Erik,
I am not very excited about this proposal, I understand the intention but I feel it
conveys the wrong message.
1) logging requests made via Wikimetrics puts it on par with CheckUser, or other tools
designed for detecting abuse based on *private data*. CheckUser requests are logged for a
reason, in order to keep a record of who is performing policy-enforcing actions and to
detect potential abuse of the tool itself. By publishing a log of Wikimetrics requests we
imply that individual Wikimetrics users might be liable/accountable for their use of the
tool, which – it's worth reminding – is strictly equivalent to running queries on DB
replicas or against the MediaWiki API. Shouldn’t we start to log and publish whoever is
querying Labs DB? Or every registered user visiting Special:Contributions?
2) The flipside of this proposal is that it’s trivial to craft controversial log entries.
Wikimetrics is accessible to anyone with a valid OAuth/Google account and by design it
allows anyone to create cohorts from arbitrary sets of user IDs. I can impersonate another
person by creating a fake email address and upload a cohort called
“suspicious_terrorists_in_itwiki” which will result in a nicely log entry and story.
I’m not 100% against the proposal but I don’t see its value and I want to challenge the
principle that Wikimetrics requests should be considered *transactions*. If anything I’d
like to have LCA’s take on this.
Dario
On Oct 29, 2013, at 7:09 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
How would folks feel about a public log of WikiMetrics
uses in this form
2013-09-18 20:01:47 [some username] Edits - Oregon newbies
2013-09-18 19:23:18 [some username] Bytes Added - Oregon2013
We're tracking this info right now without sharing it. I don't feel
it's particularly sensitive, and would give us a good shared
understanding of who's using the tool & how. It does expose cohort
names, but I'm not sure why that would be an issue. In a way, it seems
only fair that if we're putting our users under the microscope, we
should also be comfortable with publicly logging what we're doing.
Thanks,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
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