On 12/11/07, Neil Harris <usenet(a)tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
I have a feeling this might have been done to make
non-logged-in pages
cacheable in an attempt to improve performance, rather than out of any
privacy concerns.
I don't understand how this would affect cacheability at all? It just
affects what's displayed in the page history.
It's true that the principles like "use real names" have fallen by the
wayside over the past few years. It would be interesting to see them
revived in a fashion like this. It's not very difficult to get the IP
address of a typical user, anyway . . . you just need to get them to
follow one link (say, by planting a dubious link on an article they're
watching that they have to follow to see if it's legit) to get a
shortlist.
I doubt anyone's going to remember anything from 2003, unless Magnus
does. Maybe it's best to hunt through archives to see if this was
discussed. (Although if it was just Magnus making the change in his
new software, maybe nobody did discuss it.)