Talk:Privacy policy/IT guidelines

"People interacting with Wikimedia UK (members, board members, donors, staff and partners in general) deserve absolute privacy in their exchange with Wikimedia UK." - there's a tension here between privacy and transparency, which could do with expanding on. Privacy is only really important when it comes to confidential things that can't be made public for whatever reason, and it's only then that we should be aiming to keep things as private as they can be. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:35, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Mike, not sure to understand you right, do you disagree with the sentence which directly follows the one you have quoted "As long as the contrary is not clearly announced, the data are private and should not be communicated to a third party."? Kelson (talk) 09:54, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand it, sorry! I'd suggest rewording "As long as the contrary is not clearly announced", as I'm not sure it means what you intend it to mean... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:40, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I mean "As long as it is not clearly announced that a data is public and consequently might be shared"... data are private (and so one should not be shared). Is that more clear? Kelson (talk) 17:57, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

It's more clear, but could still do with rewording. What do you mean by "clearly announced"? Is it clearly announced that data posted here are public? I'd actually suggest flipping it around, and saying that data is private where it is clearly indicated that it is private (such as the recent members survey did) or there's a clear expectation for privacy (e.g. email communication between individuals), in which case the privacy challenges will be tackled as described below. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:06, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Mike for the clarification. So, the discussion point is the "default behaviour". I tend for privacy, you tend for the right of making the information public (correct me if I'm wrong). Regarding this wiki, the strategy regarding the content is clearly available in the footer displayed on all pages: It's public and free content. From a general POV, I don't think that "flipping it around" would be a good move; this is not how it works "in the normal case/real world" and therefore doing this is dangerous if not illegal (but I'm not a -british- lawyer. In France or Switzerland I'm almost sure this is). In any case, I'm not in position of deciding anything regarding this - this must be a political decision. We should gather other feedbacks. Kelson (talk) 18:29, 1 January 2014 (UTC)