Ed, SJ,

on top of what Aaron and Jonathan said (for example, the use of WMF’s logo) there were other concerns that we had to address.

The scope of DERP shifted from an informal communication broker between organizations and academic researchers to a body that – at least according to the original press release – would be responsible for: 

• setting guidelines for ethical research (for example, by prohibiting any kind of feature testing/experimentation)

• aggregating and sharing privacy sensitive data

• reviewing data requests

on behalf of the member organizations.

The Foundation has specific policies on what data can be collected from readers and contributors, how long this data is retained, how it’s released and licensed and under what conditions third parties can obtain access to private data hosted by the Foundation. We felt that we could not join an initiative that would commit the organization to make promises about data access to external parties, without having a conversation with our internal stakeholders first–not just WMF Legal or the WMF analytics team but also our volunteer community, chapters etc. 

The press release was later amended to remove language that would suggest specific commitments for member organizations but our concerns remain the same. 

Jonathan, Aaron and I are all interested in creating opportunities for cross-platform research on online collaboration and we have plans in the pipeline to make more data publicly available. We are big fans of DERP and are still involved in a personal capacity in the initiative, but we are not in a position to take Wikimedia with us at this time.

I hope that clarifies how the decision was made.

Dario