[WikiEN-l] A modest proposal

[Casey Brown]

I agree with George.  River always talks about that.  Come to think of it,
what is an IP address?  All it does is identify you to the other computer.
*Whenever* you go on-line, or visit a website, you share your IP address.
Most websites don't even have a privacy policy, and this information is
available easily to the webmaster.

And all this crap about someone checking you when they didn't start by
checking you is crap, that's how the tool is designed and that is how it is
used.  If a Vandal has done lots of bad stuff, I can do a few things like
check his IPs, get all the edits that were made from that IP (logged-in or
not), or get all the usernames that a certain IP used.

It annoys me that a lot of the people who are commenting in this thread have
no idea what the extension looks like, let alone does.


On 8/13/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/13/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 8/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 13/08/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > That checkusers have the ability to spy on Wikipedians and checkuser
> > > > policy forbids other checkusers from revealing the fact that they
> did
> > > > so is a major problem with Wikipedia.
> > >
> > > Has it stopped you editing productively?
> > >
> > It absolutely has cut down my productive editing drastically.  Around
> > the time checkuser came out I started editing solely using TOR, so as
> > not to reveal my IP address.  I even made a script which searches all
> > the tor exit nodes to find one that isn't blocked by Wikipedia.  But
> > nowadays I rarely bother with this, and most of the tor exit nodes are
> > now blocked.  I set up a TCP tunnel through my friends house which is
> > where I make my edits while at home.  My edits are way down from the
> > pre-checkuser days, and this is due largely to the introduction of the
> > checkuser tool and the lack of good policies against abusing it.
>
> You have a right to use extra privacy technology if you want, but...
>
> Why?
>
> The worst that could happen from someone looking at my IP addresses is
> that they could determine from outside what tech companies I've
> consulted at over the last few years.
>
> My own company's IP addresses are public, and I publish valid contact
> info in WHOIS.
>
> I don't exactly shy away from hot button topics on-wiki.
>
> And in 20 years on the Internet, I've only had one incident where I
> was bothered in real life from something that started online.
>
> Everyone has their own comfort levels for privacy, but ...
> seriously... why so much effort for Wikipedia usage?
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>



-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

---
Note:  This e-mail address is used for mailing lists.  Personal emails sent
to
this address will probably get lost.