[WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 27, Issue 205

Wed Oct 26 23:55:53 UTC 2005

>
>Message: 10
>Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 00:26:04 +0100
>From: Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Privacy policy and editing anonymously notice.
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>,	Wikipedia
>	<wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>,	Wikimedia Foundation
>	<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>Message-ID: <4360108C.5070803 at starglade.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>Hi all,
>
>As the Board have been rather slow with publicising the new privacy
>policy,

What new privacy policy? Is there a new one?

>I have taken the step of adding a notice to the bottom of
>[[MediaWiki:Copyrightstext]] on the English-language Wikipedia (the text
>which is displayed when you click "Edit this page"), which mentions that
>if you are editing anonymously, your IP address will be publically and
>permanently associated with the edits, and if you're editing while
>logged in, your IP address will be stored for around 2 weeks.

I don't like this message. It is an extremely stern and harshly worded 
message that might scare away potential contributors. Isn't a link to the 
policy enough? Most websites don't write out their entire Terms of Service 
(TOS) directly on the page; there's a link to the ToS at the bottom instead. 
(Sidenote: if you've ever taken the time to read the ToS for some major 
websites, they're quite scary...)

>Someone has also added a link to the privacy policy on the bottom of
>every page.

I like that - nice and simple link to the policy, similar to the 
aforementioned ToS links.

><snip>
>Chris

I just don't think that the notice there is appropriate. When I clicked edit 
today, I went "What the...?!" A link at the bottom is enough, in my opinion. 
What do all of you think?

Regards,

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

_________________________________________________________________
On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to 
get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement