I share some of your concerns and agree with your insightful observations. My comments are inline-
On Sat, May 11, 2013, Sylvia Ventura
<sylvia.ventura@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Theo, thank you for the thorough response. You bring up very valid points, specially around privacy standards across countries/continents with a very different political and cultural makeup. And not something likely to change unless supremacy over wikipedia is given to one specific entity or state (nah). And losing our Freedom of Speech is not up for question.
A coupe of thoughts on the comment <<that internet itself promotes anonymity>> that might have been the case in the early days, but as more of our 'real lives' activity migrates online and replaces the physical world; internet has become the 'repository' of knowledge, but also goods and services, it's increasingly the place where 'untangle assets' get traded and human interactions take place (social/professional/commercial/financial/legal…). As we create our online trail, so is our personal profile. It's just a matter of time before we access everything about anyone with a simple email address (Google already pulls chunks of info from linkedin twitter, quora, etc to feed your G+ ID … and so does rapportive on email) It's already possible to spot the fake (ID) from the real.
Yes, agreed. Those are some smart observations. I generally agree with your concerns above and also fear that as corporations get larger, our privacy, and its value might be getting smaller. As more devices get networked together, our digital footprint increases several folds- our phones, televisions, PCs and the information retained in them, all converge at some point. From a privacy stand-point, the future does seem to have a bleak outlook.
I only have a minor disagreement with the last statement. As Thomas already pointed out, merely spotting a fake ID doesn't really have the same limitations. The entire system is predicated on the idea that the user in question chooses to be honest. The system is only effective for those who choose to be bound by it. A user can choose to provide a false email address, a false name, or a completely fictitious identity, and the only way to discern would be to physically visit them and ask to see their papers - which seems an even more draconian interpretation of the original thought.
More and more you see these "vetting" mechanisms use cross pollination of personal data (i.e. signing up to Airbnb to book room with your Facebook account or google account). As far as anonymity is concerned I think we're beyond the 'point of no return'. This if from a North American perspective of course, but Europe will soon join us with different levels of implementation (the trade off is always Access vs Privacy and that's a though sell), and so will the rest of the planet. This sounds a bit Orwellian and a bit depressing I agree, and that's why it is SO VERY important to get Wikipedia and sister projects to thrive and grow and be a strong space, repository of human knowledge, human history, representing all voices.
An insightful thought. We do trade ease vs. privacy more and more; perhaps not directly related, but we do have a unified login across all projects and languages - one login can be used automatically across all Wikimedia projects. And now, we have an upcoming initiative whereby remaining accounts across all projects would be unified under one login(SUL). It would certainly promote access (which we already have), even force it, but who knows if we might have traded something for it along the way.
Going back slightly to the original issue you mentioned about Meta. I looked for your username across meta, and only found this mention[1]. But it doesn't link to a user account, instead and goes to a red-link in the main namespace for Slv[2]. I see Sarah also left a message on the associated talk page without realizing that it wasn't a user talk page. Now, working off the assumption that this was the issue your encountered, it only means that you didn't technically create or log-in to your account on Meta, and instead created an article perhaps. Mediawiki divides things between namespace and a userspace (lets call it your profile - "user:<your ID>"). The namespace is reserved for articles only, which on Meta means- essays, policy pages, stroopwafel addiction pages, discussions pertaining to multiple projects or languages (more or less). An admin would delete anything that they deem doesn't fit into the description of the project, but they hardly ever ban a user outright for that misunderstanding. Meta community is actually pretty lax and gives more leeway for new users.
The biggest difference between a friendly and a new environment, is familiarity with other users. Interacting with other users and admins makes a great deal of difference for new users. I would suggest that you don't abandon Meta yet, and consider engaging again. As far as Meta goes, if you ever have any issues or queries, please feel free to leave a message on my talk page there [4], I would do my utmost to help when I can.
Regards
Theo