[WikiEN-l] Please remove user data and talk pages from database dumps!

Thu Dec 29 18:14:10 UTC 2005

Ryan Delaney wrote:

>Uh, you're being a bit of a hardliner here. We all accept the risk that
>someone will commit fraud and identity theft. What we're suggesting here is
>a simple solution- remove user/talk pages from database dumps. "Don't like
>it? Too bad!" isn't a very constructive attitude.
>  
>
But then there'd have to be a new separate database dump that _did_ 
include the user/talk pages. The purpose of the database dumps is not 
just to allow someone to toss up a mirror of the current article 
versions and make a few bucks from banner ads, it's to allow Wikipedia 
as a whole to be researched or recreated or otherwise manipulated in 
ways that can't be done just from the existing website. The user and 
talk pages are important parts of how Wikipedia functions, they should 
be available for historical reasons if nothing else.