[WikiEN-l] Assume bad faith, for banned users.

[Wily D]

On 11/21/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:15:03 -0500, "Wily D"
> <wilydoppelganger at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I'm not sure that anyone's suggesting abuse is *routine*.  I will
> >suggest it's most likely "fairly" to "quite" scarce, although I cannot
> >verify this myself.  All that you or I know is that it can and has
> >happened, and almost certainly will in the future at some point or
> >another.  Reviewing the list I don't see any indication that anyone
> >believes it's "routine".  Did I miss something?
>
> I must be missing something. Why are we even having this discussion
> if there is no evidence of present abuse, and no contention of
> likely abuse outside of the normal range of human fallibility?
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
You objected to an offhand comment about illegal checkusers being the
only way to detect nonabusive socks, saying checkusers could never be
illegal, and there was some discussion about whether this is true,
because it seems that it may be possible, given the terms and
conditions of use and our checkuser policy (at least, a violation of
contract).

You also object to the casual assumption that checkuser abuse is
routine, although I'm not sure anyone made that assumption.  Since the
comment was directed at me, I inferred you meant *I* assumed this, so
I felt it was probably appropriate to clarify that I don't think
checkuser abuse is routine, I would guess that's its quite uncommon,
although obviously I have no knowledge of the situation beyond my
ability to say that checkuser has never been used abusively towards
myself.

It is a seperate interesting question: "How often do we expect
checkuser abuse?" but I really have no answers to that.

Cheers
WilyD