[Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

[Lodewijk]

Just to give this a bit of context, without taking any position:

On the Dutch Wikipedia, you can get blocked for sockpuppet abuse. This block
has an infinite length because the opinion of the community has been that
sockpuppet abuse is unacceptable. This has happened to Huib - it was
concluded he abused sockpuppetse and he got blocked for infinite duration.
This /besides/ a finite block by the arbitration committee for other
issues.

Quite a while ago, there were some cases where people did get blocked, but
they wanted to change for the better. Individuals provided these people the
option to send them a physical letter with identification. The idea behind
this was mainly (as I understood) that it would give a significant threshold
to the person requesting to get unblocked, but it would also ensure it would
only happen once. Of course this physical letter with a promise to never do
it again would not be legally enforced in the end. If you get caught once
again after that, there will be no extra options any more to get unblocked.

So let it at least be clear that there is no obligation whatsoever to send
your identity to someone. It is the main route to get unblocked after an
infinite block for sockpuppet abuse. From what I can tell, it is quite clear
that the letter and identification goes to an individual. The individual
usually taking care of this (but it could be any trusted user) is a former
board member of Wikimedia Nederland, but currently holds no position. He is
active on OTRS too, but it was explicitely chosen to make this a snail mail
process.

Just to state it once again: I do not intend to take *any* position on this,
but rather to explain the facts as I understand them.

With kind regards,
Lodewijk

2011/7/9 Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki at gmail.com>

> David Gerard, 09/07/2011 12:46:
> > On 9 July 2011 11:02, Béria Lima<berialima at gmail.com>  wrote:
> >
> >> The WMF is not responsible for private mails you send to anyone. The
> only
> >> people who "officialy" can receive a copy of any ID you may have are
> >> Philippe<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Philippe_%28WMF%29>,
> >> Christine<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Christine_%28WMF%29>or
> >> Megan<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mhernandez>. If you send a
> copy
> >> of your ID to anyone else is not WMF problem.
> >
> >
> > I do think it is absolutely a problem when people on a WMF-hosted wiki
> > are using an unofficial mechanism to demand copies of people's
> > passports.
>
> While Beria is technically right (probably), I agree with David.
>
> Gerard Meijssen, 09/07/2011 10:06:
>  > If you do not trust the person involved, you are crazy to send him a
> copy of
>  > your passport. This is a common sense. This policy as it obviously
> works..
>  > what is really your issue ?
>  >
>  > Do we really need a theoretical approach that only can bring us less
>  > functionality ? I do not think so.
>
> Gerard is right as well.
> This system makes sense and could work as an extension of those
> occasions when a trusted user says "oh, but I met both User:Whatever and
> User:AllegedSockpuppet in person at that wikimeetup, I grant you they
> really exist!", but probably there shouldn't be any "official" page,
> policy or guideline suggesting people to send private data like Huib
> described.
>
> Nemo
>
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