On 6/18/07, Gracenotes wikigracenotes@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/18/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/18/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
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.
So long as usernames, passwords, e-mail addresses, HTTP headers, and other cybernetic elements are involved, you'll be surprised (or, possibly, not surprised) about the shockingly unscrupulous things that some people can do. Make sockpuppets, leak information, make themselves popular, play around with social structure. Things that can harm a community.
However, once such elements as phones and mail become involved, most 20-somethings living in their parents' basement *will* back off, even if they can handle faking an identity and getting away with it. Ethics can be more "cleanly" violated with a temporal stream of bytes than with pen, paper, and a voice. The law does not cover leaking admin-only-available information to rival websites. As far as I am aware, it does cover identify theft and pretending to be someone that you are not, _in real life_.
By seamlessly moving admin actions to a higher (and more much real) jurisdiction than that of the Foundation, by requiring personal information, we can preventatively protect Wikipedia against those that would seek to harm it. Just my opinion, though.
I wouldn't be opposed in principle to having admins identify themselves to the Foundation, so long as there were safeguards in place about how the information would be handled e.g. that it wouldn't be left on a computer that anyone had access to; wouldn't be left in an unlocked filing cabinet, and so on -- and the thing about this being a largely volunteer organization is that I'm not sure we could ever get convincing enough assurances about that.