On 24/05/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
On May 24, 2006, at 9:40 AM, Bryan Derksen wrote:
As someone who regularly polices RFP, I am pretty strict on what I semiprotect and what I don't. But I must say, that rigor aside, I very much like the idea of semiprotecting living people's articles as a matter of course. Accountability skyrockets when someone has to register for an account to edit.
Only if the editor doesn't actually understand the system. If the guy who messed with the Siegenthaler article had logged in with a disposable account before he'd done it rather than making an "anonymous" edit that permanently recorded his IP address for all the world to see he'd have got away with it scott-free rather than losing his job.
We still could have uncovered his IP address with CheckUser, no?
Only if he'd edited recently. IP-to-editor links are discarded after a period of time - [[m:CheckUser Policy]] says one week, but I vaguely recall this is the absolute minimum and in practice the information is often left for longer. It's pushing it to hope it would still be there three months later, though...