Legal:New User Welcome Survey Privacy Statement

This statement describes how and when Wikimedia collects, uses, and shares the information we receive from survey participants.

Purpose of Survey

We appreciate your feedback! This survey will help us understand what new users are trying to accomplish on Wikipedia, direct them to appropriate assistance, and potentially use their feedback to build new features.

What Information We Collect

This survey collects the responses you provide to the questions asked; there are two types of answers: defined responses, and free-form responses. We will automatically collect your username and which language version of Wikipedia you are using. If you choose to provide your email address, it will be added to your account preferences, but it will not be stored with your responses to this survey.

Information Sharing and Disclosure

The results of this survey will be shared publicly in the following manner. Aggregate data about the defined-response questions, and a sample of anonymous raw answers to the free-form response questions, will be published on mediawiki.org. For that reason, we strongly suggest that you do not provide your real name, username, email address, or other personal information in response to any free-response questions. If you choose to be contacted about getting help with editing, the Wikimedia Foundation may contact you via email for that purpose.

Raw data will only be shared with the Wikimedia staff, contractors, and volunteers who need to process this information and are subject to non-disclosure obligations, with the exception of the circumstances described below.

We may disclose any collected information when required by law, when we have your permission, when needed to protect our rights, privacy, safety, users, or the general public, and when necessary to enforce our Terms of Use or any other Wikimedia policy.

Licensing of Survey Responses

By answering the free-form response questions, you agree that we may record your answers, and agree to donate them to the public domain under the terms of Creative Commons Zero 1.0 (full text available at https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).

Important Information

Wikimedia Foundation is a global organization committed to promoting free and open knowledge. In submitting your response, you understand that the information transferred to Wikimedia Foundation will be collected, transferred, stored, processed, disclosed and otherwise used in the U.S. as described in this Privacy Statement. You also understand that the information may be transferred by us from the U.S. to other countries, which may have different or less stringent data protection laws than your country, in order to carry out the aforementioned purposes and objectives.

Wikimedia understands the importance of user privacy. For this reason, we work to protect our users from the unauthorized disclosure or use of information we maintain. The data collected in this survey will be deleted, anonymized, or aggregated within one year. See our data retention guidelines for more information.

For questions about this survey, contact bevellin@wikimedia.org.

Thanks again for your feedback!

The Wikimedia Foundation

Please note that in the event of any differences in meaning or interpretation between the original English version of this Privacy Statement and a translation, the original English version takes precedence.