Essjay controversy

Timeline

July 31, 2006: The New Yorker publishes story about Wikipedia by Schiff, which features an interview with Essjay. January 2007: Essjay hired by Wikia. January 7, 2007: Essjay posts autobiographical details on his user page at Wikia, giving his name, age, previous employment history from age 19, and positions within various Wikimedia Foundation projects. These details differ sharply from previous assertions on Essjay's Wikipedia user page about his academic and professional credentials. February 23, 2007: Wales announces his appointment of Essjay to Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. February 28, 2007: Radar Online notes the fact correction appended to the The New Yorker article. March 3, 2007: Wales issues a statement on his user talk page at Wikipedia. Essjay announces his retirement from Wikipedia on his user talk page at Wikipedia. March 5, 2007: Story covered by the New York Times. March 6, 2007: Story featured on World News with Charles Gibson. March 7, 2007: Story covered in an Associated Press article picked up by over 100 media outlets listed in Google news cache. March 19, 2007: The New Yorker publishes a formal apology by Wales.

The Essjay controversy arose in February 2007 after The New Yorker magazine noted that prominent English Wikipedia editor and administrator Essjay, later self-identified as Ryan Jordan, was found to have made false claims on his Wikipedia user page and in a phone interview concerning his age, job, activities, background, and academic credentials. Although Essjay, who was also briefly employed at Wikia, had claimed to hold doctoral degrees in theology and canon law as a tenured professor at a private university, he was in fact a community college dropout from Kentucky. The discrepancy in credentials was brought to public attention in late February 2007 when The New Yorker attached an editorial note to a July 2006 article about Wikipedia, for which Essjay had been interviewed.

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, along with creating and debating various proposals to improve the project's handling of identification and credentials.

Jimmy Wales, a Wikipedia founder and president of Wikia, initially showed support for Essjay's use of false credentials in creating a persona by stating, "I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it." Later, however, when it was understood that the false credentials were used in "content disputes," Wales withdrew his support and asked for Essjay's resignation from, "his positions of trust within the community" on Wikipedia and from his paid job as Community Manager at Wikia. In March 2007, Essjay announced his retirement from Wikipedia.

The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky reported that Jordan had attended but never graduated from Centre College and Bluegrass Community and Technical College (formerly known as Lexington Community College). The paper also stated that despite his claim to have had a three-month special position with a United States bankruptcy trustee, the office had no record that Jordan ever worked there.

The New Yorker interview

Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist writing for The New Yorker, interviewed Essjay as a source for an article about Wikipedia ("Know It All" July 31, 2006) after he was recommended to her by a member of the Wikimedia Foundation. According to The New Yorker, Essjay "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." Describing his academic credentials as including two doctorates, the article said that Essjay was spending fourteen hours or more a day on Wikipedia but was careful to keep his online life a secret from his colleagues and friends. Essjay was portrayed as often taking his laptop to class, so he could be available to other Wikipedians while giving a quiz. Essjay later commented on his Wikipedia user page about having fooled Schiff by "doing a good job playing the part."

Identity revealed

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". World Wide Web activist and Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt then reported the Essjay/Ryan Jordan identity discrepancy to The New Yorker. In late February 2007 The New Yorker updated its article with a correction indicating that "Essjay" had subsequently identified himself as Ryan Jordan and further stated, "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 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." According to Essjay, these credentials were part of an online persona he had created, in part, to avoid cyberstalking. In fact, he had relied on sources such as Catholicism for Dummies when editing articles.

Reaction

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.”

Essjay had promptly responded to the controversy with a statement on his Wikipedia user talk page, in part reading:

…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. Jimbo and many others in Wikipedia's hierarchy have made thier [sic] support known as well…

Reaction from within the Wikipedia community was sharp, voluminous, and mixed. While most editors denounced at least some aspects of his behavior, responses ranged from offering complete support to accusing Jordan of "plain and simple fraud."

As the controversy unfolded the Wikipedia community began a review of Essjay's previous edits and discovered evidence he had relied upon his fictional professorship to influence editorial consideration of edits he made. "People have gone through his edits and found places where he was basically cashing in on his fake credentials to bolster his arguments," said Michael Snow, a Wikipedia administrator and founder of the Wikipedia community newspaper, The Wikipedia Signpost. "Those will get looked at again."

Wales was "...reported to be considering vetting all persons who adjudicate on factual disputes." "I don't think this incident exposes any inherent weakness in Wikipedia, but it does expose a weakness that we will be working to address," Wales added. He reportedly insisted that Wikipedia editors still would be able to remain anonymous if they wished. "We always prefer to give a positive incentive rather than absolute prohibition, so that people can contribute without a lot of hassle", Wales commented. However, he also warned that “It's always inappropriate to try to win an argument by flashing your credentials, and even more so if those credentials are inaccurate.” Wales reportedly "...expects contributors to the site who claim certain credentials will soon have to prove they really have them." However, Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation (which is no longer headed by Wales), was not supportive of his credential proposal, saying, "I think what matters is the quality of the content, which we can improve by enforcing policies such as ‘cite your source,’ not the quality of credentials showed by an editor." Vigorous debate over how to improve Wikipedia continues.

As a followup to his initial comments to The New Yorker, Wales wrote this apology to the magazine, which appeared in its March 19, 2007 issue:

I am writing to apologize to The New Yorker and Stacy Schiff, and to give some follow-up concerning Ryan Jordan (Editors' Note, March 5th). When I last spoke to The New Yorker about the fact that a prominent Wikipedia community member had lied about his credentials, I misjudged the issue. It was not O.K. for Mr. Jordan, or Essjay, to lie to a reporter, even to protect his identity.

Wales expressed his regret that Essjay had "made a series of very bad judgements." He also commented that he hoped Wikipedia would improve as a result of the controversy.

Wikipedia critics

Larry Sanger, Editor-in-Chief of Citizendium and a founder of Wikipedia, was reported to have called Essjay's response "a defiant non-apology" and elsewhere characterized Essjay's actions as "identity fraud." Longtime Wikipedia critic Andrew Orlowski harshly criticized Jimmy Wales for hiring Essjay at Wikia and appointing him to the Wikipedia arbitration committee after Essjay had apparently admitted his previously claimed academic and professional credentials were false. Orlowski wrote in The Register that Essjay's actions betrayed a dangerous community mindset within Wikipedia, quoting Sanger as saying, "Wikipedians have plainly become a very insular group: they have their own mores and requirements, which are completely independent of the real world. Indeed, that's what this story is about, after all: real-world identities and credentials are rejected as unnecessary by Wikipedia." Dan Blacharski of ITworld wrote, "Legitimate writers, scholars and industry experts have very little motivation to contribute to Wikipedia – leaving the project with wannabes and posers like Essjay with too much time on their hands to churn out content." Internet activist Seth Finkelstein said that Wikipedia "fundamentally runs by an extremely deceptive sort of social promise," of which he claims Essjay is a product. In another comment Finkelstein asserted, “Wikipedia is selling heavy contributors a dream that their donated effort will give them the prestige of an academic…But all that'll happen is they will work for free, while elsewhere the Wikia investors will reap the rewards.” He saw Essjay, “that dream’s poster child,” as having been encouraged by Wikipedia to play out a detailed fantasy role along with “a cadre of acolytes willing to devote their lives (without payment) to the organisation’s projects.”

Effect on donations

File:Scandal effects on donations.jpg

A graph of the effects on donations to the Wikimedia Foundation following the essjay controversy.

The Wikimedia Foundation enjoyed a total of $3,477 in donations on February 23rd, the day Essjay was elevated to ArbCom status. Contrast this with a total of only $739 made on March 18th, less than one month later. This represents a 79% drop in daily contributions. As the details and implications of these scandals continue to be disseminated, it is uncertain if donations will eventually rebound.

Academics

On March 2, 2007, a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education commented "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."

Ross Brann, a professor of Judeo-Islamic studies at Cornell University, said, "This [process of scholarly review] is completely removed [at Wikipedia]…They could make up your life if they wanted to." Brann said that Wikipedia "has no place in the University," and he believed the Essjay incident would do nothing to change the unfavorable opinion that academics generally hold about the online encyclopedia. Several students interviewed at Cornell indicated that they would continue to use Wikipedia as a quick source of information, though they would not cite it in scholarly work.

Nicola Pratt, a lecturer in international relations at the University of East Anglia stated, "The ethos of Wikipedia is that anyone can contribute, regardless of status…What's relevant is their knowledge as judged by other readers, not whether they are professors or not – and the fact the student was exposed shows it works."

See also

• Criticism of Wikipedia: external criticism of Wikipedia, its concepts and contributors.
• Reliability of Wikipedia: the reliability of information in Wikipedia, including comparisons of accuracy with other resources.
• Wikipedia community: a group of people who volunteer their time to edit Wikipedia

Related links

• Essjay's personal talk page on Wikipedia, with notice of retirement from the project