WikiEN-l April 2003

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

63 participants
217 discussions

Re: Michael's threats
by Daniel Mayer 04 Apr '03

04 Apr '03

Anthere wrote: >Hum...this is the second time that a wikipedian >appears to have doubts on my morality in 24 hours. >I *think* it would be nice between wikipedians to >avoid this type of statement and recognise we are >different, and might actually not share the same >morality. Moral rules are personal issues. Agreed - This was based on the presumption that you disagreed with the handing over of the death threat person's IP and was made before I realized Brion had already given-out this information. As I stated in my private email to you I realized after making the post that this wasn't your intention - you were concerned with the general policy of allowing sysops the ability to see logged-in user's IP numbers. BTW, when I say "policy" while posting to WikiEN-l I usually mean policy for en.wiki. There does seem to be consensus for allowing sysops to see the IP numbers of logged-in users on en.wiki but there obviously is no consensus for this to be a global policy. This feature could be turned-off by default and decided on a language-by-language basis as far as I'm concerned. On en.wiki at least, there are enough sysops and enough people watching the sysops to ensure proper checks and balances. Jimbo is also fluent in English so it is easy for him to investigate alleged abuses. --Daniel Mayer (aka mav) WikiKarma The usual at [[March 29]] __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com

1 0

Re: Re: Michael's threats
by Daniel Mayer 04 Apr '03

04 Apr '03

On Wednesday 02 April 2003 08:39 pm, anthere wrote: > Oh ! And since when *exactly* was it a consensus that > sysops would be allowed to see other people ip please > ? Enlighten me on that, 'cause I have no memory of > having ever since a consensus about that. With the old version of the software that was in operation when I started yarns ago /everybody/ could view the IP of /anybody/ with mouse over text. The idea of allowing Admins have this long-lost ability arose for two reasons; 1) the so-called MIT-vandal was trashing en.wiki for 6 hours by creating dozens of different usernames 2) there was a suicide note placed on en.wiki that turned out to be the real thing. Luckily Jimbo just happened to find out about the MIT vandal and was able to find out the guys IPs and block them (it was on a Saturday morning and Jimbo hardly never checks his Wikipedia email or RC on Saturday morning). Very luckily the suicide note was submitted by an anon user so regular users were able to find out which college and computer lab the the submitter was writing from and this information was passed onto the police (the person was hospitalized and placed on suicide watch). But what if that person had created a login and there was´nt´t any developer around to find out the IP address? > Was it discussed in one of this remote places on a > talk page on the en wiki ? It sounds as if it was a > consensus essentially reached by you. Is there is reason why you are being so insulting? Have I personally offended you in some way? If I have then I´m sorry. This has been discussed before. Most recent discussion; On Wikipedia-l http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-February/008954.html On WikiEN-l http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001242.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001034.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001043.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001050.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001099.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001100.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001030.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001037.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001164.html And on WikiTech-l http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002625.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002655.html There was even more discussion on this in the Wikipedia-l archives even further in the past but I don´t feel like looking for it. > As far as I am concerned, I consider it a *very* > dangerous breach on people privacy and freedom. Since when has there been privacy on the Internet? > Through IPs, it is possible to find people real names, > and I strongly object to this made possible. No - this is incorrect. With personally assigned IPs you can tell which ISP the person is using and guess which city a person is writing from. Any information beyond that has can only be obtained from the ISP (who are not at all likely to give out that information). Information on public computers and school computer lab computers is much easier to obtain though. >I see not > why you - as a sysop - would be given the right to > know who I am. Again - why are you taking this so personally and taking it out on me? Am I some type of criminal? If I have done something so terribly wrong then please tell me about it so that I don´t do it again. >Sysop are there to help wikipedia, not > to have power on people. There is an important notion > in freedom, it is that everyone share the same rights. > And giving denonciation abilities over the physical > bodies of people while others lower their heads more > and more in fear of having the cops called on them for > any reason that a sysop would consider good enough to > launch an attack, is not exactly what I would call a > collaborative encyclopedia. What? So you think it is OK for people to make death threats and not have the cops called on them? That type of morality seems very odd to me. Just because people would have tools doesn´t necessarily mean they will use them in bad ways. Knives are very useful things to have, for example, but they can be deadly if they are placed in the hands of a psychopath. Do you think that some sysops are psychopaths that would abuse otherwise useful tools? Do you really have such a low opinion of me and other people who are also sysops? If we can´t trust our sysops then we might as well forget the project alltogether. >.... > The sysop role is to protect wikipedia against > unacceptable aggression. This is not the role of a > sysop to run after the people. Denonciation is not the > role of a sysop. Read again what a sysop is. Well I am an Admin and I battled the MIT vandal for 4 hours trying to protect Wikipedia. If I had the ability to view this person´s IP then I could have banned it very early on (several people got mad at me for not banning the IP - but I was as helpless as they were). And we are also talking about a death threat - don´t you think that it is important to report this to the police? Isn´t protecting the lives of our contributers also important? -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) WikiKarma The usual at [[March 25]]

3 2

RE: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats
by Poor, Edmund W 04 Apr '03

04 Apr '03

I'm with Mav on this one. The Wikipedia has no obligation to guarantee the anonymity of people who make violent threats. I daresay it's more obliged to protect the threatened party than the threatener. If not, then consider this my final resignation notice. I'm getting *really* sick of the nonsense. Ed Poor

5 5

Apology to Brion (was Re: Michael's threats)
by Daniel Mayer 03 Apr '03

03 Apr '03

On Wednesday 02 April 2003 08:39 pm, wikien-l-request(a)wikipedia.org wrote: > > You misunderstood Brion. He was referring to Michael's threats, not to > > determining the IP address (which he posted). > > Quite right. I'm not sure how mav made that interpretation, particularly > as I followed the statement WITH THE IP ADDRESS! > > -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) Whops! I´m very sorry about that Brion (like I said I´m pretty darn dense sometimes, er, often). I get posts in plain text format or I read the archives (which are also plain text) so at the end of many people´s emails there is a whole bunch of unreadable HTML insanity. So to cope I mentally block this out this. So when I saw: |The post: |http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=3DTalk:Crass&diff=3D793666&oldi= |d=3D793523 | |IP address from logs: |64.12.96.205 - - [01/Apr/2003:01:05:27 +0000] |"POST /w/wiki.phtml?title=3DTalk:Crass&action=3Dsubmit HTTP/1.1" 302 5 |"http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=3DTalk:Crass&action=3Dedit" |"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; AOL 7.0; Windows NT 5.0)" | |(Timestamps in logs are in UTC.) | |The e-mail address set in the account is Weezer76(a)aol.com (though it |should be pointed out we make no attempt to verify e-mail addresses, and |cannot guarantee that this is the actual address of the person or even |if it is a valid address; AOL should be able to look into it, I imagine |their web proxies keep logs which can be traced to particular users.) | |-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) | |--=-jKqeSzfRNXI6rxo1ZJ9/ |Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc |Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part | |-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- |Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) | |iD8DBQA+ie2QxVlOmwh1xjgRAvEEAJ4ibJCF0vRUw+hYXaySZ4m0f906rwCgi7ho |xzxdJ/5xBdEGJLfbmG7zDLc= |=WmTb |-----END PGP SIGNATURE----- | |--=-jKqeSzfRNXI6rxo1ZJ9/-- as a block of text I blocked that out thinking it was part of the normal HTML mess that follows most emails. I also took this sentence: |That's certainly highly inappropriate on Wikipedia as an /answer/ to my question ´´Could one of the developers get this creep's IP so that Zoe can call the cops?´´ Which I interpreted as; You did not think it was appropriate to give out that information. Please forgive my idiocy and rudeness for not reading your post carefully before responding (I did this while at work and with a deadline hanging over my head so that combinded with the nature of the post prompted me to send a quick reply - that still isn´t an excuse though). Again, I´m sorry. :-) -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) WikiKarma The usual at [[March 26]]

3 2

Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #249 - 12 msgs
by John Knouse 03 Apr '03

03 Apr '03

User 208.63.114.185 just extensively vandalized the "white oak" page and I just reverted it. He not only vandalized it once, but four successive times. This user is obviously a malicious jerk, and I strongly suggest banning him. -- John Knouse jaknouse(a)frognet.net www.jaknouse.athens.oh.us +1.740.589.4575 PO Box 1196, Athens, OH 45701-1196 Author - F. P. Jones English - Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. French - L'exprience est cette chose merveilleuse qui te permet de reconnatre une erreur quand tu es en train de la commettre . Quote supplied courtesy of Verba Volant at: http://www.logos.it/owa-l/press.rol_ml.verbavolant1?lang=en

5 4

Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: 208.63.114.185
by Tim Starling 03 Apr '03

03 Apr '03

>The other other thing we need, IMNSHO, is a pair of pages like >Special:Recentchanges and Special:Newpages, but that only show the ones >done by anon IP people. I'd find that mighty handy for keeping the patent >nonsense under control. I suggested something similar to that on Sourceforge quite some time ago, but I never heard anything more about it. -- Tim Starling _________________________________________________________________ MSN Instant Messenger now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_messenger.asp

1 0

Weezer and Michael banned (was: Michael's threats)
by Poor, Edmund W 03 Apr '03

03 Apr '03

Okay, it took me a day and a half to get around to it, but I locked both of Weezer's user accounts. Ed Poor P.S. I hate doing this. I guess no one else likes doing it, either, which is why I generally wind up being the one who runs the "update queries" to enforce the bans. P.P.S. Does a hangman walk home whistling, afterward? (Right now, I have a headache...)

1 0

New sysop, cprompt (was: Request for a whole bunch more sysops)
by Poor, Edmund W 03 Apr '03

03 Apr '03

At his request, I have made cprompt a sysop. Ed Poor

1 0

Request for a whole bunch more sysops
by Poor, Edmund W 03 Apr '03

03 Apr '03

"Let a thousand flowers bloom." We have to get rid of this mental distinction between "wooden puppets" and "real people". There is no Blue Fairy to wave her magic wand and reward Pinocchio for all his good deeds. Anyone who's been around long enough to leave a track record as a halfway savvy contributor with a genuine desire to write serious articles -- SHOULD, AS A MATTER OF COURSE, be able to use the advanced features like article deletion and IP blocking. Ed Poor

1 0

RE: 172--what happened
by Graham Burnett 03 Apr '03

03 Apr '03

> Message: 8 > Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] 172--what happened > Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 15:48:15 -0500 > From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com> > To: <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org> > Reply-To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org > > Stop grumbling and request sysop rights! They're yours for the asking, you know :-) > i'm flattered by your suggestion but wasn't really 'grumbling', just making the point that it's important that sysops are always SEEN to be above reproach in matters such as these, Cheers Graham (quercus robur)

1 0

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

WikiEN-l April 2003