-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
Erik Moeller
Sent: 12 December 2007 08:41
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] ip address
On 12/12/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
I am looking for some arguments to keep it
private. Others
than "well,
this is the default behavior".
If you have a fixed IP address that can be relatively easily
linked to your personal identity or your employer, I could
see why you wouldn't want it to be publicly known that you've
been pushing the article about gay midget pornography to
featured article status. Or the one about Scientology.
Yes, there are anonymizer tools, but
* most of them are quite slow
* they are not always built to be used on a per-page basis
* they may cost money, or contain spyware, etc.
Basically - it would mean that quite a few users would have
to go through substantial pain in order to have any degree of
privacy at all.
Could always hash the ip address, and display that. It would be completely
meaningless outside of wikipedia, so couldn't be tracked back to ISPs or
company owner. But the hash would always remain the same for each IP.
Jared