If I understood a previous recent letter here, then Admins and Sysops cannot find out a user's ISP when they are logged in. Is this correct?
If so, this strikes me as a good idea. On occasion I do some travelling, and I sometimes access Wikipedia while on the road. Other contributors do a substantial of travelling. We would greatly appreciate the privacy afforded by a block on reading ISP's when logged in. It would probably be unwise to allow Sysops and Admins to track where people travel, for reasons of privacy. (As I understand it, following one's ISP effectively allows one to know approximately which city or town is logged in, in many cases.)
It does not matter at all for me today, as I decided to take another three-day Wiki-break. (We'd have fewer edit wars if more people took such breaks.) Nonetheless the principle is worth asking about. Is my understanding correct?
Robert (RK)
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Yes, you have it right, although we are having discussions about granting some access due to problems with sockpuppets. It was suggested that some administrators have this power as developers often have other things to do and inquiries to developers are sometimes not answered as soon as we might like.
Fred
From: Robert rkscience100@yahoo.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 09:28:01 -0800 (PST) To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] ISPs are private when logged in? Good idea
If I understood a previous recent letter here, then Admins and Sysops cannot find out a user's ISP when they are logged in. Is this correct?
If so, this strikes me as a good idea. On occasion I do some travelling, and I sometimes access Wikipedia while on the road. Other contributors do a substantial of travelling. We would greatly appreciate the privacy afforded by a block on reading ISP's when logged in. It would probably be unwise to allow Sysops and Admins to track where people travel, for reasons of privacy. (As I understand it, following one's ISP effectively allows one to know approximately which city or town is logged in, in many cases.)
It does not matter at all for me today, as I decided to take another three-day Wiki-break. (We'd have fewer edit wars if more people took such breaks.) Nonetheless the principle is worth asking about. Is my understanding correct?
Robert (RK)
Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 09:28:01 -0800 (PST), Robert rkscience100@yahoo.com wrote:
If I understood a previous recent letter here, then Admins and Sysops cannot find out a user's ISP when they are logged in. Is this correct?
Replace "ISP" ("Internet Service Provider") with "IP" (short for "IP address", the unique identifier every computer gives out during all sorts of requests online) and yes, this is correct. It is one of the benefits listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account?
As noted there and, more expansively, at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Draft_privacy_policy (see the sections headed "Identification of an author" and "Private logging"), your IP address is still recorded for a short period *as it is by almost any web-site you visit*, and in particular circumstances may be retrieved by developers, but it is most definitely *not* available through the wiki software itself, even if the user has "sysop" (aka "admin") privileges.