I've been meaning to update you on our progress regarding the privacy
policy.
Several months ago, the board asked Mike Godwin to revise and update the
privacy policy. Mike consulted with his colleagues at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, and then worked with his then-legal intern,
Shun-ling Chen, to create a first redraft which was posted to Meta at
the beginning of June. That engendered a lot of feedback, which Mike
reviewed. He found quite a bit of it useful, and incorporated it into a
subsequent redraft, which is available here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Draft_Privacy_Policy_June_19_2008
(note: despite the date in the page name, the current version is from a
later date, based on feedback from the June 19 version)
At our meeting in Alexandria, the board reviewed the status of the
policy, and seemed inclined to agree that this second version (at the
URL above) is fundamentally good, and an improvement on the current
policy. It's hard to write a privacy policy that's fun to read, but I
think this version is clear, thorough, responsible and accurate. It also
now includes a linkable table of contents, which will enable people to
easily link to subsections of the draft for reference. (When adopted, we
encourage you to link to the appropriate section from community policy
pages where they touch on privacy issues, rather than paraphrasing or
generating unofficial versions of the policy.)
The board intends to vote on this version, but before we do, I wanted to
provide one last opportunity for your feedback.
If you see something in this last draft that strikes you as a
dealbreaker: that is potentially misleading or seriously problematic for
any reason, please send me or Mike a note. If we don't hear anything
within a week, I will ask the board to vote on the current version for
formal adoption.
--Michael Snow