[Foundation-l] New draft of privacy policy

[David Gerard]

2008/6/15 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
> 2008/6/15 geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
>> 2008/6/15 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:

>>> Someone should answer Gregory's question first: "Why do we grant the
>>> equivalent of checkuser rights over a majority of our contributors to
>>> every person on the planet?"
>>> "Historical accident" was the only thing I could come up with.

>> It's hard not to. If we were to say assign a random number to every IP
>> then by now someone would have published a partial list of number to
>> IP relationships. If the number assigns keep changing well we know the
>> problems that we had with AOL back in the day.

> You can do it with a hash. Each hash could be mapped to from multiple
> IP addresses, so it's impossible to work out the IP address from the
> hash. Of course, you then have the risk of collisions, but that can be
> kept fairly small, and isn't the end of the world - we get collisions
> anyway when multiple people use one IP address.
> That said, I don't have a problem with publishing IP addresses of anon
> users - it's made clear to them that that will happen, and they have
> the option of registering if they have want to keep it hidden. The
> risk from having your IP address publicly known is really pretty
> minimal (mine is 82.152.59.121 (or 122 if you want my actual computer,
> rather the router, but the router is what's reported to the outside
> world) - do with it what you will!!).


It's also entirely unclear how this proposal would actually cause a
better encyclopedia, dictionary, media archive, quote database etc. to
be written. You know, the stuff we're supposed to be here for. Project
first, then community.


- d.