (Essjay controversy articles & related) for a while and have read lots of the comments.  I've put the {Template:User degree/BSc} userbox on my user page and I'm now thinking I should probably take it off because nobody on Wikipedia has verified it.  Conveniently, it is easy to get such a list of "claimers" at  and perhaps all of them/us should remove their crediential-claims from their user pages also.   However also on my user page is a "claim" that I can program in C, Perl, and assembly language... should I remove those also?  After all, I haven't sent samples of my code into the Wikimedia foundation.   I also "claim" to use an Apple Macintosh and I also "claim" to use Linux and OpenBSD... how do I verify those claims?   Also, I "claim" to be from Saskatoon who's going to verify that?.  And before you think: "well, that's silly... why should someone need to verify that?"... well my claims are on a continuum of claimed expertise that may need to be verified (yuck, bad grammar - sorry).   Many claims aside from academic credentials are not black and white cases of "this claim must be verified"  If this page was only about academic credentials needing to be verified, I probably wouldn't be writing this comment, but I've also been reading some comments about how some think that there should be Subject Matter Experts which are PhD-level, verified, editors... however I'm not a big fan of that proposal mainly because it seems to turn away from the Wikipedia core concept of "anyone can edit" and also... are you really going to find a PhD to be the SME for obscure historical articles like HP_2100 or for even new obscure (to many people) things like Adelaide Hills Hawks - are you really going to require a PhD SME for that?   I'd prefer if Wikipedia made it clearer that everyone should "Ignore any claimed credentials" and focus more on getting better references in articles.  Personally, I think that if an article is tagged as {Unreference} (see BIG list at ), it should be deleted.  It may be a GREAT article, but if there's no references and it isn't currently in the process of being created/expanded it goes against the core of Wikipedia and should be removed ....  (Seriously, there are many many articles tagged as unreferenced from December 2005  there is no reason these articles should be around for that long without references).
 * I've also seen some comments about admin (and higher) Wikipedians should maybe send in a copy of their drivers license to the foundation to verify identity. In this age of databases being compromised and hightened awareness of identity theft, I'm not sure I would want to send in a copy of my driver's license to verify my identity.   If that might mean that I would never become an admin, so be it and I think quite a few people might think that way also.
 * Summary: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog", but if the dog is making good edits, it doesn't matter.

Thomas Dzubin Talk 18:40, 13 March 2007 (UTC)