[WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser tool

[BJörn Lindqvist]

On 11/13/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On 11/13/05, BJörn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My cents: I think this whole checkuser shit is totally re-tarded. It's
> > a grave violation of privacy. I have accounts on Wikipedia only
> > because I care about my anonymousity (otherwise I would edit as an
> > "anon"). I do NOT wan't someone to connect my contributions to my
> > identity. Especially not someone I don't know and who identifies
> > itself with a random and totally meaningless userid!
> >
> > Dumb dumb dumb. Stupid stupid stupid.
>
> That is why it is only being used by a trusted set of users and only under
> strict terms. The developers have always had the ability to see your IP. The
> ArbCom needs it to check for sock puppets.

The rules will be bent. Admins will use the checkuser tool for smaller
and smaller infractions until it becomes in reality practically no
restriction whatsoever in using the tool. It's the same thing with
bans. And this may be a potshot: But I remember a certain person on
this mailing list some years ago outing a user called "EofT" by
publishing his real life name. It makes me think that people do not
respect other peoples privacy and that similar things will happen more
frequently in the future thanks to checkuser...

And the stupidest thing of all is that there is absolutely no
technical need to expose peoples IP addressess at all.

--
mvh Björn