Anonymity, Good or bad Options

[Peter Damian]

I noticed the mail below on one of the Wiki-lists (public). It seemed immediately that there was much wrong with the logic, but I wonder what others think?

The first argument that occurred to me was that, if his argument was valid, then the same conclusion would apply to banks, public companies, charities and so forth. Yet we require public companies to publish the names of their directors, likewise charities. But that begs the question. Why do we require directors of companies, charities, etc to declare identities?

[edit] On second thoughts, the analogy with companies and charities is imperfect, because of the point he makes about every action being transparent.

----- Original Message -----
From: Happy Melon
To: peterc@cix.compulink.co.uk ; Functionaries email list for the English Wikipedia
Cc: office@wikimedia.org.uk ; wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2012 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] [Functionaries-en] Edward Buckner/Peter Damian& W


What possible need is there to know the personal life story of a community member in order to "scrutinise" their actions on-wiki? In an environment where every action is quite deliberately laid open for transparent 'scrutiny', *precisely* to engender a culture where members are judged on their actions, not any personal characteristic? Why is it any more important that the name, birthday and home address of the admin who blocks "established editors" is known publically, than the same of the admin who 'only' blocks IPs? Why does knowing the marital status of your arbitrators help you or anyone else to "scrutinise" their behaviour? There is absolutely no justification from the "ends" of outing to justify any means.

Conversely, those members of the community who *have* "got further up the hierarchy" have done so with the support and endorsement of the community which is *well aware* of their pseudonymous status, anonymous or otherwise. They have done so in line with Foundation policy, which is fully protective of that anonymity. They have done so in a *legal* environment which is sympathetic to people's right to privacy and comes down hard on people who harrass others by breaking it. The entire structure is established, with increasingly broad mandates, on the basis that pseudonymity is acceptable and to be protected. What right does any single person have to declare that establishment 'wrong' and unilaterally overturn it?

Of course, I'm writing from an anonymous email account with a pseudonym that has always been in place, and probably always will. I've had things oversighted on five different projects, and removed from places where 'oversight' is far from standard practice, to protect that anonymity. Is the fact that you don't know my name, address and date of birth a concern to you? Is the fact that I've written code for the cluster, or administrated three ArbCom elections, a problem for you? Would you sleep better at night if I *hadn't* once had the Oversight bit? Please do tell me, how would your "scrutiny" of my actions be improved if my personal life was public record?

--HM

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[dogbiscuit]

There are a number of issues:

1) The audit trail argument is fallacious. The reality is that those in power have been able to cover their tracks through the use of tools (notice these days that they are getting quite slack over the casual use of say, revision deletes, which used to be a minor scandal), the hiding of one's past misdeeds through creating new personas and whatever.

2) The suggestion that people in an anonymous world are judged by their deeds is fallacious too. Admins get a free pass in general and are presumed to be acting appropriately when challenged by minions. Minions are generally considered untrustworthy and unreliable and then IPs are just ignored or barred. Those not in the project are just treated as below contempt.

3) The linking of real life identities with Wikipedia identities is generally not, as far as I am aware, being done to expose the individual, but simply to link people who are holding positions of authority with their Wikipedia accounts, or to seek out why someone is acting in an obviously conflicted way.

4) It is interesting that Wikipedians hold their own anonymity sacrosanct and yet want to enforce COI, and of course the classic example was Gary Weiss who was actually probably the worst COI editor Wikipedia had seen. Without a concerted campaign where all those involved were vilified in real life in the most grievous way, Gary would not have been exposed, and what was worse, was that it wasn't really just about Gary, it was a whole host of other Wikipedians, who still are present today, who were well aware of the conflict but used the anonymity card to protect him. So, if there is a Wikipedian who is beavering away with anti-corporate slime on various articles, he is protected to the extreme, and the merest hint of being in favour of a company, you can be exposed and ridiculed as an evil COI person.

5) They then have a whole host of sock systems, where we see that even Wikipedia knows anonymity does not work because if anonymity were perfect, then we would just accept socks and assume that they represented what they did rather than who they were - clearly we judge them on their actions and the fact that they may be one or many people should not be relevant.

[EricBarbour]

4) It is interesting that Wikipedians hold their own anonymity sacrosanct and yet want to enforce COI, and of course the classic example was Gary Weiss who was actually probably the worst COI editor Wikipedia had seen.

And he just had another sock banned. A sock that has been operating for TWO YEARS, with near impunity. And editing Weiss's BLP, with near impunity.

5) They then have a whole host of sock systems, where we see that even Wikipedia knows anonymity does not work because if anonymity were perfect, then we would just accept socks and assume that they represented what they did rather than who they were - clearly we judge them on their actions and the fact that they may be one or many people should not be relevant.

Pop quiz: how many sock accounts vote in a typical RFA, AFD or other administrative decision?

No one knows. No one even has a vague guess. And we have seen cases of socks voting in the past
to support one side of an issue, the socks only being revealed later. When Mantan was an admin,
he did that. Weiss was socking at the time, and he has kept on socking, even after being desysoped and
banned "for eternity".

And I submit, the insiders of Wikipedia know he's doing it. And they tolerate him.