[WikiEN-l] SlimVirgin and CheckUser leaks

[SlimVirgin]

On 7/20/08, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
>  If we say it's okay to give privileged information to your wife, we're
>  essentially saying that making any married person a privileged user is a
>  two-for-one.  If so, whenever a married person applies to become an admin, his
>  wife should be checked out and questioned in as much detail as he is,
>  and go through the same gauntlet of criticism as the applicant himself.
>  We don't do this.
>
>  If you think about it a bit, we generally don't do this in the real world.
>  For instance, HIPAA in the US governs what doctors are allowed to disclose
>  your private health information to.  Disclosure to the doctor's spouse is
>  certainly not in there.

I would say that where a checkuser's wife is not a Wikipedian, there's
less of a privacy issue, or if the editor who has been checked is not
of interest to many people.

But in this case, Wikitumnus had reason to want to protect his
privacy, and Lar's wife is another Wikipedian. (There are other issues
relevant to that point that I can't discuss in public.) That makes
this the kind of breach of the privacy policy that really shouldn't
happen.  Certainly, Wikitumnus felt his privacy had been breached and
felt forced to abandon the account, though he had done nothing wrong.

Sarah