On Wednesday 02 April 2003 08:39 pm, anthere wrote:
Oh ! And since when *exactly* was it a consensus that sysops would be allowed to see other people ip please ? Enlighten me on that, 'cause I have no memory of having ever since a consensus about that.
With the old version of the software that was in operation when I started yarns ago /everybody/ could view the IP of /anybody/ with mouse over text. The idea of allowing Admins have this long-lost ability arose for two reasons; 1) the so-called MIT-vandal was trashing en.wiki for 6 hours by creating dozens of different usernames 2) there was a suicide note placed on en.wiki that turned out to be the real thing. Luckily Jimbo just happened to find out about the MIT vandal and was able to find out the guys IPs and block them (it was on a Saturday morning and Jimbo hardly never checks his Wikipedia email or RC on Saturday morning). Very luckily the suicide note was submitted by an anon user so regular users were able to find out which college and computer lab the the submitter was writing from and this information was passed onto the police (the person was hospitalized and placed on suicide watch). But what if that person had created a login and there was´nt´t any developer around to find out the IP address?
Was it discussed in one of this remote places on a talk page on the en wiki ? It sounds as if it was a consensus essentially reached by you.
Is there is reason why you are being so insulting? Have I personally offended you in some way? If I have then I´m sorry.
This has been discussed before. Most recent discussion; On Wikipedia-l http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-February/008954.html On WikiEN-l http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001242.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001034.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001043.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001050.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001099.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001100.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001030.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001037.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001164.html And on WikiTech-l http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002625.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002655.html
There was even more discussion on this in the Wikipedia-l archives even further in the past but I don´t feel like looking for it.
As far as I am concerned, I consider it a *very* dangerous breach on people privacy and freedom.
Since when has there been privacy on the Internet?
Through IPs, it is possible to find people real names, and I strongly object to this made possible.
No - this is incorrect. With personally assigned IPs you can tell which ISP the person is using and guess which city a person is writing from. Any information beyond that has can only be obtained from the ISP (who are not at all likely to give out that information). Information on public computers and school computer lab computers is much easier to obtain though.
I see not why you - as a sysop - would be given the right to know who I am.
Again - why are you taking this so personally and taking it out on me? Am I some type of criminal? If I have done something so terribly wrong then please tell me about it so that I don´t do it again.
Sysop are there to help wikipedia, not to have power on people. There is an important notion in freedom, it is that everyone share the same rights. And giving denonciation abilities over the physical bodies of people while others lower their heads more and more in fear of having the cops called on them for any reason that a sysop would consider good enough to launch an attack, is not exactly what I would call a collaborative encyclopedia.
What? So you think it is OK for people to make death threats and not have the cops called on them? That type of morality seems very odd to me. Just because people would have tools doesn´t necessarily mean they will use them in bad ways. Knives are very useful things to have, for example, but they can be deadly if they are placed in the hands of a psychopath. Do you think that some sysops are psychopaths that would abuse otherwise useful tools? Do you really have such a low opinion of me and other people who are also sysops? If we can´t trust our sysops then we might as well forget the project alltogether.
....
The sysop role is to protect wikipedia against unacceptable aggression. This is not the role of a sysop to run after the people. Denonciation is not the role of a sysop. Read again what a sysop is.
Well I am an Admin and I battled the MIT vandal for 4 hours trying to protect Wikipedia. If I had the ability to view this person´s IP then I could have banned it very early on (several people got mad at me for not banning the IP - but I was as helpless as they were). And we are also talking about a death threat - don´t you think that it is important to report this to the police? Isn´t protecting the lives of our contributers also important?
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
WikiKarma The usual at [[March 25]]
First Mav, would you forgive me for not enveloping my opinion in honey enough. I seem to remember that nearly a year ago you explained to me, your personality type made you go to the point without unnecessarily circonvolutions. I remember you told me I should not feel hurt if you sounded a little bit short sometimes, as it meant no agressivity from you toward others, but rather the deep need to go to the point quickly and efficiently. I tought it would be best maybe for us to understand each other if I were doing just the same when talking to you, rather than losing myself in complicated explanations as I unfortunately quite often do.
--- Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday 02 April 2003 08:39 pm, anthere wrote:
Oh ! And since when *exactly* was it a consensus
that
sysops would be allowed to see other people ip
please
? Enlighten me on that, 'cause I have no memory of having ever since a consensus about that.
With the old version of the software that was in operation when I started yarns ago /everybody/ could view the IP of /anybody/ with mouse over text.
You might remember that until november 2002, so not a very long time ago, the french wikipedia was still using the old software phase I, as most of the international wikipedias, when english wikipedia was already benefitting of the wonderful new features of phase III. So sure enough, I remember quite well this time when IPs were displayed. Though I also remember it is not ips that were displayed on my browser for recent changes, but some mi-textual mi-numbered complicated address which in fact allowed very well to distinguish who was posting from where (city).
Which is why the "old" collegues on the french wikipedia know very well from where I am from, and which type of line I have. At that time, in my city, when I took the adsl, we were precisely 58 users. For the adsl just arrived then (and there is only one provider).
I also remember quite well that I was one of the 3 first sysops on the french wiki, and that at that time, a deletion made by a sysop was final. I also remember we could ourselves ban ips (so...user ips as well), action which was not possible by any others than Jimbo and Larry (if I understood well) on the english wiki in phase I.
And I found that it could possibly lead to abuse :-) However, every user could see everyone ips. Not only sysop.
The idea of allowing Admins have this long-lost ability arose for two reasons;
So, that's not a long lost ability 1. the ability of seing ips adress was global, not sysop restricted 2. no sysop in phase I
1) the so-called MIT-vandal was trashing
en.wiki for 6 hours by creating dozens of different usernames 2) there was a suicide note placed on en.wiki that turned out to be the real thing. Luckily Jimbo just happened to find out about the MIT vandal and was able to find out the guys IPs and block them (it was on a Saturday morning and Jimbo hardly never checks his Wikipedia email or RC on Saturday morning). Very luckily the suicide note was submitted by an anon user so regular users were able to find out which college and computer lab the the submitter was writing from and this information was passed onto the police (the person was hospitalized and placed on suicide watch). But what if that person had created a login and there was�nt�t any developer around to find out the IP address?
yes, yes, yes But again, 2 unique cases are not a reason for generalization of such a controversial process.
Clearly the problem is not that sysop can or cannot see an ip, the problem is there are not enough "developers" with the ability to look in the database and answer a very urgent request such as heavy vandalism and suicid issues.
Was it discussed in one of this remote places on a talk page on the en wiki ? It sounds as if it was
a
consensus essentially reached by you.
Is there is reason why you are being so insulting? Have I personally offended you in some way? If I have then I�m sorry.
I was not insulting. I was going to the point. I saw nowhere there was a consensus about this.
This has been discussed before. Most recent discussion; On Wikipedia-l
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-February/008954.html
One message on the main wiki. A comment, and a question. Thats all.
On WikiEN-l
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001242.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001034.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001043.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001050.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001099.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001100.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001030.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001037.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001164.html
English list And only about extrem cases
And on WikiTech-l
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002625.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002655.html
If seeing user ips is a consensus, I am *sure* tech will find a technical way to make that possible But deciding whether sysop could see user ips or not, is not a tech issue, it is a global issue. So, the tech list is not the place to discuss it.
There was even more discussion on this in the Wikipedia-l archives even further in the past but I don�t feel like looking for it.
hum... I have no memories about these discussions Maybe someone could help us here ?
As far as I am concerned, I consider it a *very* dangerous breach on people privacy and freedom.
Since when has there been privacy on the Internet?
Since when has there been a wonderful comprehensive cooperative encyclopedia built on consensus on the Internet ?
Through IPs, it is possible to find people real
names,
and I strongly object to this made possible.
No - this is incorrect. With personally assigned IPs you can tell which ISP the person is using and guess which city a person is writing from. Any information beyond that has can only be obtained from the ISP (who are not at all likely to give out that information). Information on public computers and school computer lab computers is much easier to obtain though.
Hum...surprising then that you ever found out that poor depressed student.
And your belief upon ISP ethics is maybe based on american ISPs. Not on other countries ISPs.
I see not why you - as a sysop - would be given the right to know who I am.
Again - why are you taking this so personally and taking it out on me? Am I some type of criminal? If I have done something so terribly wrong then please tell me about it so that I don�t do it again.
Apology. I rephrase then. I don't see why any sysop, on any wikipedias, would be given the right to know who any non-sysops are.
Sysop are there to help wikipedia, not to have power on people. There is an important
notion
in freedom, it is that everyone share the same
rights.
And giving denonciation abilities over the
physical
bodies of people while others lower their heads
more
and more in fear of having the cops called on them
for
any reason that a sysop would consider good enough
to
launch an attack, is not exactly what I would call
a
collaborative encyclopedia.
What? So you think it is OK for people to make death threats and not have the cops called on them?
I think you understood what I meant there, as you mentionned in your private post.
That type of morality seems
very odd to me.
Hum...this is the second time that a wikipedian appears to have doubts on my morality in 24 hours. I *think* it would be nice between wikipedians to avoid this type of statement and recognise we are different, and might actually not share the same morality. Moral rules are personal issues.
Just because
people would have tools doesn�t necessarily mean they will use them in bad ways. Knives are very useful things to have, for example, but they can be deadly if they are placed in the hands of a psychopath. Do you think that some sysops are psychopaths that would abuse otherwise useful tools? Do you really have such a low opinion of me and other people who are also sysops? If we can�t trust our sysops then we might as well forget the project alltogether.
By default, I trust users and sysops and anoms just the same. If we can't trust users and anom, then we might as well prevent them from editing alltogether.
Besides, long term users or sysops on a minor wikipedia are obviously not trusted on the big wikipedia. So, allow me to take this "let's trust our sysops" with precautions.
The sysop role is to protect wikipedia against unacceptable aggression. This is not the role of a sysop to run after the people. Denonciation is not
the
role of a sysop. Read again what a sysop is.
Well I am an Admin and I battled the MIT vandal for 4 hours trying to protect Wikipedia. If I had the ability to view this person�s IP then I could have banned it very early on (several people got mad at me for not banning the IP
- but I was as helpless as they were). And we are
also talking about a death threat - don�t you think that it is important to report this to the police?
Isn�t protecting the lives of our contributers also important?
Yup ! So let's not display unnessarily information about them to the whole world !
You know...there are really some crazy people on the net !
Hum...to be constructive...would it be possible to ban *anyone* - doing anything that could be thought wrong - (I mean, sysops included :-)) After all, we could generalize the agreement system for any banning (discussions for controversial banning, immediate banning for obvious case of vandalism)
And I am sure there could a tech way to ban a user without displaying his ip to the sysop.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Have a very good evening Mav. I hope you will not think I was insulting you here. I really don't mean to. So we can both go on disagreeing.
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com
On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 09:51, Anthere wrote:
And I am sure there could a tech way to ban a user without displaying his ip to the sysop.
Hmm, there's two ways to go on this:
* Banning user _names_. That could be done easily without showing IPs anywhere, but (controversy on whether it's appropriate to do aside) it's not a complete solution, as the person can simply create a second account.
* Banning the _IP_ last used by a user. This could be done with some slight changes to the database, storing a 'last visted from IP address' in the user table. Access to the field could be restricted so sysops couldn't see it.
However, we would have to show it in the ban list if it were actually banned. This would make a quick ban/unban an easy way to find out anyone's IP address.
Hiding the address even in the ban list would be theoretically possible, but a very bad idea. Maybe not quite as immoral as some things that some governments do, but I don't think it's very nice. :) Basically, this can block off a whole group of people using dynamic IPs or a proxy server, without any advance warning as to what area of the world might be affected.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)