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

Wed Sep 18 21:36:08 UTC 2013

Hello Silke,

I would like to raise a counter question. If people do not like that people
use the data they themselves provide, is it the use of data or the fact
that they make that data publicly available by own choice and not
understanding it that is the problem? Clearly, any experienced Wikipedian
know how to look at user contributions, and if someone makes what is
already available userfriendly that is a Good thing™. If we do not like
userfriendliness, it is not the tool that is wrong, but the way in how we
collect data. Some obvious options stand out (there might be more): 1) do
not collect data on who is making what edits 2) do not make that data
available to other than trusted people (admins or higher user rights) 3) be
clearer what data is actually made public by making edits.

As I see it, this is not a question for labs-l, but wikimedia-l because the
data available in dumps can be used to do these kind of tools on external
platforms. Prohibiting someone to analyze available data is so far from the
free knowledge movement I am not even sure I can wrap my head around it. If
the data is not available to start with it is a completely different story
though. So in my opinion, that is where the discussion should start, not at
how clever people use what is available could be a problem.

So to finally give my opinion on some of your questions se below.

2013/9/18 Silke Meyer <silke.meyer at wikimedia.de>

> 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?
>

Yes. Not to prevent tools, but to change what is possible to do.

>
> 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 platform for experiments and tools.

> A technical platform?
>

Yes.

> 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?
>

Yes, if not we should not make them publicly available.

> Do we want to encourage this sort of profiling?'
>

Yes! We want to encourage everyone to play with all data that is availble.
Otherwise innovation and insights will be forever lost and the movement is
the loser.

/Jan
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