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Hello directly from Jimbo at Wikipedia



I'd like to say thanks for the invitation to join this dialogue.

Let me tell you what I love.  I love the Chinese dissident who wants to
work on Wikipedia articles in safety.  I love that Wikipedia is an open
platform that allows people to have that voice, and that we can have a
positive impact on the world in large part because we don't bow to
censorship and we are willing to reach out and work with people like Tor
to empower individuals to speak, no matter what sort of oppressive
conditions they face.

WE ARE ON THE SAME SIDE.

So it always dismays me to see conversations like this, and I think that
at least some cooler heads here will understand why I get frustrated and
why I make no apologizes for characterizing at least some people in the
Tor community as being irresponsible.

"I share frustrations that the statements attributed to Jimmy Wales in
the record below and in previous messages seem to show some fundamental
misunderstandings and willful ignorance of Tor, and more broadly of
identity, identifiers, reputation, authentication, etc. in open
network communications"

Willful ignorance?  Not at all.  What I know is that we are forced to
block Tor servers regularly due to persistent vandalism.  That's a sad
fact to me.  It's a difficult thing for those of us who are serious
about these issues.  But the really sad thing is when elements of the
Tor community are not willing to face up to this as a legitimate and
difficult problem.

"everyone is so worried about it, but has any one ever been successfully
been able to use tor to effectively spam anyone?"

Yes, of course!  We deal with it constantly.  We have an effective means
of dealing with it: we block Tor servers from editing wikipedia.  But is
that what any of us want?

"Misbehaviour is in the eye of the observer, however."

No, actually it isn't.  There is such a thing as objectively
identifiable malicious behavior.  We aren't Chinese censors here.  We're
the good guys.  We want to work with you.

Yes, we could implement tight security to only allow people who identify
themselves (perhaps we'll require a credit card number, someone
suggests?)... but *cough*, aren't we supposed to care about privacy here?

--Jimbo