On 01.04.2011 14:28, Stephen Bain wrote:
On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Brett Hillebrand
<bretthillebrand(a)internode.on.net> wrote:
"Tools that allow profiling of individual user's activity (beyond what can
easily be achieved directly on the public wiki sites) must only be applied
with the respective user's consent (opt-in)."
Well the policy is pretty vague (indeed, you have quoted the whole of it there).
yes, it is vagues. because a precise policy would be twenty pages long, and
still wouldn't cover all corner cases. So the policy is supposed to give a
general idea, any corner cases get decided on a case by case basis.
What counts as profiling and what does not? And what
"can easily be
achieved" using only the wiki?
The editing overlap can be reproduced quite straightforwardly using
Special:Contributions and article history pages (or the API), perhaps
with the aid of a pencil and paper and the browser's search function
for the larger sets. There could be quite a bit of labour in that
though. Does that count as "easy"?
No, that's not "easy". But the result is unlikely to give away much about
the
user's lifestyle beyond the information which pages they edit. And that
information *is* easily available on-site already, we can expect people to
expect this. As opposed to plotting the time of day they mostly edit, which
isn't that hard to get from the site either, but gives much more (apparent)
insight into a person's habits.
-- daniel