Wikimedia LGBT+/Wikimania 2013/Privacy

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Wikimedia LGBT+

Privacy has been, and remains, the top priority of Wikimedia LGBT+ organizers and advisors. It is vital to the protection and safety of participants as not all members will be from nations that have LGBT friendly laws.

During Wikimania 2013, a number of people from nations where privacy is a serious concern were incredibly helpful in offering suggestions on a model the group can use to provide privacy to any participants in this group. Members will be able to select how much information they would like to share.

The suggested options being:

Characteristics of members
member type publicly uses Wikipedia name? publicly uses real name? privately shares Wikipedia name? privately shares real name?
public yes yes n/a n/a
semi public 1 yes no n/a yes
semi public 2 yes no n/a no
semi private 1 no no yes yes
semi private 2 no no yes no
private no no no no

A Privacy Officer will be elected, with consideration for the laws of the candidates' residence, and charged with maintaing an offline record of anonymous members linked to a randomly assigned User # format ID for any communication or group documentation. This was a collection of suggestions, and is certainly up for amendments. Additionally a future privacy policy for Wikimedia projects will likely include removing the public display of IP addresses when wikis are edited anonymously. Combined with the privacy considerations already taken with this mailing list - the group remains committed to doing the absolute best we can to protect the privacy and identities of this group's members. This is an incredibly important topic, and constructive input is welcome.