[Foundation-l] Privacy policy, statistics and rankings

[wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk]

Sebastian Moleski wrote:
>> 
> That's not quite what the rule tries to accomplish. Rather, the point is
> this: personal data being public does not allow anyone to aggregate such
> data in a way such that the result is still tied to individual people (also
> called 'profiling'). Why is that so? Because according to this German point
> of view, people have the right to control what their personal data is being
> used for. Since, when setting up an account on MediaWiki, there's no
> explicit statement saying that your editing data may be aggregated in such a
> manner, MediaWiki users didn't give permission to such aggregation and
> therefore such aggregation may not take place. Therefore, such aggregation
> without opt-in can't be published on German Wikipedia or on the Toolserver
> (which is run by Wikimedia Deutschland and therefore subject to German law).
> 
> I understand that this position may seem odd to a lot of people, especially
> if they come from the US or UK. I'm just stating a perception that is very
> common here.
> 


That isn't odd to me. Where does anyone sign to give permission for 
their editing history to be aggregated and scrapped? There is no such 
permission granted, and as many are under 18 they do not have the legal 
capacity to enter into such agreements anyway.