Sweet! thanks for the lookup tool The chapter leaders at Iberoconf told me that they would prefer to just see the usernames as the default. I suppose we could have the actual usernames be an "opt-in," and the user_id to be the default? (I actually can't remember the rationale behind user_ids in the first place, so if someone has specific points around this, please share!) On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Dan Andreescu &lt;dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org&gt;wrote;wrote: -- *Jessie Wild Grantmaking Learning & Evaluation * *Wikimedia Foundation* * * Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! Donate to Wikimedia <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>

Now I remember. I was using username in the first prototype and Jaime identified that as a problem. I can't remember if it was for privacy or legal reasons, but I've cc-ed her personally so she can chime in. On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:58 PM, Dario Taraborelli < dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote:

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Jaime Anstee &lt;janstee(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: If any person has access to user ids you should assume they also have access to usernames. Both are public information. Assuming numeric ids are more private is security through obscurity. -- Steven Walling, Product Manager https://wikimediafoundation.org/

I fully agree with this reasoning and I believe that was my initial response as well. Legal, as far as I know, favored the tiny amount of security through obscurity. As I said, with an ok from legal, I would be happy to allow either output style. On Wednesday, October 16, 2013, Jan Ainali wrote:

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 10:13 PM, Luis Villa &lt;lvilla(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: After reading through the thread, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and say simply that there was a misunderstanding here. There are a lot of deeply problematic issues with wikimetrics, but the idea that we'd try to stop this "feature" is nuts - pretending that it solves anything would be a distraction from the actual, more serious problems that legal has identified. There are enough things to blame us for already; please don't add more we're not responsible for. :) Thanks- Luis -- Luis Villa Deputy General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext. 6810 NOTICE: *This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity.*

I sincerely apologize if what I said sounded like blame. I did not intend to blame anyone, but I was careless with my language and lack of research into past notes and discussions. What I should have said is: If this is not a concern for legal or anyone else, I can easily show usernames instead of user ids. Just let me know and it'll be done in a few minutes. Please accept my apologies Luis, I personally do not find legal issues an inconvenience by any stretch of imagination. This is why it's troubling to hear you say "There are a lot of deeply problematic issues with wikimetrics". I was under a completely different impression so I'd like to resolve any issues with top priority. If you've already communicated these to Diederik and/or Toby, I'll find out from them. Otherwise, please let us know as soon as you can. Dan

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 10:20 PM, Luis Villa &lt;lvilla(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: Hey, folks, since this was sort of tossed off quickly, and several people have asked me about this statement off-list, let me clarify: There is no legal problem with Wikimetrics, the tool. There are *potential* problems with usage of Wikimetrics to create and monitor cohorts that reflect real-world data; i.e., that such and such a person attended a specific event at a specific time, or that such and such a person is of a specific political or sexual orientation (e.g., they attended an LGBT editathon), or so on and so forth. Using that sort of data to create cohorts can accidentally expose data that wasn't previously collected/made public, and is potentially problematic. (There may also be other potentially oddball uses, especially when the cohort size is very small, but that's the easiest-to-grasp example.) The solution there isn't to condemn the tool, and that wasn't my intent; the solution is simply for all of us to be careful about what information we're collecting and feeding to it, especially if that information isn't passing through our normal checks and balances. Hope that helps clarify- Luis -- Luis Villa Deputy General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext. 6810 NOTICE: *This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity.*