Wikipedia:Anonymity

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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WP:ANON

This is a work in progress. Please help complete this page by adding links to policy and discussions.

Some of Wikipedia's pages on anonymity:

General links:

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

Guidelines

Guidelines related to anonymity and pseudonymity:

Essays

Research

Rejected guidelines

Historical use of shared accounts

At some point in 2003, there were role accounts on en:wp and on fr:wp. As of late 2005, they became considered harmful, and were discontinued by policy on most wikis.

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])
Bugzilla #53069 Mobile editing requires sign up/log in. Readers cannot edit on mobile anonymously. See mw:Extension:MobileFrontend and m:Research:Anonymous mobile editing in Italian Wikipedia (as of 15 Nov 2014)