25 Mar
2009
25 Mar
'09
5:41 p.m.
Hi Vincent,
Actually Denis is right. If we want to use a GUID we should make it part
of a concious agreement of sending back generic data (number of pages
etc..)
It can be considered spyware to do it not knowingly even if we collect
the data anonymously. I've had to deal this in the past with the data we
collected for usage statistics
So we should stick to the web data although it won't give us unique
installs as easily.
I have to think about it if we can find a solution to get some info
about unique installs without being intrusive.
Ludovic
Vincent Massol a écrit :
Hi Denis,
On Mar 25, 2009, at 2:46 PM, Denis Gervalle wrote:
--
Ludovic Dubost
Blog: http://blog.ludovic.org/
XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com
Skype: ldubost GTalk: ldubost
Vincent,
Here is my honest thoughts:
- Your idea is great if you do not generate any GUID and you use the
normal information any HTTP request made to your site, for producing
statistics. It is the fair spying we all practice, I cannot disagree.
- Your GUID idea is great if you apply it under the clear acceptance
of the user, so that you add in the admin preference an option to
participate in your statistics. And you may imagine transmitting event
more detail informations about a wiki, like the number of documents,
and some global stats on the visits. You of course has to publish a
clear privacy policy regarding the data collected. For having that
option checked, I suggest you put it checked on an first page
displayed the first time the wiki loads for acceptance.
I would really dislike to be spy on by a GUID without clearly knowing
so. It is spyware methods, no more.
Hope you understand my point, such method could make people angry.
Thanks for your feedback.
Just to be sure, the GUID would not allow to link any data back to you
of course, it's just an id that is the same across pings. We should
make sure of that. Then the idea is not to send any data at all, only
to know that a given instance is alive (for that we need to know that
2 pings are coming from the same XE install).
The problem is that adding a screen with disclaimer/etc is more
complex and would require more time. We would actually need the
installation wizard which is not there yet. I think it's a good idea
to do so but in this case, as you say we would probably gather more
data. Right now the need is very simple: just to know how many XE
installs are active.
The GUI could be a random number generated once and stored in the
database.
Do you consider that to be spying if there's no way to link that
simple information to you?
Thanks
-Vincent
With kind regards,
Denis
On 24 mars 09, at 19:09, Vincent Massol wrote:
> Hi devs,
>
> I think it would be interesting for us to know how many people
> install
> and use our software. Of course we'd need to do this in a non
> intrusive manner that adds value for the user.
>
> Here's an idea Ludovic and I have discussed:
> * In the administration page add a blog panel by default (replacing
> the create page panel for ex which IMO isn't needed there) showing
> the
> last 5 RSS feeds from xwiki.org
>
> -> This is useful for the admin users since they need to know the
> latest versions and news about the software they use
> -> They can remove the panel easily if they don't want to see news
> -> We can generate a unique id based on the user's system
(http://johannburkard.de/blog/programming/java/Java-UUID-generators-compared…
> ) so that we can identify active installs
>
> We could then define what we call an active install (say a ping at
> least once every month for ex) and we can find:
> - how many new installs per day/month/year
> - how many users stop using xwiki after some time and what the
> average
> time it's used actively
>
> Obviously we won't get perfect data (people will remove the panel,
> others won't be connected to the internet, etc) that but it seems to
> me it would a good guess.
>
> Once we get this data we could display it on xwiki.org (we could even
> display it in the stats space with the other data).
>
> WDYT?
>
> Thanks
> -Vincent
>
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