Policy talk:Privacy policy

Archives: See Talk:Privacy policy/archive for all comments made before the policy was approved by the Board in April 2005.

spelling/grammar corrections and suggested rewording

"However, you may contact one of Wikimedia developer to enter a new mail address in your preferences."
- "one of Wikimedia developer" -> "a Wikimedia developer" or "one of the Wikimedia developers"
- It may be difficult or impossible for a developer to verify that the person making the request is the person who uses the account, so I suggest rewording to: "However, you may contact a Wikimedia developer and request that they enter an email address in your preferences." and some note to the effect that the request may be refused if there is suspicion.
"By participating to an IRC channel" -> "By participating in an IRC channel"
"publicaly" -> "publicly"
"agregated" -> "aggregated"
"Many aspects of the Wikimedia projects community interactions" -> "Many aspects of Wikimedia projects' community interactions"
"or it required by law to release the infomation" -> "or it is required by law to release the infomation"
"Only a developer can permanently delete information from the Wikimedia projects and there is no guarantee this will happen except in response to legal action."
- suggest changing "except in response to legal action" to "unless it is legally required", as anybody can perform legal action, whether or not their complaint is valid.

-- Jeronim 18:09, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You can make the minor changes at Privacy policy. These will be moved to the foundation wiki version once the page here stabilizes. The aim of making it "official" was to encourage people to actually look at it and comment on it since it's been basically ignored for months, not to prevent anyone making edits to the page. Angela 20:59, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Technical problems

The description of what an IP is is both inappropriate here (overly-complicated - 'a number' will suffice, writing it as a dotted-quad is wholly optional) and IPv4-specific, whereas IPv6 support is likely to be forthcoming. Better to fix this now, i.e.:

"[...] your network IP address. This is a series of four numbers which identifies the Internet address [...]"

→

"[...] your network IP address, a number which identifies the Internet address [...]"

Also, the statement about your IP being displayed to all users in IRC is misleading.

"[...] By participating to an IRC channel, your IP address will be exposed to other participants. [...]"

→

"[...] By participating to an IRC channel, your IP address may be exposed to other participants. [...]"

James F. (talk) 20:58, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Regarding accounts

Once created, user accounts can not be removed.

Yes they can, you probably meant to say "won't". —User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason/Sig 00:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, though there are several places where it is said quite explicitly that there is no chance of this happening, so we might want to make it a little stronger than "won't". Perhaps "user accounts will never be removed"?

James F. (talk) 00:55, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have a concern about committing to that clause in the very long term. I put it at Talk:Right to vanish but maybe should have posted it here. Any thoughts? Rossami 23:03, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppets

"data collected in the server logs will not be released ... except as follows: ... Where the user has been vandalising articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers"

Developers are often asked to check whether two users are the same person. Does the privacy policy allow this currently or should it be more explicit about this? Angela 14:13, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that that's sufficient; I looked over the text with CheckUser et al. in mind, and I think it's enough.

James F. (talk) 17:49, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Remember to disconnect"

However, remember to disconnect yourself after using a pseudonym to avoid allowing others to use your identity.

This sentence seems a bit confusing to me. (Disconnect yourself? From where? Do you mean "log out"?) And, is it a good idea to add such general advice to a page stating policy, anyway? --Mormegil 18:47, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you are publishing every word you post publicly. If you write something, assume that it will be retained forever. This includes articles, user pages and talk pages. Some limited exceptions are described below.

Does this include images and audio? or am I being too pedantic.

To Jimbo Wales/To the President of WMF

¿Shouldn't be said to the President of WMF instead of To Jimbo Wales? --Ascánder 17:14, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't it make more sense for it to refer to the Board than either of those? Angela

site statistics pages link is broken

I get a 404 when I click on the site statistics pages link in the Private logging section. Js-js2 01:55, 10 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Data on users

I am not sure I understand the meaning of this:

Data on users, such as the times at which they edited and the number of edits they have made are publicly available via "user contributions" lists, and occasionally in aggregated forms published by other users.

Fault

I'm sorry but I have no login and I just saw a little mistake : In the party "Sharing information with third parties" the last "information" has no "r". Cheers :)

Update

Once I logged on otrs, on preferences I found some info-xx addresses which aren't described at this document. like info-fr Those addresses are also better to be listed here? Or they are in fact still dormant? --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 23:56, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hashed passwords

As far as I know Mediawiki does not store users' password, it merely stores password hashes, from which actual passwords can not be recovered. Privacy policy should state this so user can be concerned about more important matters. --195.113.65.10 14:55, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Research access to logs

I think we should have a good community discussion to review our privacy policy with an eye towards revising it in order to allow some limited additional access to our access logs for credible academic researchers who are willing to sign a strong non disclosure agreement.

This sort of data is of intense interest to researchers -- I am getting more and more requests for it -- and I think that the results of the research would be incredibly helpful to our global mission. We make a lot of decisions based on our own theories of how the community really works, but I wonder what facts about ourselves we don't realize because they are lost in the data.

--Jimbo (on Foundation-l, 9 August 2005)