[Labs-l] Discussion needed: Technically feasible, legally okay... but want tools do we want?

[Silke Meyer]

Hello all!

tl,dr;
We need to talk: Does it matter if there are tools in Tool Labs that users
have objections to even if they are legally okay?

I would like to bring up a discussion about the community on Tool Labs. I
think we should discuss some "non-legal" rules for this rather new space of
Tool Labs: What do we want Tool Labs to be? A technical platform? A
community? What do we want the tools to be or to do? Do the developers want
to come to a common understanding about these questions? Are the concerns
of others heard and respected? How are common decisions made???

These are not questions WMF alone can/should answer, but we all can. Let's
open the discussion!

My e-mail has the following background:
Currently there is a discussion going on (as far as I know mainly in German
[1], [2]) about the tool "Deep User Inspection" in Tool Labs [3]. Many
people feel uncomfortable about their edit stats being displayed like that.
I think the bottomline is: Yes, these data are publicly available but does
that mean we want to gather and present them like that only because it's
technically feasible? Do we want to encourage this sort of profiling?

On the toolserver there is a similar tool[4] and there was a discussion / a
voting [5] about using a user opt-in to parts of the data. (Also see the
3rd paragraph in the toolserver's Privacy policy at [6].)
Now on [1] and [2] people claim that the Deep User Inspection tool was
written without an opt-in in direct response to this discussion. Whether
this is true or not (I can't tell), this might be the moment to talk.

Dear former toolserver users,
I would also like to ask you for the patience to discuss again what you
might have discussed for the toolserver before. There were agreements made
for specific tools on the toolserver that are no longer known or not
automatically valid in Tool Labs. If they are important to you, you should
address them again here.

Opinions and decisions, too! (Btw how are such decisions made at all in
Tool Labs?)

Best, Silke


[1]
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Diskussion:Wikimedia_Deutschland_e._V.#Deep_user_inspector
[2]
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Diskussion:Kurier#Deep_user_inspector
[3] https://tools.wmflabs.org/ricordisamoa/dui/
[4] https://toolserver.org/~tparis/pcount/index.php
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/X!%27s_Edit_Counter
[6] https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Rules#Privacy_Policy

-- 
Silke Meyer
Internes IT-Management und Projektmanagement Toolserver

Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 260

http://wikimedia.de

Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/labs-l/attachments/20130918/feb8aa59/attachment.html>