Thought I might give you some thoughts on this wet day.

It depends what you mean by a role account.

An account name, even if an apparently real name, is just a pseudonym in Wikipedia terms - we are not allowed to consider the real person behind the account (I won't go there!)  they are that person role-playing on Wikipedia.

If an individual is taking the role of "Private person editing Wikipedia" but also they have another role of "Person editing Wikipedia in their role at work" then there should not be an issue with one person operating two accounts - though I believe that link is meant to be revealed. That is no different from a Wikipedian deciding that they have two role accounts for different reasons (Bishzilla comes to mind).

Within a company it is standard operating practice for certain tasks to be invested in the job title, not the person, and therefore in a company environment it is highly appropriate that there are role accounts - it is stating that the responsibility for the edits lies with the company. In terms of password security, it is no different from the accountant at the firm holding the password for VAT submission and on moving on roles passing the password to another employee - in company terms it is the company who owns the password and they are not disclosing it to a third party.

In this case, it increases the accountability, because if there is a problem with the user editing, there is no issue going to the employers and getting problems sorted out - a private account (where you aren't even supposed to know who they are in real life) is a problem and gives the organisation deniability.

The only issue that Wikipedia might have is a shared account - but in this context, it wouldn't really be a problem if multiple people were editing in the name of the organisation - it is something that is done in the real world all the time.

With regard to the first comment in the thread - there should be no reason why it should be a problem disagreeing with policy, policy is there to be examined and tested as for it being fit for purpose. Wikipedia's biggest problem as I see it is that policy is used for the justification of doing the wrong thing, of which this is a simple example. To me this is using policy to stop doing something sensible - SOP for Wikipedia.

Dogbiscuit




Thomas Dalton wrote on 29/04/2012 02:40: 
On 29 April 2012 02:32, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:

Does that make sense though? With an account called "Starwarrior", say,
there is no way of knowing who made the edit either.

Sure, you do. It's not the name on the person's birth certificate, but
it's still a name. It tells you about as much as "John Smith" would.
You can hold that account holder responsible for their actions. With a
role account, they can just say it wasn't them.

If you would like another reason then, from 25 May onwards, role
accounts will violate the Terms of Use, section 5, "Password
Security":

"You are responsible for safeguarding your own password and should
never disclose it to any third party."

(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_%282012%29/en#5._Password_Security)

You can't operate a role account without someone disclosing the
password to a third party. (Well, I guess you could share the password
to an email account and use the "forgot your password" link every time
you wanted to log in, but you would still be violating the spirit of
the rules.)

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