Talk:Lookup directory wiki

Discuss the project name at Lookup directory wiki/Name.

Discussion

Before adding your comment, please note:

• I no longer support this proposal's viability because:
  1. It does not strictly fall under Wikimedia's "free education" goals, so to begin with, even if it were viable, this is the wrong place for it
  2. The data protection/privacy issues are massive and/or insurmountable

  --131.111.8.96 23:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

This project could provide a great resource for posting resumes and credentials for an individuals seeking employement. It also could become a great consolidated resource of hard to find, but publically disclosed information about famous individuals (until they opt out as some likely will). It'll be interesting to watch it unfold. 24.10.98.53 06:20, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

privacy grievances

The proposal suggests:

• to abide to US-data-protection law.
  This will be likely impossible in most jurisdictions. US-laws permit many things which are illegal elewhere, e.g. in most of EU-Europe, in Russia, in China, in most of the Arab world, in many muslim countries.
• all information on the directory is merely a collection of sources that were otherwise public anyway (hence not private).
  This reasoning is - sorry - utter nonsense. The fact that some information was at some time publicly available somewhere indicates plain nothing. More specific, it indicates neither correctness, nor usability.
• An individual may ask to be ex-directory, have information removed, or have his/her page locked.
  1. Offering that to idividuals after the fact is fraudulent in most of Europe. You must ask permission first, before publishing potentially unwanted informations, in almost all circumstances.
  2. Individuals who are not online may have a hard time to have their wish made being heared by a wiki community. I cannot imagine any jurisdiction to permit someone to force them into anything specific to do, so as to protect their privacy. The logical consequence again has to be that they are 100% protected against having anything published about them, unless they actively request otherwise.
  3. When someone happens to be in a witnesses protection programme, or victim of harrassment or stalking, or anything similar of any kind, when his or her data is made public, the person who did that may be liable for consequential damages, possibly up to and including charges of murder.

It is hard for me to imagine even, how the identity of a person or organization could be established, in order to have someone who could legally agree having their data included in a wiki. --Purodha Blissenbach 16:01, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

I think vandalism would be a much greater problem here simply because your average editors aren't going to want to safeguard the profile of Joe Schmoe, and if he doesn't do it himself, no one will (unless the individual in question is famous). Also, any degree of verifiability with people who have never appeared in print (except, perhaps, an outdated phone directory, etc.) will be nigh-impossible.

It's a neat thought, but not really implimentable in its current form, IMO.

Perhaps something like Facebook not limited to students and with a more exhaustive search feature is what you're thinking of… The Jade Knight 02:36, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Asserting who is who

If this project is to be realised, it's important to have a way to assert that a user is the person he is claiming to be. It might be impossible to prove/disprove if a user claiming to be John Smith really is this person. What is somebody claims that he is this person and says it's okay to post private info, which is really not okay with the realy person.

What is good enough for proving that you're the person you claim you are? Certainly not e-mail. Delta Tango 13:47, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Completely useless

The name will be something like wikiblog or what? This is completely against the wiki philosophy and I think it should not be even discussed. There may be information that people want to hide or people want them not to be known. There may be personal information about people. For instance, any selfish couple would seperate and write the secrets that they know about their mates on this wiki? If people need information, they should have a look to wikipedia I think. Such directory is not needed, in my opinion.144.122.7.12 11:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC)