On 6/18/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/18/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/18/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Nevertheless, the pertinent issue is whether it is against policy to edit through open proxies.
I think the most pressing issue is not the policy thing, but that someone who wanted adminship was very keen to ensure that no one, not even the Foundation, could find out anything about them. Not even the location s/he edits from, or the ISP.
Perhaps we should focus on that question: do we want any kind of minimum accountability from admins, or do we not care who they are, or that one person might easily be controlling multiple admin accounts?
If we do want minimum accountability, how do we get it? If we don't want minimum accountability, are we willing to accept the consequences e.g. that it's currently easy for a banned or malicious user to get adminship, not just once, but multiple times?
I'd support requiring admins to provide their real identity to the foundation.
I'm not sure that would help, unless we're willing to employ investigators to make sure people have faxed the Foundation the right ID. And knowing that Admin A is called Bill Smith in real life doesn't tell us whether he's a banned or malicious user.
As I see it, what we need to start doing as a minimum, is stop promoting people who've spent a few months hitting revert every few seconds. That kind of profile tells us nothing about the person, and it's too easy to build up several accounts that way. And we need to ditch the "it's no big deal" thing. It's not for us to decide that it's "no big deal" when hurtful material deleted from Wikipedia ends up on Wikitruth, just because the material's not about us. The existence of Wikitruth is a direct consequence of the "it's no big deal" mentality.