Wikipedia:Credential verification (proposal)

This is an initial draft for how credentials will be verified on Wikipedia. Please feel free to edit and modify. Please discuss on the talk page.

Verification of claimed credentials may occur in various circumstances. This policy outlines those situations and the process that will be used to verify those claims.

What are credentials?

Credentials include:

• Academic degrees, and other formal qualifications based on higher education;
• Licenses to practice a certain profession or trade;
• Awards or prizes for achievement in a particular field;
• Relevant positions of employment, for example as a professor in a particular field, or as a consultant or employee in a particular industry;
• Published works;
• Professional references from recognized experts.

Verification for positions of trust

Normally editors will not be asked to verify whatever credentials they list because editors are judged by the edits they make and not their credentials. However, editors who decide to disclose their credentials and have been selected, or are being considered for selection, as a Bureaucrat, CheckUser, Oversight member, or Arbitration Committee member should be absolutely honest about whatever credentials they make public via their user page. Individuals in those positions should be prepared to pass credential verification after they are promoted.

Any editor, at any level, will very likely be required to pass credential verification before they are asked to speak on behalf of Wikipedia.

See also

• Essjay controversy

Other related proposed changes to Wikipedia

• Wikipedia:Administrators accountability - a proposal for power at Wikipedia to be accompanied by accountability
• Wikipedia:Credentials - a proposal for credentials to be verified
• Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons - a suggestion to extend the BLP policy to claims made by users on their user pages
• Wikipedia:Honesty
• Wikipedia:Arbitration policy a suggestion that "Arbcom will establish and maintain and over time improve: a policy on transparency that will provide for accountability of Arbcom members through public knowledge, that increases over time, of the identities of Arbcom members."
• Wiki of Trust - A proposal that would enhance the security how personal ID would be verified.
• meta:Talk:CheckUser policy#Real name policy
• User:MikeURL/Credentials
• User:Misza13/Nobody cares about your credentials
• Wikipedia:Credential ban
• This proposed addition to WP:ATT which begins "Editors should not make claims about their professional expertise or academic qualifications anywhere on the site, including on their user pages, without supplying reliable, third-party source material in support of it."
• Wikipedia:Ignore all credentials
• User:Jimbo Wales/Credential Verification