India summons Wikipedia officials over edits to cricketer’s page

I think no one should be forced to do anything unless the law says otherwise. And even then it should be clearly argumented for.

Given Wikipedia's influence on society I think I agree. Misinformation can reach at least as many people as on Facebook, and cause injury and death to real people. It's only a matter of time before Wikipedia's Myanmar genocide comes.

We can't bring that threat under control while remaining completely ignorant of the people involved.

I think Hacker News users should too. After all, HN is an influential website read by many important people in the tech industry and beyond. It’s concerning how anonymous HN users could spread misinformation that impacts our critical technological infrastructure.

You first.

The situation was dealt with within 24 hours by mostly pseudonymous people. How much faster do you believe the response would have been if people had fully revealed their identities?

As a counter, I knew a rather active en.wikipedia admin[1] who -on joining google+ - had to reveal her real name at the time. Immediately she got doxed and people harassed her boss, her grandparents, and her family. This was somewhat to be expected, because there will always be a contingent of people who are unhappy with authority, especially those who are are subject to it. Would you argue that the harassment allowed her to keep a clear judgement, improved her understanding of policy, or otherwise made her a better admin?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators

KYC is a pretty awful idea in general, applying it to even more locations is an even worse idea.