[WikiEN-l] Editing with open proxies

[Steve Summit]

Matthew Brown wrote:
> On 6/18/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> This shows an astonishing ignorance of the effects that a person's
>> comments can have on another.
>
> It doesn't make jayjg's statement any less true, however.  Regardless
> of whether he should have acted as he did, there is no breach of
> privacy involved, unless you extend the definition of privacy to go
> beyond real-world identities, which I think is a bit of a stretch.

If you define "privacy" narrowly enough, no, I suppose you could
argue there was no "breach".  But there certainly *was* a breach
of confidentiality.

It's simple: checkuser is a special tool, that most people don't
have access to, that reveals information otherwise secret.  Those
with checkuser ability should not be revealing that information --
any of it -- willy-nilly.

The piece of information "User:CharlotteWebb has edited using
TOR" was formerly secret.  Revealing it was clearly -- as the
length of this mailing list thread shows! -- not an innocuous
act.  You could claim without too much exaggeration that it's
done as much damage to CharlotteWebb's persona as do the vicious
"outing" practices of those other Wikipedia satellite websites we
don't mention.

Don't say, "Revealing that CharlotteWebb used TOR reveals
nothing about her real identity".  Don't say, "Revealing that
she used TOR is okay since it's not a damaging revelation."
Those statements are both quite beside the point.  Pledging not
to reveal confidential information means that you won't reveal
the confidential information, period.  It does not mean that
you'll selectively reveal bits of it if you can concoct an
argument saying it's "okay".

(Finally, don't say "Revealing the information wouldn't have been
so damaging if only CharlotteWebb had reacted differently".
That's blaming the victim.)