[WikiEN-l] Ban notices, Wikipedia, and search engines.

[Armed Blowfish]

On 24/09/2007, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's just someone impersonating an admin, it happens all the time.
> Thanks for bringing it to my attention, I'll get it sorted (In the
> interests of transparency, I'll get someone else to delete it). An
> "outsider" being impersonated on Wikipedia is pretty unlikely. There
> are two parts to a risk assessment. First you work out what could go
> wrong and how damaging it would be (you've done that) and then you
> have to work out how likely it is. You seem to have missed that part.
> Losing the ability to search the user space (something tells me
> MediaWiki's search will never be as good as Google's) is a significant
> cost to prevent a very unlikely risk.

So, if Mr. Y were to desire to harm the reputation of Mr. X, all Y would
have to do is create an account on WP is X's name, and proceed to
create as drastic an incident as possible... make sure to get it all over
AN/I, RfC and RfAr, and end up with a banned user notice on User:X.
Now X, noticing the WP page on him after his application to his dream
job is denied because of it, proceeds to ask WP to take it down and
replace it with a notice saying WP mistook his identity, and the banned
user is actually someone else.  WP says no, he deserved to be
banned, and tells him to prove that User:X is someone else.  He can't,
of course.  Mr. X then proceeds to sue WP in the UK, and wins because
it is clear the defamatory material referred to him, WP did not take
reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of the defamatory material
(i.e. confirm the identity of the banned user), and failed to take it down
upon request, clearly failing the criteria for innocent dissemination.

Perhaps all users should be prohibited from contributing under or
revealing their real names on WP, to prevent this sort of thing from
happening.  Those who have already done so could have their
usernames changed and their names removed from WP.