Talk:Community Tech/Data Portability

Hi, this is very interesting. As you may know, I specialize in EU data protection law in my day job. Let me know if I can help in any way. --Gnom (talk) Let's make Wikipedia green! 13:04, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer Gnom. JMatazzoni (WMF) (talk) 22:43, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Observations on data availability

Looking over the current list it looks like everything is already available, just not in one convenient download:

• All edits and logged actions the user performed. This will include page edits, page creations, page moves, page deletions, thanks, patrol actions, page protections, etc.
  • Special:MyContributions has edits, or use the action API.
  • Special:Log can list log entries by user ("Performer"), or use the action API.
• User ID #
• Username
• Email address (if we have it)
• Email verification date (if we have it)
• Account registration date
  • These are all easily fetched from the action API. All except the ID are also on Special:Preferences.
• Date of first edit
• Date of latest edit
  • Unless you're going to include deleted edits or edits where the username was suppressed, you can find this by looking at the first and last entries in the list of edits.
• User groups joined
  • "Joined" seems like the wrong word, MediaWiki's user groups are typically added by other users (e.g. Bureaucrats) rather than by the user themself. Current groups are available via the API and Special:Preferences.
• Global user groups joined (e.g. global interface editor)
• Wikis that the user has an account on [Not absolutely required, but the idea is to tell them this as an alternative to actually going and fetching all the global data]
  • I note this data would come from the CentralAuth extension. Both items are available from Special:CentralAuth and from CentralAuth's API modules.
• Preferences (this wiki, including hidden preferences)
  • These are available from the action API.
• User group changes (including comments unless suppressed)
  • Special:Log/rights, entering your user page as the target, gives this information (or, again, the the action API).
• Number of times the user was blocked; info about the blocks (including comments unless suppressed)
  • Special:Log/block, entering your user page as the target, gives this information (or, again, the the action API).

The biggest issue you might run into is that the list of all edits and logged actions might be very large, especially if you include the content or diffs of all those edits. HTH. Anomie (talk) 15:20, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Anomie. Thanks for these. We've just gotten started developing this, and I'm sure your comments will be helpful. JMatazzoni (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

GDPR dependency

This request could be closely related to the GDPR rules (EU privacy law). GDPR requires that every EU citizen has control over ones private data, and has the right to have an electronic download available of private data. Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 16:01, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for this thought talk. JMatazzoni (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 26 March 2019 (UTC)