[Foundation-l] Data retention

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Jon wrote:
>> I could not find this in the privacy policy... however, what is
>> Wikimedia's current data retention policy?  That is to ask, how long do
>> projects keep data for use in tools such as checkuser?
>
> CheckUser data used to be kept for 3 months, but Aaron recently increased
> it to 5 months. I'm not sure why or on whose authority.
>
> <http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/CheckUser/CheckUser.php?r1=39734&r2=40620>

I think Jon was inquiring about more than just checkuser (notice the
"such as").  I would assume that anyone asking about data retention in
general is not overly concerned with the specific modes of retention,
but is more concerned with the maximum retention time (across all
modes) of any particular type of private data.