On 24/09/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@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.