Dan Keshet wrote:
many times, but could not enforce consistently because he's coming in through a popular dial-up service.
My main concern here is that we ought to be careful that we don't unfairly assume that anyone coming through sympatico is the same person. Can we more completely characterize "bad 142" so that we're generally aware of strengths and weaknesses?
If "bad 142" is reading this, and is offended, then I recommend that he or she get an anonymous email account -- a throwaway hotmail account would do -- and come here and chat about it. Educate us.
I can really understand concern for privacy and anonymity. I understand it a lot less in this context than in most, because what we're doing is as uncontroversial as stamp collecting in most jurisdictions. But if people want privacy and anonymity, hey, that's great with me, because I support those things generally.
But this idea "I won't log in because I don't want to be tracked" doesn't really make sense. From the viewpoint of privacy and anonymity, it's exactly backwards. It's a real pain in the neck for anyone, even me, to figure out an ip number for a logged in user, by the design of the software.
The only reason I can think of for someone like this to not want to log in is a reason that I don't think we can say is valid: the desire to make independent edits that are not watched by the community. Someone with a bad mission, either vandalism or pov, may want to pop in numerous times and make edits without anyone realizing it's the same person again.
--Jimbo