[Labs-l] Discussion needed: Technically feasible, legally okay... but want tools do we want?

[Johannes Kroll]

Just to prevent some possible misunderstandings... :-)

I'm not arguing for less privacy. I'm saying that forcing this one tool
to use "opt-in" would not give you more privacy. It would only force
the "bad" people to abuse the data in a less obvious way, for example
by copying the tool to another account and commenting out any opt-in
related code. This is trivial to do. 

If you are concerned about the data you generate on Wikipedia, you
should argue that either the data should not be stored (which probably
isn't technically feasible since it is needed for other reasons), or
not made publically available via the DB replication and the API. I
think this is an important discussion because profiling Wikipedia edits
can really tell you a *lot* about a person. More control for individual
users over how their data is stored and made available via the API
and DB would be a very good thing.

This is my personal opinion and not an official statement by WMDE. 

-- 
Johannes Kroll
Softwareentwickler

Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | NEU: Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0

http://wikimedia.de

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