[Foundation-l] Data retention

[Anthony]

On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 3:28 PM, Alex <mrzmanwiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> Anthony wrote:
> >
> > I don't see why checkuser can't be watered down, to simply provide a
> > "YES/NO" answer, and that two or three WMF employees can have access to
> the
> > actual IP addresses (with all but one of those employees only having it
> for
> > backup/emergency purposes).  Unlike in the past, blocking of a username
> > automatically blocks the IP address, even if the user doesn't try to make
> > any edits, so isn't checkuser basically just for investigations of
> ongoing
> > abuse which can wait a few days for a WMF person to get around to it?
> >
>
> It would only work in the most obvious of sock puppetry cases, and could
> still be wrong.
>

At least it'd be a quick first check to spare the WMF person from handling
those obvious cases.  But see below...

What if we can't wait a few days to get the IP address, say a user using
> proxies or dynamic IPs to use avoid autoblocks, see Spacebirdy's
> userrights/globalblock/global account logs on meta for an example, an
> autoblock would only affect one wiki, then they go to another one to
> create more accounts. Or what if they have other accounts that they
> registered, but haven't used yet?
>

Most of those problems could be solved without revealing the actual IP
address (you don't need to know an IP address to be able to block it), but
I'm going to concede that I haven't thought through all the possible
ramifications to be sure that there wouldn't be any holes left open.

I plead no contest.  Thanks for pointing out the naiveté of my simple
solution.