On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 5:05 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > When I signed up for Knol, one thing they did was allow verification. > So one way to verify you was that you gave them a phone number and your > name as it was listed in the phone book. They check that it's really > there, they CALL you and give you a code. You have to type that code > back in. > > So what that verifies is that whoever answered the phone at that number > was the same person who asked them to call that name and number (listed > in the phone book) in the first place. I'd call that *fairly good* > verification. Not perfect, but at least it pins the typist down to a > particular phone number and phone book listing. > > At any rate, I don't see how a 50-word biography which could be > anything I choose to make up, would satisfy any kind of identify > verification. To be an *Editor* that ask that you submit a CV which I > suppose if you were so inclined you could check against some college > database or whatever. >
They've had some discussion on the CZ forum about the onerousness of the sign-up process before, and in addition to rejections, they have quite a few where they basically write back, "we need more information, because we don't have enough to verify your identity". Most of those people never get back to them, from what I gather. CZ sign-up is slightly problematic for people without institutional email addresses, but they place a high premium on better verification than just 'fairly good'. In part, I think this is because they really, really want to avoid letting any vandals through; the lack of that particular aspect of Wikipedia is a major selling point for many of their users and potential users. A related observation: presumably because of the delayed sign-up process, only about half of new users ever make a first edit on CZ: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Image:New_users.png -Sage (User:Ragesoss) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
