User:GeeGoo

It is suspected that this user might be a rodeo clown or sock puppet of Daniel Brandt. Please refer to [1] for evidence.

My name is Donna Nelson and I work as an attorney in Houston. I support the Wikipedia-Watch Accountability Project. I believe that all administrators should be required to provide their real name, and the city where they are located. This is important for the future of Wikipedia.

Unless this is made a requirement, courts around the world will be inclined to rule that anonymous administrators are agents of Wikimedia Foundation. This means that the Foundation will increasingly find itself the target of civil litigation, and will face an uncertain future.

The current Wikipedia privacy policy recommends techniques for enhanced anonymity, such as editing under a user name to avoid revealing one's IP address. This policy amounts to an invitation for any court to hold Wikipedia accountable for the actions of its anonymous agents. Once the server logs have been rotated (which is apparently done every few weeks), even CheckUser becomes impossible. How many courts will let Wikipedia off the hook just because the Foundation has already rotated its logs? A service provider would get away with it, because such a provider generally plays no role in decisions about specific material hosted by them.

At Wikipedia, administrators play a major role in determining content, and would likely be considered agents of Wikipedia. In cases where the Wikimedia Foundation claims that it is unable to identify its own agents, any court is likely to hold the Foundation itself liable. This issue is one that Wikipedia should confront now rather than later.