First Mav, would you forgive me for not enveloping my
opinion in honey enough. I seem to remember that
nearly a year ago you explained to me, your
personality type made you go to the point without
unnecessarily circonvolutions. I remember you told me
I should not feel hurt if you sounded a little bit
short sometimes, as it meant no agressivity from you
toward others, but rather the deep need to go to the
point quickly and efficiently. I tought it would be
best maybe for us to understand each other if I were
doing just the same when talking to you, rather than
losing myself in complicated explanations as I
unfortunately quite often do.
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
On Wednesday 02 April 2003 08:39 pm, anthere wrote:
Oh ! And since when *exactly* was it a consensus
that
sysops would be allowed to see other people ip
please
? Enlighten me on that, 'cause I have no
memory of
having ever since a consensus about that.
With the old version of the software that was in
operation when I started
yarns ago /everybody/ could view the IP of /anybody/
with mouse over text.
You might remember that until november 2002, so not a
very long time ago, the french wikipedia was still
using the old software phase I, as most of the
international wikipedias, when english wikipedia was
already benefitting of the wonderful new features of
phase III.
So sure enough, I remember quite well this time when
IPs were displayed. Though I also remember it is not
ips that were displayed on my browser for recent
changes, but some mi-textual mi-numbered complicated
address which in fact allowed very well to distinguish
who was posting from where (city).
Which is why the "old" collegues on the french
wikipedia know very well from where I am from, and
which type of line I have. At that time, in my city,
when I took the adsl, we were precisely 58 users. For
the adsl just arrived then (and there is only one
provider).
I also remember quite well that I was one of the 3
first sysops on the french wiki, and that at that
time, a deletion made by a sysop was final. I also
remember we could ourselves ban ips (so...user ips as
well), action which was not possible by any others
than Jimbo and Larry (if I understood well) on the
english wiki in phase I.
And I found that it could possibly lead to abuse :-)
However, every user could see everyone ips. Not only
sysop.
The idea of allowing Admins have this long-lost
ability arose for two
reasons;
So, that's not a long lost ability
1. the ability of seing ips adress was global, not
sysop restricted
2. no sysop in phase I
1) the so-called MIT-vandal was trashing
en.wiki for 6 hours by
creating dozens of different usernames 2) there was
a suicide note placed on
en.wiki that turned out to be the real thing.
Luckily Jimbo just happened to
find out about the MIT vandal and was able to find
out the guys IPs and block
them (it was on a Saturday morning and Jimbo hardly
never checks his
Wikipedia email or RC on Saturday morning). Very
luckily the suicide note was
submitted by an anon user so regular users were able
to find out which
college and computer lab the the submitter was
writing from and this
information was passed onto the police (the person
was hospitalized and
placed on suicide watch). But what if that person
had created a login and
there was�nt�t any developer around to find out the
IP address?
yes, yes, yes
But again, 2 unique cases are not a reason for
generalization of such a controversial process.
Clearly the problem is not that sysop can or cannot
see an ip, the problem is there are not enough
"developers" with the ability to look in the database
and answer a very urgent request such as heavy
vandalism and suicid issues.
Was it
discussed in one of this remote places on a
talk page on the en wiki ? It sounds as if it was
a
consensus essentially reached by you.
Is there is reason why you are being so insulting?
Have I personally offended
you in some way? If I have then I�m sorry.
I was not insulting.
I was going to the point.
I saw nowhere there was a consensus about this.
This has been discussed before. Most recent
discussion;
On Wikipedia-l
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-February/008954.html
One message on the main wiki. A comment, and a
question. Thats all.
On WikiEN-l
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001242.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001034.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001043.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001050.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001099.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001100.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001030.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001037.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001164.html
English list
And only about extrem cases
> And on WikiTech-l
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002625.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002655.html
If seeing user ips is a consensus, I am *sure* tech
will find a technical way to make that possible
But deciding whether sysop could see user ips or not,
is not a tech issue, it is a global issue. So, the
tech list is not the place to discuss it.
There was even more discussion on this in the
Wikipedia-l archives even
further in the past but I don�t feel like looking
for it.
hum...
I have no memories about these discussions
Maybe someone could help us here ?
As far as I am
concerned, I consider it a *very*
dangerous breach on people privacy and freedom.
Since when has there been privacy on the Internet?
Since when has there been a wonderful comprehensive
cooperative encyclopedia built on consensus on the
Internet ?
Through IPs,
it is possible to find people real
names,
and I strongly object to this made possible.
No - this is incorrect. With personally assigned IPs
you can tell which ISP
the person is using and guess which city a person is
writing from. Any
information beyond that has can only be obtained
from the ISP (who are not at
all likely to give out that information).
Information on public computers and
school computer lab computers is much easier to
obtain though.
Hum...surprising then that you ever found out that
poor depressed student.
And your belief upon ISP ethics is maybe based on
american ISPs. Not on other countries ISPs.
I see not
why you - as a sysop - would be given the right to
know who I am.
Again - why are you taking this so personally and
taking it out on me? Am I
some type of criminal? If I have done something so
terribly wrong then please
tell me about it so that I don�t do it again.
Apology. I rephrase then.
I don't see why any sysop, on any wikipedias, would be
given the right to know who any non-sysops are.
Sysop are there
to help wikipedia, not
to have power on people. There is an important
notion
in freedom, it is that everyone share the same
rights.
And giving denonciation abilities over the
physical
bodies of people while others lower their heads
more
and more in fear of having the cops called on
them
for
any reason that a sysop would consider good
enough
to
launch an attack, is not exactly what I would
call
a
collaborative encyclopedia.
What? So you think it is OK for people to make death
threats and not have the
cops called on them?
I think you understood what I meant there, as you
mentionned in your private post.
That type of morality seems
very odd to me.
Hum...this is the second time that a wikipedian
appears to have doubts on my morality in 24 hours.
I *think* it would be nice between wikipedians to
avoid this type of statement and recognise we are
different, and might actually not share the same
morality. Moral rules are personal issues.
Just because
people would have tools doesn�t necessarily mean
they will use them in bad
ways. Knives are very useful things to have, for
example, but they can be
deadly if they are placed in the hands of a
psychopath. Do you think that
some sysops are psychopaths that would abuse
otherwise useful tools? Do you
really have such a low opinion of me and other
people who are also sysops? If
we can�t trust our sysops then we might as well
forget the project
alltogether.
By default, I trust users and sysops and anoms just
the same. If we can't trust users and anom, then we
might as well prevent them from editing alltogether.
Besides, long term users or sysops on a minor
wikipedia are obviously not trusted on the big
wikipedia. So, allow me to take this "let's trust our
sysops" with precautions.
The sysop role
is to protect wikipedia against
unacceptable aggression. This is not the role of a
sysop to run after the people. Denonciation is not
the
role of a sysop. Read again what a sysop is.
Well I am an Admin and I battled the MIT vandal for
4 hours trying to protect
Wikipedia. If I had the ability to view this
person�s IP then I could have
banned it very early on (several people got mad at
me for not banning the IP
- but I was as helpless as they were). And we are
also talking about a death
threat - don�t you think that it is important to
report this to the police?
Isn�t protecting the lives of our contributers also
important?
Yup !
So let's not display unnessarily information about
them to the whole world !
You know...there are really some crazy people on the
net !
Hum...to be constructive...would it be possible to ban
*anyone* - doing anything that could be thought wrong
- (I mean, sysops included :-))
After all, we could generalize the agreement system
for any banning (discussions for controversial
banning, immediate banning for obvious case of
vandalism)
And I am sure there could a tech way to ban a user
without displaying his ip to the sysop.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Have a very good evening Mav. I hope you will not
think I was insulting you here. I really don't mean
to. So we can both go on disagreeing.
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