[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation's non-disclosure agreement

[MZMcBride]

Samuel Klein wrote:
>I have not seen a copy of such NDAs myself.   Where did you see that
>Bugzilla admins have to sign an NDA?

Philippe B. said so, I'm told. As it happens, most Bugzilla admins are
Wikimedia Foundation staff, so the issue doesn't seem to come up much.

>As far as I know the relevant issue is that anyone who has access to
>private personal information of users needs to sign an agreement that
>they will not share that information.

This definition doesn't seem to include CheckUsers, oversighters, OTRS
volunteers and OTRS administrators, wiki administrators, and many others,
so I'm not sure it's accurate.

It's unclear whether Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees members and
Wikimedia stewards are also required to sign NDAs. It seems all Wikimedia
Foundation employees are required to sign one.

And I imagine there are other (volunteer) user groups I'm forgetting.

>Whatever people are signing, it makes sense for the agreements
>themselves to be public.

Agreed. :-)  Any idea who I could poke about that? I e-mailed this list in
January 2013 with no real response.

Relatedly, the Wikimedia Foundation's employee handbook was posted to
wikimediafoundation.org in December 2012, but it was subsequently deleted
without explanation: <https://wikimedia.org/wiki/Employee_Handbook> and
<https://wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Smerrick#Employee_Handbook>. I'm not
totally sure this level of transparency is exactly needed, per se, but it
was an interesting read and it may serve as a reference point for other
non-profits and similar organizations. It'd be nice to see it re-posted at
some point.

MZMcBride