[Foundation-l] Note regarding status of privacy policy

Sat Aug 9 16:16:10 UTC 2008

On Sat, Aug 9, 2008 at 10:46 AM, elisabeth bauer
<eflebeth at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2008/8/8 Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net>:
>
>> The board intends to vote on this version, but before we do, I wanted to
>> provide one last opportunity for your feedback.
> While the policy deals at length with who has access it is very silent
> about when all these persons are allowed to access my data and
> actually access my data. The only thing somehow related to this was
> "As a general principle, the access to, and retention of, personally
> identifiable data in all projects should be minimal and should be used
> only internally to serve the well-being of the projects." which is
> somehow a bit vague. Who defines what is well-being? How is this
> controlled? Who does guarantee that a nosy checkuser doesn't just look
> up my user information, revealing my employer,  the wikipedia user
> name of my boyfriend and other friends just for fun? How would I even
> know?

Elian, this is exactly the situation we have on the English Wikipedia.
Jimbo takes the view that checkusers may be conducted more or less at
random, for no reason, and the checkusers follow that lead. In other
words, the Foundation's checkuser policy is being openly flouted.

We've been told we can't complain to the Ombudsman commission because
they only deal with violations of the privacy policy, not the
checkuser policy. We've been told we have no right to know whether
we've been checked. Attempts to introduce such a rule have led to the
checkusers saying they will not follow it. And when we do find out
that we've been checked, the only concern of the checkusers is to find
out who told us, and to punish that person. It really is a very bad
situation for the Foundation, one that's bound to lead to trouble
sooner or later.

Sarah