On 8/10/06, Daniel Kinzler <daniel(a)brightbyte.de> wrote:
Ideally, new users would be presented with a text
explaining what data
they expose when they contribute, and how this may be analyzed. This may
even be made a click-through part of the account creation process.
I suspect in certain legal jurisdictions we may be actually required
to do this. (anyone?)
The problem with this is that it puts up another barrier to
registration as a user.
Also ideally, users would be able to state which types
of analysis they
want to allow. Perhaps a simple scheme of "no statistics", "simple
statistics" and "detailed statistics" would be enough, with a default of
"simple". "Simple" statistics would basically be total counts (number
of
edits, maybe per namespace, number of deletions, etc), "detailed" would
be "anything goes". A per-project policy could then require admins to at
least allow simple statistics, or something like that.
My concern with this is that abusive users will abuse privacy options
to reduce oversight of what they're doing, and that adopting such a
policy would eventually lead to restricting access to such things as
Special:Contributions.
-Matt