Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org> wrote:
So, there were some questions about using the real
names functionality
added for Wikimedia 1.3. They seem to have been
rolled out for
Wiktionary and other projects without a lot of
problem.
The problems with this aren't likely to be seen in the
first few days of it going live, and particularly not
on wikis that suffer far less vandalism that the
larger Wikipedias. The issue of irreversible vandalism
has still not been addressed. This feature allows any
user to claim the name of someone else and to insert
that into the meta data of any article they edit, or
have edited in the past. See
http://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Angela&action=dublinco…
for example, which claims
<dc:creator>Evan Prodromou</dc:creator>
It claims this because I set my real name to be "Evan
Prodromou".
No one but a developer can revert this. You are listed
as the most recent editor of that page and you can't
do anything about it.
I could have done this even if I had been blocked from
editing, meaning that not only is the vandalism
unrevertable, but also the vandal doing this is
unblockable.
Until this is made reversible in the same way normal
edits are, I think this feature has a high chance of
being misused, particularly on the larger wikis where
retaliatory vandalism against sysops is common.
Angela.
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