Grants talk:IdeaLab/Anonymity - Aliases

Strongly contrary

For users of Wikimedia projects, it is very important to know the name of who has modified a page for a lot of reasons:

• first of all, to speed up revision process; in fact, because I contribute to Wikipedia since many years, I know who is a trustworthy user, so I can concentrate in doubtful contributions that come from users I do not know;
• secondly, it is is important to identify a user in order to have a better communication; for example, it happened that I have to talk with someone that I know has a good knowledge of a particular subject that I know too, so for this reason we can talk together freely; instead if I do not know it, we need to spend more time talking before to realize we do not need to explain things we know yet;
• thirdly, users that are renowned to make good contributions, can receive thanks and recognition (e.g. barnstars) from other users and in this simple manner they will be more motivated to contribute.

For all these reasons, I think anonymity is not a solution, instead it could be a great problem and could lead to an increase of vandalism. --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 03:18, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I disagree with you. Anonymity is a pretty basic idea here. Anybody can edit, even as a number. And I think that people being afraid of their government (or others) is probably a real problem.

1. Knowing who is a "trustworthy" user can lead to sort of an "Old boys' network". Doesn't "concentrate in doubtful contributions that come from users I do not know" sound biased?

2. You can communicate on an article's talk page. If someone doesn't want to talk personally with you, they shouldn't have to.

3. I personally have thrown a couple of barnstars away, I sort of find them insulting. I don't do that little heart, either. If I don't care, why should you have the right to bother me?

I check out "must register" conversations, I have not seen anyone show that IPs have a higher porpotion of serious vandalism than accounts, my experience is the opposite. I just got 4 good ones yesterday, look at all the good numbers on this article. Thank you. Sammy D III (talk) 20:07, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Strongly in favour

Due to current policy, we shun many potential contributors who share Wikimedian values, such as Tor users, activists in repressive countries or otherwise vulnerable groups. This unintentional, yet selective exclusion could also strenghten structural bias in Wikimedia projects. I suggest we look into ideas such as Blind signature or similar crypto schemes to preserve users' privacy. NMaia (talk) 03:36, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry

You've a sound theory here, but it fails to address the matter vis-a-vis our sockpuppetry policy, which may actually cause more accounts and more hostility on site. Moreover, if it were to come out that multiple aliases were used, a clever person could track the given names and establish a pattern. How would compensate for this issue? TomStar81 (talk) 05:21, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Could you set something up that makes socks under control? If they didn't edit the same article (or topic) they wouldn't really be pretending to be two people. If you could make a secret sock-making account couldn't you keep track of where the socks edit? Sammy D III (talk) 20:41, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Deny recognition

See w:en:Wikipedia:Deny recognition --AVRS (talk) 18:22, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Oppositions

• Ok, so I would be able to vote 10 times in a vote and for all non-admins it would look like 10 different people voted? And if I see a wrong edit I would not be able to write to that edit performing user but will have to either write on talk page but never know if that person has answered me or some other (as the person will have new alias by then) or just editwar without better choice. Task forces/Wikiprojects and other things will be impossible. Sorry I looks like a thing which will ruin the collaborative part of Wikimedia movement. --Base (talk) 15:56, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Nothing stops malicious actors from using proxies to do this now (some systems more geared for this than others). Is possible to do a dynamic, hash-based and cross-checkable identification system that still facilitates communication and collaboration. This would require not only a complete rewrite of the code-base (one increasingly burdened with technical debt), but a complete ideological and architectural overhaul of the entire system; technical and social. Entirely possible. Not at all very practical, however. --dsprc (talk) 02:35, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
• The contrary should be done: ban edits by non-registered users. I see many changes on topics by dial-up IP addresses which by the changes they make come quite obviously an interested parties, PR agents of the person being covered, or representatives of a certain company, or partisans of specific political views. --L.Willms (talk) 06:30, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
• I think this idea is poorly thought out and probably infeasible. Some objections:

1. The current system doesn't prevent you from editing using different accounts. If you prefer to edit a particular (controversial or sensitive) article without attributing the edit to your main account, just do so using a new account.
2. Turning on identity obfuscation/masking by default very substantially prevents the community at large from contributing to Wikipedia moderation. E.g. spotting the one user responsible for vandalism of multiple articles and filing an appropriate report.
   • As a consequence, the burden on those that do have access to this information will increase, given that the vast multitude of layman editors can no longer figure this out themselves).
3. The majority of Wikipedia editors like public attribution of their edits.
4. "groups of Wikipedia editors maintaining that article". This will never work because the sheer amount of Wikipedia articles will make it all but impossible for each (or even 5% of them) to have a dedicated group of editors in charge of them".
5. The Wall of Shame for bullies is only tangentially related to the question of contributor obfuscation/hiding and (if you think it is actually a good idea, which I don't), should be a separate grant.

--Doveofsymplegades (talk) 18:30, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

• A kind of general anonymity will block harassment from user with lesser privileges, but not from users with higher ones. It is often those that are the most difficult to handle. Users with high privileges log out, trolls a user anonymously or from another account, and then switches back to its own account again. An idea like this one will not stop that. — Jeblad 10:40, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
• This would require a change in licensing - you can't offer CC-BY-SA to your contributors and then not provide attribution. WereSpielChequers (talk) 12:14, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
• I have to oppose this as well. The problem with anonymity is that it tends to make people more likely to misbehave and more likely to harass others. The other issue is that this would mean that admins would have to be the sole people who deal with misbehavior and there aren't a whole lot of us out there, all things considered and there are a lot of problems that can be solved without the need for admin intervention. Not only could this be confusing for attribution purposes, but this would overtax an already stressed population of admins. This would likely result in stricter rules, more blocks, and less assumption of good faith because it'd become far easier to block than to do anything else - and believe me, this is not what you want. Tokyogirl79 (talk) 13:04, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Opposed. It would be harder to identify the vandals. The admin will have to read and identify the change, rather than everyone can read and identify the change. My2ndAngelic (talk) 22:38, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

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