Some key points that come to mind: - It's not easy to get the ID of a user with a login name - Wikipedia actively discourages off topic discussion. Anyone asking for anyone's personal details or providing an email address would generally be told off, whatever the context. - Any nasty person would leave a huge electronic trail behind them publicly visible to basically anyone.
Steve
On 2/6/06, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/6/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
What can we practically do that would reduce any real risk? (I exclude
fighting among ourselves in a destructive way)
Block anyone we see actively using talk pages to groom minors I guess. Personally I've never seen evidence of this and I can't imagine that any pedo would be dumb enough to do it in a public forum like that. I suppose there is some marginal risk that a pervert will meet a child through Wikipedia just by virtue of the fact that we are so highly trafficked and we permit user communication through our site, but there isn't much else we can do about it short of shutting the whole thing down. It's not our responsibility to raise people's children, and parents should know what their kids are doing on the internet.