The outing policy, as I see it, serves some useful Wiki-culture purposes, but also fails on some fronts. The policy's primary point is to encourage editors who do not want their name known to edit articles. I could imagine this being a positive motivation for people who have been stalked, are generally shy/quiet in real life, or who have a public position and want a hobby where they won't be criticized. I could imagine a medical doctor wanting to edit articles on medicine, but not wanting to assume the liability of people suing him for bad information or hounding him for free advice. Also, obviously, there is the idea that children shouldn't have their name on the internet since it simply makes pedophiles jobs that much easier. In these areas the outing policy is rather successful to the extent it encourages responsible contributions.
Where the policy fails is the same place the COI guideline and the external linking policy fail. While it is obviously OK for someone to mention a link to their website in a relevant context, most people on the internet seem intent on putting their link in as many places as possible, so Wikipedia adopts the counter-measure of reverting a good portion of links added. Similarly, if COI actually worked, it would tell people with a financial interest in something that they couldn't edit the article and could only suggest changes, but that would reduce content overall, so we allow people with conflicts to edit.
In this way the outing policy fails, since in order to protect the people mentioned above as completely as possible, it requires us to act without looking at the intentions of the person. So a sockpuppeter is generally protected from disclosure of his IPs or real name. And a self-promotional author is generally protected from linking names together to make the accusation. In a perfect world there would be some kind of "management" making the legally liable decision of when to out a person who refused to act collaboratively, but lacking that perfect world, I really don't see what other options we have other than to enforce the policy blindly.
|