Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:06:52 UTC
Currently a user can register and use as many user accounts as they want provided they can get one email address per account which is very easy. As such Votes for deletion are often attacked with individuals pretending to be multiple users. With unregistered users you can see the ip address of the poster and figure out if it is likely a valid vote or not. What is needed is a similar feature for registered signed-in users. I suspect several keep votes on [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bum Wine Wednesday]] are from the same user(s). The user(s) are staging an active campaign in an attempt to keep his Bum wine Wednesday page which has properly in my opinin been nominated for deletion. So some method of viewing the ip address of a register user either though an ip <nowiki>[[User_IP:SusanLarson]]</nowiki> (history page of ip's used to login the wikipedia) or a signature ip address block for all registered users. [[User:susan@susans.org|susan@susans.org]] ([[user:24.183.201.49|24.183.201.49]]) in addition to whatever custom signature is used.
remove nowiki tags from above please thanks :)
Users don't even need email addresses to register accounts. And viewing IP addresses and throwing out that kind of information is going to produce some interesting privacy issues, particularly for the Wikimedia Foundation, as evidenced by the recent CheckUser debate on En.
You can have this only enabled if a user participates in votes. I suspect that this goes on extensively for all votes including RfA, AfD, and so on. Do not the security, policy, and other important issues this affects warrant a means to check for this kind of activity. With this going on a small group or even a single individual could overcome the majority which goes against the principle the Wikipedia operates on.
Interestingly, however, "majority" or "voting" are not principles Wikipedias operate on; they use "consensus" which is something rather different.
I agree about operating on consensus. However consensus can be diluted or even totally skewed by people or persons who are pretending to be muitple people supporting one point of view. My main concern is the effect on on official wikipedia votes and policy discussions nothing else.
IP addresses for logged-in users are considered sensitive, private information, and access to the IP records is restricted. Look for the 'CheckUser' lookup requests if there's something specific you want to have checked on Wikipedia and with good reason.
