[Foundation-l] checkUser live

Tue Nov 8 14:29:29 UTC 2005

Anthere wrote:
> I guess that this policy is approved for now. if you have further 
> comments, please add them in the talk page. I archived all the 
> discussions, if you wish some to be kept on the live page, please move 
> them back.

Can we have some clarifications of "disruptive" (as in "Where the user 
has been vandalising pages or persistently behaving in a disruptive 
way") and "reasonably necessary" and "safety" (as in "Where it is 
reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the 
Wikimedia Foundation, its users or the public.") from the Board 
regarding the Foundation's privacy policy, just so that everyone is 
crystal clear about what circumstances this personal information may be 
released?

What does "If the user has said they're from somewhere and the IP 
confirms it, it's not releasing private information to confirm it if 
needed." mean?

What does "generally" in "Revealing the country is generally not 
personally identifiable (e.g. "User:Querulous is coming in from the UK, 
User:Sockpuppet is coming in from Canada")." mean?

I'm still not happy with the idea that access to personal information 
can be given to people on the say-so that they will behave. Yes, the 
people who this will be given to are going to be some of the most 
trustworthy Wikipedians there are, but this is *personal information*. 
We should have some kind of legal agreement in place so there are no 
excuses.

Chris