EP Writing for Interactive Media Forum

Maybe we need certification of authors

You're right, just linking to an author's bio may not be enough. Maybe we need some sort of credentials check to be able to judge whether the writer knows what he's talking about on a given topic.

What would those credentials be:

And on the other side, shouldn't writers disclose their special interest in a topic? If somebody is an environmental activist or a timber company executive, we should know that when we read their page on the rain forest.

In conventional publishing, editors mediate between authors and readers. As it gets easier to publish more directly, the steps in the process and the process itself may get squeezed.