[Foundation-l] should not web server logs (of requests) be published?

[Benjamin Lees]

On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Logs cannot be read by wikipedia owners or us government because they don't exist.
There aren't any raw logs?

On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 2:30 PM,  <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> Each web server, of which the WMF has a few, collects details on the
> behaviour of IPs, in logs.  Those logs can be and probably have been requested by
> certain government officials, most likely for the purpose of tracking down
> who is behind a certain "Bad" posting to a BLP.
Presumably they would usually just use CheckUser data for that.

On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 2:30 PM,  <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> I'm still not clear why we would want to know the IP exactly for analytical
> purposes.  Some intrepid programmer could write a program which would
> simply collect detailed analysis of a person's in-world behaviour and call them
> "Bob992" instead of 13.42.204.192 or whatever.  Making the information
> packets anonymous.  That would still allow any sort of analysis the Tatars want to
> make, and not reveal any private information.
It's a bit more complicated than that.  Sometimes anonymous isn't
anonymous enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal