Bytesock
Welcome to Meta! edit
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User analysis tools edit
About your concern, the funny thing is that in my experience a lot of people make a lot generic speeches about privacy but when you ask for a real place to discuss and agree on some robust "starting points" no one seems to hurry up. If someone they don't know or trust suggests something new (a tool) you can have great principles stated, but if it a friend do the same or they are involved in some project with their name on it, they don't seem to care very much. It's in the nature of human beings, I guess.
Often advanced tools exist and few "expert" users use them, which is even worse, IMHO. w:it:Utente:Alexmar983 contains some of the tools I found during these years. They often broke down, but new ones arrive. I wanted to have a global discussion at least on itWikipedia about the issue, a permanent project dedicated to "community issues" such as this one, but it never occurred. Also, as far as I witnessed with my own yes in these years, your editing pattern can be analyzed by everyone who has the expertise to do it in any case, tools like CentralAuth just make it possible for a lot of people, but if the page history is there (and it has to be, the editing process should be public) it can always be processed as metadata.
Now I use these tools but I am honest, I would like people to select a box when they enroll for example to be sure they understand what those data are, things like that. At the moment "my truth" is that they exist and trust me they are really useful for the maintenance of a complex system such as our platforms. I use them in the interest of newbies with good results, but yes I guess someone may use them improperly. I strongly believe users have to be informed and discussion to be public. Well, vox clamans in deserto.--Alexmar983 (talk) 06:04, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
- My experience is that most people just are too cognitively impaired to get what's wrong with exposing information that isn't meant to be exposed. And who has what. It's like a claiming having a gun to your head isn't bad because you are still alive.. well.. Bytesock (talk) 14:37, 29 May 2016 (UTC)