QUOTE(Coren @ Sun 14th February 2010, 11:54am)
The alternative is to give up on the project entirely; and I'm really unable to figure out how that could possibly help... (schnip) Daniel seems to be under the impression that this would, magically, reduce the impact Wikipedia has. It wouldn't. It'd just end up with even less control.
Well, don't get me wrong, fellas - I'm not really trying to defend Daniel's apparent policy of potentially including all WP contributors, regardless of their positions on BLP and related issues. There have been plenty of times when his insistence on this has been personally frustrating and upsetting for me, and at least twice I thought he was just being completely unreasonable. Nevertheless, I'm not going to say the idea of listing
some WP'ers identities is fundamentally wrong, and it may even amount to a form of justice in some cases, and provide a psychological boost for people who are (or have been) at the short end of the stick in disputes with folks like JoshuaZ, Durova, Slimmy, and so on. (Sorry if I've left anyone out!)
I don't think people (including myself) fully understand - yet - the psychological impact of being humiliated in some way by a set of anonymous account names in a Wiki environment, especially when you yourself are using your real name (or even some derivative of it). It's one of the most interesting issues we deal with here, and you rarely see it discussed on Wikipedia at all, other than in passing references on policy talk pages on occasion. The best thing we can do is probably try to convince people that any feelings of humiliation they might experience are unnecessary and unworthy of them, but not all people can be convinced of that.
Anyhoo, if an effective opt-out policy is ever implemented and Daniel
doesn't either drastically reduce the length of that list, or remove it altogether, then I suspect most of us will stop supporting him, as I would. But so far I'm still taking him at his word in that regard.