[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser tool

[Sean Barrett]

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BJörn Lindqvist stated for the record:

> IP Checking: Worst case: Someone who doesn't like you get your ip
> checked, calls your ISP and talks with a clueless receptionist who
> reveals your real life name. That person then publishes your name
> somewhere. Your boss who happens to also be a Wikipedia user finds out
> about it and fires you because s/he think your political stuff you've
> written on Wikipedia suck. So some brat on WIkipedia cost you your
> employment.

How very theatrical.  Notice that it took three evil people to cost
"you" "your" (ooo, my very own personalized strawman!) job:

#1: the evil CheckUser user who went far beyond "yes, they match" or
"no, they don't," (which, as you know, is all we ever do)

#2: the evil (and amazingly knowledgeable) receptionist

#3: the evil boss (are there no labor laws in your country?)

Not one of these villains is at all hesitant about heinously violating
the terms and laws governing their roles.

That's a scary world you live in, Björn.  That, of course, makes you a
better person than me.  More wise and more sensitive.

> You don't even need to be an ArbCom member to do that. Let's say a
> veteran editor like Ed Poor asks for an ip check. Will an ArbCom
> member oblige? Yes, because Ed Poor is trusted. So your only job is to
> convince Ed Poor to ask for an ip check.

You, of course, have indisputable evidence showing the willingness of
each and every one of us to bend over any time Ed Poor gets an urge.
There's no way that you could be just making this up out of your febrile
imagination.

> For more details:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_hacking With the checkuser tool it
> becomes so much easier.
> 
> If you have ever met a political refugee, you know that they often are
> very careful not to talk politics with persons they don't know.

Oh, very nice escalation there!  We now see that CheckUser is a tool of
political oppression, if we're allowed to use it, people will be getting
shot in the back of the head down in the basement of the Wikipedia
server farm!

> Especially not with strangers from their own home country. The reason
> is that they fear secret agents from their home country. Often this
> fear is unfounded paranoia (there aren't THAT many secret agents in
> the world), sometimes it is not. Their worst case checkuser scenario
> is even worse than the worst case scenario I described two paragraphs
> above.
> 
> That's why I hate the checkuser shit - (mis)uses of the tool can have
> very detrimental real-life effects on real-life persons. Something
> that nothing other on the silly text game Wikipedia can have.

Well, Björn, I have to recommend that you take this matter up with
someone who can actually do something about it.  The ArbComm has had the
tool for some time now, and will continue to use it.  Writing to the
mailing list won't help -- it's been too useful so far, and we're not
going to give it up, even if you manage to build some sort of ground
swell of emotion against it.  The Board won't help -- they've agreed to
let us use the tool.  You might try Jimbo, but I doubt he'll overrule
the ArbComm and the Board.

If you're serious about your concerns, you'll probably need to contact
external authorities and tell them that the administrators of a Web site
you like to use are recording your IP address for their internal
monitoring and maintenance of the site.

> --
> mvh Björn

I'm done with this conversation.  Over to you for the last word....

- --
 Sean Barrett     | For days, we survived on
 sean at epoptic.org | nothing but food and water.
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