[Foundation-l] Privacy policy, statistics and rankings

[James Alexander]

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 3:56 AM, emijrp <emijrp at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2010/8/3 Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>
>
> > On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 9:13 AM, emijrp <emijrp at 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 at 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 at rochester.edu
jamesofur at gmail.com