On 13 June 2012 14:09, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
<snipping FT2's comment>
Why is "improving anonymity" a goal? Our privacy policy governs the disclosure of non-public information, but the IP addresses of editors without an account have always been effectively public. Are IP editors clamoring for more privacy? Is masking IPv6 addresses more important than the uses to which IP addresses are currently put? Is masking a better way to solve the problem of potentially more identifiable information in IPv6 than, say, a more prominent disclosure and disclaimer? Would masking the IP addresses only for logged-out users be a worthwhile change, given the ease of registering an account? Would they remain masked in the histories of project dumps? There are a lot of questions to answer here before it's reasonable to start suggesting changes be made, and these are only some.
I believe that FT2 is saying that we should seriously consider masking the *publicly viewable* IPv6 addresses. The only reason that we publish the IP addresses of any logged-out user is for attribution purposes, although some use it for other reasons (both positive and nefarious). Quite honestly, it doesn't matter what information is put in place in the publicly viewable logs, provided it's consistent.
Risker