Wikipedia:Anonymity

This is an essay, a page containing the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints, and they may be heeded or not based upon your judgement and discretion.

Shortcut: WP:ANON

Some of Wikipedia's pages on anonymity:

General links:

• Wikipedia talk:Talk page/Anonymous talk pages proposal
• Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit (not functional since early 2005; see Bugzilla #3539 for an automated idea)

Rules

Privacy policy

See Wikipedia:Privacy policy, Wikipedia talk:Privacy policy, and m:Talk:Privacy policy

This is "an official policy approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. This policy may not be circumvented, eroded, or ignored on local Wikimedia projects."

Summary: If you only read the Wikimedia project websites, no more information is collected than is typically collected in server logs by web sites in general. If you contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you are publishing every word you post publicly. If you write something, assume that it will be retained forever. This includes articles, user pages and talk pages. Some limited exceptions are described in the main policy.

Blacklists

Currently, people using open proxies or otherwise on the SORBS blacklist can't create accounts or log in.

Checkuser Policy

• See the m:CheckUser Policy/Wikipedia:Requests for CheckUser

See also: Editor's index: privacy

Guidelines

See for instance these guidelines:

• Wikipedia:Account deletion
• Wikipedia:Changing username
• Wikipedia:Right to vanish and m:Right to vanish

Essays

• Wikipedia:Welcome anonymous editing
• Wikipedia:The overuse of anonymity at Wikipedia and a proposal
• Wikipedia:How to not get outed on Wikipedia

Rejected guidelines

• Wikipedia:Accountability
• Wikipedia:Editors should be logged in users
• Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement

Historical use of shared accounts

At some point in 2003, there were role accounts on en:wp and on fr:wp. They are currently (as of late 2005) considered harmful.

Technical implementations

• Bugzilla #550 - blocking IPs without affecting formerly-created accounts (long discussion; should be combined with a throttle on # of account creations per IP per [day])