Talk:Requests for comment/Opt-in site registration during installation

Wiki description
This information would be good to have in core, and be output in on the main page. That would make Google and Bing display that description when the main page is on search results (for example, searching for the name of the wiki). It should be a small sentence, though, different from a hypothetical (mediawiki:aboutpage). This was done on Wikia years ago, where wikis can edit that on MediaWiki:Description. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) 09:45, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Data sent
I don't understand the proposed data. Why send data that we can easily retrieve via the API? In essence, the only thing we need is the API endpoint URL (or index.php for older wikis and wikis where it's disabled, but those are probably both hopeless), plus some other unstructured data not in the API (as a description, and for many wikis the copyright status) and perhaps some server environment information (mentioned e.g. in wikitech-l/2013-October/072185.html). --Nemo 00:04, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Publicity of the data sent
Generally, I think we need this data desperately in order to improve MediaWiki for 3rd parties. Just a few remarks: --Mglaser (talk) 21:21, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Some (if not many) of the wikis will be inhouse. They can send a ping to a WMF server, but cannot be polled for data (re: Nemo, "Data sent" ;) ).
 * Inhouse vs. public might be a piece of information we want to poll (could be done automatically via IP (?) or be checked). I think this information is very valuable.
 * I know (at least one) very security sensitive administrator. He might be willing to send anonymous stats, but wouldn't want them to be publicly available. So I'd prefer a two-step opt in: send data and allow the data to be public.
 * As Mark scetched out, this is tightly tied to the question of wiki spam.
 * How about continuous statistics, like number of pages, users, edits?

Two comments from Dan Garry
This looks to be a nice way to provide some statistics about who's using MediaWiki, and where it's being used. I have two concerns, though.


 * 1) There are potential privacy implications to this depending on the nature of the information that is sent. The current resolution, namely making the person agree to send the information, does not absolve us of the responsibility of handling that data properly. Third parties are sending us data, and we should treat that seriously. In the present implementation it looks like this is handled though, as there is not really any private information sent. A declaration of what we'll use the data for would be nice.
 * 2) "Send data on your wiki to Wikimedia?" has the potential to be taken the wrong way, like we're some central authority on wikis or something. I suspect that this problem can mostly be solved by the wording of the text presented to the user, and I can potentially some support for refining the text in my role as product manager for platform. Please feel free get in touch if you'd like my help.

Thanks!

--Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)