2010/8/3 Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com>
On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 9:13 AM, emijrp
<emijrp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, reading the Privacy Policy[10] of the Wikimedia Foundation, you
can
see:
User contributions are also aggregated and publicly available. User
contributions are aggregated according to their registration and login
status. Data on user contributions, such as the times at which users
edited
and the number of edits they have made, are
publicly available via user
contributions lists, and in aggregated forms published by other users.
The privacy policy is clear. Your number of edits is public. And it can
be
published in aggregated forms by other uses. And
if you edit Wikipedia,
you
accept the Privacy Policy. Also, on the top of
the Privacy Policy page
you
> can read:
>
> The content of this page is an official policy approved by the
Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees. This policy may not be circumvented,
eroded,
> or ignored on local Wikimedia projects.
>
> But now, German Wikipedia has an "official local privacy policy" which
is
opposed
to that.
No. The privacy policy tells which information, and under which
circumstances *may* be divulged.
And it says that the number of edits is public.
It is not against the policy to provide less
information than that, only
to
provide more information.
But it is against the policy to write a new policy which converts the
number
of edits in a private data, until the user gives permission to be used and
published in statistics.
At least, that is how I always read the privacy
policy.
--
André Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
While I disagree with the policy I'm not sure we can say that they aren't
allowed to make it. I think a more restrictive policy would be allowed just
not less restrictive.
That being said I'm not totally sure that basic info like edit counts should
be disallowed since most of them are given by the software itself (and still
is) not to mention the toolserver. Perhaps more complex things (which are
currently disallowed by the toolserver without opt-in for example). I know
for example that X!s tool is required to get opt in to show broken down
stats like per month/time of day/graphs.
James Alexander
james.alexander(a)rochester.edu
jamesofur(a)gmail.com