[Foundation-l] Privacy policy, statistics and rankings

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

Risker wrote:
> On 3 August 2010 16:38, <wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>>
>> People can edit for years without creating an account, and they may well
>> have a static IP address. Besides simply writing down that data is
>> aggregated does not make it right. If its violation of personal data
>> right for Germans why should it be any less of a violation for
>> Spaniards, French, Americans, British, or the Chinese? Don't the German
>> pages also have links to privacy statements?
>>
>>
>>
> 
> Perhaps the point here is that it is not illegal in the place where the
> servers are housed, or where the WMF exists.


Just because something isn't illegal on one location doesn't mean that 
one has to do it, or that it is right to do it, or that one will get 
general accolades for doing so. Jerry Lee Lewis discovered that in 1958.


> I do find it kind of curious to see such a hostile response to the
> long-time, well-known privacy policy for a group of projects devoted to
> education, research and openness of information, particularly one
> where  each editor is personally and directly responsible for each edit s/he
> makes.  Publishing one's words on WMF projects is a *public* act, something
> that is made clear with every time someone opens an "edit" tab.  (If it
> isn't on the projects you work on, then it ought to be.)
> 

The issue is the aggregation and collation of the data and making it 
available to others. Why would you consider that some one's edit history 
is any less personal than what they borrow from the library?