+ Michelle Paulson

On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 7:37 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

This issue is also being discussed on the Research mailing list.

I have three questions:

1. Was this outreach method approved by RCom?

 No, and RCom, as far as I know has not been active in the past year or more (last meeting was on Dec. 22, 2011). This is a research from the Research team in the WMF.

2. Email addresses are nonpublic information on-wiki unless they are proactively and publicly disclosed by users. Does the bulk collection of nonpublic email addresses in this manner and the bulk provision of those addresses to researchers for their use in this campaign violate the Wikimedia privacy policy? The policy states regarding email, "We use your email address to let you know about things that are happening with the Foundation, the Wikimedia Sites, or the Wikimedia movement, such as telling you important information about your account, letting you know if something is changing about the Wikimedia Sites or policies, and alerting you when there has been a change to an article that you have decided to follow." The bulk scraping of email addresses from account registrations for research and outreach purposes doesn't appear to be contemplated or authorized under the privacy policy.

Michelle can help with this one as this is related to Legal. Note that it's weekend here and this may have to wait until Monday.

3. Wouldn't talk pages be a more appropriate outreach method than bulk email?

The reason we chose email over talk pages (or Echo notifications) is explained here.

Hope this helps.

Best,
Leila

Thanks,

Pine


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