[Foundation-l] Re： [Wikizh-l] About WM private policy

[Andrew Gray]

On 24 December 2010 10:20, HW <waihorace at yahoo.com.hk> wrote:

>> A recent discussion on zh Wikipedia is talking about the WMF private policy
>> which is on http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy . Some IP user
>> says that in the sentence "The Foundation does not require editors to register
>> with a project. Anyone can edit without logging in with a username, in which
>> case they will be identified by network IP address." , createpage is a edit,
>> so the wiki should not disable IP's createpage and allowed only user to
>> createpage.
>>
>> The question is: IS CREATEPAGE MUST NOT BE DISABLE TO IP USER?

The short answer is: disabling createpage for IPs does not conflict
with the privacy policy and is *allowed*. (zhwp can always decide to
turn it back on, though. This is also allowed!)

"Anyone can edit without logging in with a username, in which case
they will be identified by network IP address".

The intent of that line is really to say "if you edit without a
username, you will still be recorded" rather than to provide an
absolute right for all edits of any form to be IP-based.

Remember, "normal" editing isn't allowed all the time. If we say that
createpage should be allowed because it is an edit, and edits should
always be allowed, we could also argue that no pages should be
semi-protected (people are stopped from editing them without
usernames) or IPs blocked (those people are stopped from editing
without usernames). Createpage is just a version of the same idea...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk