for you fiery and foxy Wikipedians who use Firefox:

1 - in your URL entry line, type "about:config"
2 - in the "Filter" line, enter "network.http.sendRefererHeader"
3 - change the value of network.http.sendRefererHeader to "0"

When you browse websites, they collect information about you. Your IP, your browser program version, and the website ("sendRefererHeader") that you were at when you clicked on a URL link to go to the current website.

If you're worried about spooky Wikipedian Badmins painting you as an Evil WikiReviewian (and judging from Fozzie's intimidated pull-out, many are), and having them see in the CU logs what site you were at that brought you to a partiicular WP page, that modiicaton will hide that the "referring site" that you were at. Your IP and browser version will still show up. I wonder what browser versions Sami and Manny used. All that edit timing stuff isn't going to make anyone be forced to sockban, folks. These people have had been painted into a corner for a long time, and that is not going to force them to admit anything.

The things you learn by googling. Disclaimer: I don't work for Google, but "websearching" is no fun to say. And I could be wrong about this tip, but I read it via the google, at the toppermost of a search, so it must be true ;-)

Disclaimer: Some websites don't work if you disable referers.

This Firefox addon might be a little more technical, but it allows you to control what gets sent as referer on a per-site basis.

Heh, but now the "Wikipedian Badmins" can note that you have your referrers turned off and conclude that you follow directions from "Piperdown"! J/K, I think...

Actually, more seriously, turning off referers could in itself be a clue to your identity. If you want any real level of anonymity, use Tor and Privoxy.

I'm sure the second part is true, but I wanna ask Brandt (or another site owner) whether the first part is. My understanding is that all sorts of folk turn referrers off. Are there really so few that site owners would give them special scrutiny?

If you want somewhere in the middle, the Firefox plugin lets you specify "root of the current site" as your referrer. So if set, all your referrers for WP would look like you came from "http://en.wikipedia.org/".