Federico asked if sampling might make sense here. I think it will work, so I've updated the patchset.From a patchset comment I provided:"It's possible we may have situations where operators have not lots of users on them accessing Wiki(m|p)edia properties, so we do run some risk of actually missing IPs, even if exit IPs are concentrators of typically large sets of users. That said, let's try a 2% sample ratio; and if we find out it's insufficient, then we'll sample more, if it's oversampling, then we can adjust the other way, too. New patchset arriving shortly."(I've since submitted the updated code for review.)-AdamOn Thu, May 1, 2014 at 7:52 PM, Adam Baso <abaso@wikimedia.org> wrote:
After examining this, it looks like EventLogging is more suited to the logging task than debug logging and the trappings of needing to alter debug logging in the core MediaWiki software.EventLogging logs at the resolution of a second (instead of a day), but has inbuilt support for record removal after 90 days.Please do let us know in case of further questions. Here's the logging schema for those with an interest:Here's the relevant server code:-AdamOn Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 2:20 PM, Adam Baso <abaso@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Great idea!Anyone on the list know if there's a way to make the debug log facilities do the YYYYMMDD timestamp instead of the longer one?If not, I suppose we could work to update the core MediaWiki code. [1]-Adam1. For those with PHP skills or equivalent, I'm referring to https://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Fcore.git/a26687e81532def3faba64612ce79b701a13949e/includes%2FGlobalFunctions.php#L1042. Scroll to the bottom of the function definition to see the datetimestamp approach.On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
Hi Adam,
One thought: you don't really need the date/time data at any detailed
resolution, do you? If what you're wanting it for is to track major
changes ("last month it all switched to this IP") and to purge old
data ("delete anything older than 10 March"), you could simply log day
rather than datetime.
enwiki / 127.0.0.1 / 123.45 / 2014-04-16:1245.45
enwiki / 127.0.0.1 / 123.45 / 2014-04-16
- the latter gives you the data you need while making it a lot harder
to do any kind of close user-identification.
Andrew.
On 16 Apr 2014 19:17, "Adam Baso" <abaso@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Inline.
>
> Thanks for starting this thread.
> >
> > Sorry if I've overlooked this, but who/what will have access to this
> data?
> > Only members of the mobile team? Local project CheckUsers? Wikimedia
> > Foundation-approved researchers? Wikimedia shell users? AbuseFilter
> > filters?
> >
>
> It's a good question. The thought is to put it in the customary wfDebugLog
> location (with, for example, filename "mccmnc.log") on fluorine.
>
> It just occurred to me that the wiki name (e.g., "enwiki"), but not the
> full URL, gets logged additionally as part of the wfDebugLog call; to make
> the implicit explicit, wfDebugLog adds a datetime stamp as well, and that's
> useful for purging old records. I'll forward this email to mobile-l and
> wikitech-l to underscore this.
>
>
> > And this may be a silly question, but is there a reasonable means of
> > approximating how identifying these two data points alone are? That is,
> > Using a mobile country code and exit IP address, is it possible to
> > identify a particular editor or reader? Or perhaps rephrased, is this
> data
> > considered anonymized?
> >
>
> Not a silly question. My approximation is these tuples (datetime, now that
> it hit me - XYwiki, exit IP, and MCC-MNC) alone, although not perfectly
> anonymized, are low identifying (that is, indirect inferences on the data
> in isolation are unlikely, but technically possible, through examination of
> short tail outliers in a cluster analysis where such readers/editors exist
> in the short tail outliers sets), in contrast to regular web access logs
> (where direct inferences are easy).
>
> Thanks. I'll forward this along now.
>
> -Adam
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