On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 12:21 PM, Alan Liefting <alieft...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> Rather than ensuring privacy of editors the WMF should DEMAND that editors > make their identity known. I am sure that this may cure some of the many > problems that we are seeing on WMF projects. > > Having said all that there is of course a problem in some of the dodgy > countries where speaking out gets you killed. It has happened with > journalists, bloggers, activists etc. It could (has?) happen with WMF > project editors. I can't think about specifics but I will say that on a personal (as well as staff) level I'd be against mandating public identity for many reasons. The biggest one, however, is indeed the safety side. I also have edited under my real name since the start (my username isn't but I've said my full name and identifying info on my user page since I started getting more active) but I personally know far too many editors who have been dramatically harassed, threatened and abused by both private and public (governmental) individuals because of their on-wiki activities. Some of those editors did stupid things (but still didn't deserve the reaction they got in my mind) but most of them wrote good to incredibly good content that was well sourced and, as far as I could tell, completely correct and important to have in the public sphere. We need to be able to allow folks to edit in controversial areas (and depending on where you are the definition of controversial can be very different) with as little fear of retaliation as possible. There are some countries and topics where editors take an inherent risk upon themselves by editing (and they know that) but I want to keep that risk as limited as possible. James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation @jamesofur _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
