Talk:Openness and collaboration/Edit using your real name

The user who started this page has just been blocked. This page, though, was not a particularly egregious example of what resulted in his block, and the page is not far from what could actually be pursued to a good end. I did make one change, adding "alleged" to ... allegations!

There is another problem, though. The exploration of the personal behavior of an editor who is not here to defend himself is, not impossible, but problematic. We have no guidelines covering how to do this without violating privacy policy, and, in particular, the question, "What were the other user accounts that were used by this Wikipedian" could be inviting "outing," which is very much contrary to policy. It's not clear to me that we could come up with any definitive answers about how an editor's behavior would have been different if real names had been required.

I'm happy with the suggestion that, for example, special editing privileges might be reserved for those who use verified real names. This may be far more appropriate for Wikiversity than for Wikipedia. We engage in academic study here, and real names and reputations are an important part of academia. But raking over ancient history and trying to find out who was who, then, seems to be an activity that would raise the zombies, without any corresponding benefit. What would we gain?

I can say what I think has been behind some of this, for some users. We could gain revenge. And, I'm afraid, that's a luxury we cannot tolerate here. Natural consequences, fine. Centaur of attention was blocked, and if he did something wrong, that's enough of a consequence. I'd suggest we not allow tar and feathers on campus.

However, I'm not at all sure that CoA did something wrong. Should we look at that? Perhaps the account should be unblocked! After all, people who did much worse, as far as disruptive behavior, have been unblocked, at least it's been tried. --Abd 00:33, 17 April 2011 (UTC)