On 8/10/06, Patrick-Emil Zörner paddyez@yahoo.de wrote:
PS I wonder if more comments like the german law is stupid, pack your bags and leave, bizzare,... follow. There has only been one person that is answering to the topic and that is daniel.
My comments were not with regard to German law whatsoever, but purely in response to your belief that actions - admin actions especially - should not be subject to oversight or statistics.
I could be persuaded that the actions of non-admin users might have this expectation of privacy.
I explicitly do NOT agree that oversight of the administrative actions of administrators should be restricted by privacy concerns. I believe that ordinary users of Wikipedia are already, rightly, cautious of over-reach in the use of admin powers, and that full openness is a crucial part of dealing with community concerns on that matter.
However, I do also agree that bare statistics, without explanation, are often less useful than they may seem, and the availability of a statistic may influence users socially in a way that might not be for the best. As an example, the use of ever-more-nitpicking standards for granting of admin rights, I think, can be laid partly at the feet of greater availability of highly detailed statistics on a user's history obtained via toolserver scripts.
Thus, I agree, caution is a good thing; I do not, however, agree that such caution is mandated by a right to privacy over one's admin actions, but rather by considering the value to the project.
-Matt