User talk:Christine Bush/PseudonymPolicy

How It Might Work

You realize this would need a Charter amendment by referendum? (See Preamble and Article 2.) The Council can call a referendum, but so, at the next election, can any two Citizens.

Before the Charter there was provision for exceptions, but the drafting committee decided to abolish those. Maybe someone can find the discussions.

As to frank discussion, people often go to RationalWiki to avoid our restrictions. As example of how strict we can be, see [1]. Peter Jackson 10:21, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Peter. I appreciate your pointing this out. I'm not surprised and appreciate this is far from a trivial suggestion. It will take time and may fail, but I am not convinced the current policy is well justified. If a Referendum on Pseudonymity did materialize and failed to pass, I still think it would have been worthwhile because it will have resulted in generating a more nuanced consideration for the existing policy. Going through the process should also result in a great article on the topic of pseudonymity. I would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with you on it. ;-)

I am familiar with the discourse on other wikis which is in large part why I value CZ. By "frank discussion" I am invoking something more akin to "civil discourse" than "flame wars." Going forward, I think I will actually make this distinction so thank you for pointing me in that direction. The example of restricting discussion you've provided seems appropriate to me as the comment removed was inflammatory and unconstructive. (I trust it is transparent that failure to enforce similar personal attacks on the Forum have motivated recent decisions on my part.)

May I ask after your thoughts on the concept? Christine Bush 18:15, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, I'm not entirely sure what you're proposing. Would the constabulary verify people's identities and maintain a register but not make the information available to anyone else without the subject's premisssion? Peter Jackson 10:08, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Food For Thought

Hi Peter, what you've described is one possibility I've pondered. Another would be to integrate with one or more "identification authorities" such as Google+ or OpenID. Yet another would be to devise a way for specific types of contributors, such as persons with .edu e-mail accounts for example, to more easily register with CZ using a pseudonym. We may need to accomplish this incrementally, slowly diluting the real names only policy with more attractive alternatives, but always leaving real name based registration as an option (albeit, of last resort for many). I'm considering whether a proposal to default name display to an initial-based algorithm that results in unique identifier, but doesn't impact verification practices, might even be enough to attract some new users. I'm sure there are other ideas that should be considered. Christine Bush 23:14, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand the technical stuff, so I'll just give a couple of thoughts:

1. a lot of the recent changes at Wikinfo and Knowino are the opening and closing of spambot accounts, and WikiSage got so fed up that account creation was disabled;
2. if we're to continue holding elections, we need a way to ensure 63 voters aren't the same person.

Peter Jackson 08:23, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Recent History

Hi Christine, just wanted to say that this proposal makes a lot of sense. The current procedure of verifying the identities of prospective citizens is a significant inconvenience and discourages a lot of people from contributing. A change such as this would be a really good idea. As such, you should know that it is destined for failure—you won't be able to get it past Anthony to even get a referendum held about it. He has in the past personally vetoed referenda that I've proposed that would have continued to retain the real names policy and continued to enforce it, but would merely have deferred enforcement until after people created the accounts; so, a change like this seems to me to be near-impossible to get through. Nonetheless, I wish you the best of luck with this. Cheers, James Yolkowski 03:34, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Anthony rejected James's referendum proposal last year using temporary powers which he no longer holds (at the time, the Council had all but ceased to function and only one supporter was required for any referendum proposal). To get this proposal on the ballot, it would just have to either be a Council-backed referendum in itself, or be submitted as a Citizen-initiated proposal which has enough supporters and which is placed on the ballot by the Council. The Managing Editor doesn't have a veto. To be well-formed, it would have to amend the Charter (preamble and Article 2) and the non-Charter rule demanding verified real names. As a Charter referendum, it would then need a two-thirds majority to pass. John Stephenson 16:55, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to you both for this insight. My strategy was going to be to write a really good article on the topic and then slowly build support. I would like to hear from any and all on this topic. Advice on whether a Council or Citizen initiated effort makes more sense is most welcome here. Christine Bush 22:45, 15 September 2014 (UTC)