On 26 October 2010 11:00, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 26 October 2010 14:23, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know about anyone else, but I couldn't possibly care less what office software the Foundation uses. I suppose the paranoid conspiracy theory of a Google takeover fueled by illicit access to WMF data doesn't strike me as remotely realistic.
Google's greatest weakness is in the privacy sector. Anyone remember when they turned on Buzz and suddenly there was all kinds of personal information made available because they linked people's multiple accounts? Well, the same thing holds for all their other applications.
One might think that people operating within the WMF, and in the higher levels of the chapters, are likely to have publicly linked their "real life" names with their wiki-identities, but that is not always the case; there are definitely chapter-level people who have not done so. Maintaining that separation is very difficult and needs to be checked on a regular basis, since Google changes their algorithm periodically. Using Google Apps may have the unintentional side effect of deterring valuable contributors from participating in certain activities.
Certainly, oversighters on English Wikipedia have had to deal with the fallout of personal information being unintentionally revealed by editors who were unaware of this situation with Google. When we are providing information on how to address perceived privacy violations, we include a recommendation to those who use Gmail to review all of their Google-related accounts and ensure that they remove all links.
Risker/Anne