Thought: Every time a Wikipedian outs someone on meta.wikipedia.org, commons.wikipedia.org, wikien-l, foundation-l, or en-wikipedia.org, that Wikipedian in turn gets outed here. Roundabout is fair play?

Sure. I think it would depend on who it is, the circumstances, etc. Not as a punitive measure though.

Nah not really. I mean a lot of people who do that kind of thing are breaking the law in doing it. We don't want to be doing anything that might be illegal.

Nope. Outing isn't supposed to be a punitive measure.

I can't think of a single jurisdiction in the United States or UK where successfully IDing an anonymous Internet person, and posting who they are, would be illegal. Anyone?



Wikipedia has made it clear they will not stop hurting people, and that double standards of outing exist. Trusted Wikipedian = protected; others = outed freely and at will.

Nothing short of a disclosure arms race will hinder them.



It wouldn't be punishment. As soon as Wikipedia makes it an ironclad law in it's house that no-outing applies to all people:

Editors
Former editors
Subjects of articles
Any living person, anonymous or otherwise, under the sun

We would stop.

Well it might be appropriate at times to fight back against egregious hypocrisy by pointing out publicly available information, as a rule I agree with UV that we should not use IRL identifying information to punish. It should be obtained/released to hold admins and other WP authorities accountable for abuses and to critique and better understand WP as an institution.

Well, IDing someone in itself is not illegal - especially not if it is true. However, when attached to a whole ream of things that might not be true, then it can very easily be illegal. And the problem with the internet is that you often say things that might be misinterpreted very easily etc, so it just becomes very difficult. Then all of a sudden you have to be a professional project, which in many cases just becomes really seriously annoying. Its just not a good idea unless you have to.

Yes, IRL information makes it possible to defame. That does not make it illegal. It does mean you need to use reasonable care and make sure your statements are true.

Leave children alone. It might be illegal. Mostly it is not a decent thing to do. Even if they are complete assholes they shouldn't be a part of this.

Knowingly identifying an undercover agent working for ones own country might be a crime. Identifying an undercover agent working against ones own country might make you hero.

Other more routine undercover police activity might also be protected under some jurisdictions.

Not legal advice****Discussion purposes only****Consult a local attorney

Yeah, the thing with SlimVirgin may actually make us (or at least some of us - is anyone here in Canada?) guilty of treason. But then again we don't know if she is working for Canada or not. I think personally she's more likely working against the government.

Does it matter? The public outcry would be monumentally absurd if a government were actually outed doing this stuff.

Perhaps this would be a good time to review and disclose as well if and how WR retains logs of user access and decide as a community what may need changing for the legal protection of users here and the owners of the site, and to help protect against people trying to stalk users here.

What do you mean? I don't think that anyone on WR has ever been stalked. Not that I'm aware of. It's already pretty safe. We encourage people not to reveal who they are, but if they choose to then they know the risks. Makes it nice and safe for everyone. I can't recall a single instance of a WR user claiming that they were stalked while using WR. If there is anything dodgy, we can delete it really easily (and we DO delete it really quickly). If in doubt, it gets at minimum moved to a members-only forum (Tar Pit for starters), then to the Trash Can or Moderators Forum, then its gone. If anything, we've erred on the side of caution, and probably deleted more than was really needed.

I live in the nation's capital (Ottawa) and I don't consider it treason.
..so I guess it's a little bit subjective.

Or she may be an ex-brittish agent who now works for a group like SPECTRE, a terrorist organization.

I heard she works for the mysterons.

What makes you think she might work for Spectre? Is Spectre a real organisation? I haven't seen any hint that she works for a terrorist organisation. Why would a terrorist organisation edit in the way that she does? I can't imagine the motivation.

Spectre is a fictional Soviet spy organization from the James Bond books.

Yeah, sometimes I should use google search when I see something that looks fishy.

Realistically, I think we can 100% rule out any idea that SlimVirgin is working for a terrorist organisation. I cannot see any point in a terrorist organisation using Wikipedia like that. Well, they might use Wikipedia, but not like that. It flies in the face of what terrorism is. I mean if terrorism was all about changing truth, then they wouldn't need to blow people up to complete the picture, would they? Its an absurd suggestion really.

True, but it's an acronynm for "Special Executor for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion," so it should always be written in ALL CAPS!

Of course, everyone knows the real supranational spy organization is SWIFFER, which stands for "Supreme Wiki for International Foolishness, Foreplay, and Extreme Rudeness."

Not to be confused with the popular floor-cleaning device, obviously.

See, A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.P.H.O.M.A.N.I.A. is caching, after all …

Jonny

SlimVirgin and Jayjg might be working for a group like that.