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List:       wikien-l
Subject:    Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
From:       WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers () gmail ! com>
Date:       2015-04-09 11:39:42
Message-ID: CAAanWP1KF0_RinQn8oh3M-xNs+sY__eaDvpkSEtHXJQGbJLxDg () mail ! gmail ! com
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Real name editing is a very different obligation depending on how common
your real name is and how many edits you make. There are only a handful of
people who share my real name, if my surname was Smith then real name
disclosure would be a much lighter imposition.

It is also a very different thing depending on your subject area. No one is
likely to make a fuss about my fixing typos on Wikipedia, but we need to
protect those who seek to keep our articles on businesses honest and
neutral. If we insist on real names there, then it will be much more
difficult to deal with companies who can write legal letters to anyone who
disputes their version of the wikipedia article on them.

There are also likely to be some people who  write about topics that would
be controversial in their real life community and don't want their real
life identities linked to that, for example if we had an editor in the
Bible belt writing about evolution or atheism..... And of course people who
do things that they don't consider overly controversial but which provoke
rape and murder threats on IRC, here or elsewhere.

Then there is the question of what level of authentication you go to.
Simply requiring people to state that their account name is their real name
will exclude a proportion of goodfaith editors who aren't prepared to do
that, but it won't get rid of any badfaith editors. Verifying identity by
requiring all new editors to pay $5 by a credit card in the same name as
their account would get rid of most vandalism, but make it much harder to
recruit Wikipedians. It would also lose us a lot of editors especially
those who come from cultures where $5 is a lot for a hobby and or credit
cards are rare. Authentication by Facebook would make vandalism a little
more difficult,  though I know people whose pets have accounts, but I'm
pretty sure that those of us who support the open source lobby could
prevent such a path.  Over the years we've had lots of people propose that
we move to real names, but I've not yet seen a proposal that would do so in
a way that would keep almost all of our current and future goodfaith
editors whilst losing a significant proportion of the badfaith ones.

Jonathan

On 8 April 2015 at 20:21, Alan Liefting <aliefting@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

> I use my own name on WMF sites.  I was warned against doing that not long
> after I started editing back in 2004.  Ten years later and as a hothead
> editor having my real identity known does not seem to be a problem.
>
> Most editors use an alias.  I don't know why.  What are they afraid of?
> Editing wikis, if you are doing it right, is a laudable task and editors
> should be proud of the fact that they are helping to share knowledge in an
> altruistic manner.
>
> Rather than ensuring privacy of editors the WMF should DEMAND that editors
> make their identity known.  I am sure that this may cure some of the many
> problems that we are seeing on WMF projects.
>
> Having said all that there is of course a problem in some of the dodgy
> countries where speaking out gets you killed.  It has happened with
> journalists, bloggers, activists etc.  It could (has?) happen with WMF
> project editors.
>
>
> Alan Liefting
>
>
>
>
>
> On 09/04/15 00:06, Andrea Forte wrote:
>
>> The discussion here has been great. I've been keeping out of it since I
>> have an active research project and I don't want to seed my own ideas, but
>> to circle back to the original post... if anyone here would like to
>> contribute their experiences with privacy on Wikipedia to our project,
>> please consider doing an interview. This is not related to the lawsuit,
>> btw, we started the project before that happened.
>>
>> The consent form is here:
>> http://drexel.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_elzNLEUeTjIphrv
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Andrea
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 9:00 AM, WereSpielChequers <
>> werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  There is an important difference here. The WMF does not publicly log the
>>> IP
>>> addresses of visitors to the site.
>>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#your-use-of-wm-sites> It
>>> does however publish the IP addresses of editors who are not logged in.
>>>
>>> I could understand the elitist claim if the WMF were more privacy
>>> conscious
>>> of editors than readers. But it isn't, if anything the divide is a three
>>> way one, with unregistered editors as the ones who by default have least
>>> privacy
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>> Jonathan
>>>
>>> On 5 April 2015 at 21:18, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>  I propose we run a study. We will survey random editors
>>>>>
>>>> I always find it curious that we had dozens or hundreds of threads on
>>>> having IPs in history: this worry is very elitist, at most few millions
>>>> people ever edited.
>>>>
>>>> What about the hundreds millions users who never edited? What are
>>>> *their*
>>>> IPs being logged for? It would be rather trivial to do as the IA does:
>>>>
>>>>  http://blog.archive.org/2013/10/25/reader-privacy-at-the-
>>> internet-archive/
>>>
>>>> I'll start worrying about the millions when we have solved privacy
>>>> issues
>>>> for the billions.
>>>>
>>>> Nemo
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>>
>
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