On Wednesday 02 April 2003 08:39 pm, anthere wrote:
Oh ! And since when *exactly* was it a consensus that sysops would be allowed to see other people ip please ? Enlighten me on that, 'cause I have no memory of having ever since a consensus about that.
With the old version of the software that was in operation when I started yarns ago /everybody/ could view the IP of /anybody/ with mouse over text. The idea of allowing Admins have this long-lost ability arose for two reasons; 1) the so-called MIT-vandal was trashing en.wiki for 6 hours by creating dozens of different usernames 2) there was a suicide note placed on en.wiki that turned out to be the real thing. Luckily Jimbo just happened to find out about the MIT vandal and was able to find out the guys IPs and block them (it was on a Saturday morning and Jimbo hardly never checks his Wikipedia email or RC on Saturday morning). Very luckily the suicide note was submitted by an anon user so regular users were able to find out which college and computer lab the the submitter was writing from and this information was passed onto the police (the person was hospitalized and placed on suicide watch). But what if that person had created a login and there was´nt´t any developer around to find out the IP address?
Was it discussed in one of this remote places on a talk page on the en wiki ? It sounds as if it was a consensus essentially reached by you.
Is there is reason why you are being so insulting? Have I personally offended you in some way? If I have then I´m sorry.
This has been discussed before. Most recent discussion; On Wikipedia-l http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-February/008954.html On WikiEN-l http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001242.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001034.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001043.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001050.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001099.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001100.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001030.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001037.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001164.html And on WikiTech-l http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002625.html http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002655.html
There was even more discussion on this in the Wikipedia-l archives even further in the past but I don´t feel like looking for it.
As far as I am concerned, I consider it a *very* dangerous breach on people privacy and freedom.
Since when has there been privacy on the Internet?
Through IPs, it is possible to find people real names, and I strongly object to this made possible.
No - this is incorrect. With personally assigned IPs you can tell which ISP the person is using and guess which city a person is writing from. Any information beyond that has can only be obtained from the ISP (who are not at all likely to give out that information). Information on public computers and school computer lab computers is much easier to obtain though.
I see not why you - as a sysop - would be given the right to know who I am.
Again - why are you taking this so personally and taking it out on me? Am I some type of criminal? If I have done something so terribly wrong then please tell me about it so that I don´t do it again.
Sysop are there to help wikipedia, not to have power on people. There is an important notion in freedom, it is that everyone share the same rights. And giving denonciation abilities over the physical bodies of people while others lower their heads more and more in fear of having the cops called on them for any reason that a sysop would consider good enough to launch an attack, is not exactly what I would call a collaborative encyclopedia.
What? So you think it is OK for people to make death threats and not have the cops called on them? That type of morality seems very odd to me. Just because people would have tools doesn´t necessarily mean they will use them in bad ways. Knives are very useful things to have, for example, but they can be deadly if they are placed in the hands of a psychopath. Do you think that some sysops are psychopaths that would abuse otherwise useful tools? Do you really have such a low opinion of me and other people who are also sysops? If we can´t trust our sysops then we might as well forget the project alltogether.
....
The sysop role is to protect wikipedia against unacceptable aggression. This is not the role of a sysop to run after the people. Denonciation is not the role of a sysop. Read again what a sysop is.
Well I am an Admin and I battled the MIT vandal for 4 hours trying to protect Wikipedia. If I had the ability to view this person´s IP then I could have banned it very early on (several people got mad at me for not banning the IP - but I was as helpless as they were). And we are also talking about a death threat - don´t you think that it is important to report this to the police? Isn´t protecting the lives of our contributers also important?
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
WikiKarma The usual at [[March 25]]