On 13/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 13/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
A bit high-profile to be just 'how you present yourself to others on the project' - it will probably be the #1 Google hit for your name or pseudonym.
My Wikipedia user page is for "David Gerard", with or without quotes, but these days pretty much anyone wondering who this guy is will be wanting to know because of Wikipedia-related activities anyway. So if you have someone pissed off at you for Wikipedia activity and your user page is the first hit ... um, they've already read it.
Some of us use our names and/or pseudonyms at places other than Wikipaedia.
People keep going on and on about 'accountability'. Might some people be more inclined to reveal whatever personal info is enveloped by 'accountability' if the User namespace were hidden from Google and other search engines?
Possibly.
And if they did, would that not please all the pro-accountability people? (Disclaimer: I am not one of the pro-accountability people.)
But you know that the only way not to have something found that you put on the Internet is not to put it on the Internet.
- d.
Even that does not always work. For example, someone can go digging through your records offline, and then place them online.
Also, Google rankings really do matter in terms of page hits.