[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Find out active XE installations - xwiki-devs@xwiki.org

Denis Gervalle

25 Mar 25 Mar

2:46 p.m.

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. With kind regards, Denis On 24 mars 09, at 19:09, Vincent Massol wrote:

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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 _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs(a)xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs

-- Denis Gervalle SOFTEC sa http://www.softec.st

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Ludovic Dubost

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 :

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Hi Denis, On Mar 25, 2009, at 2:46 PM, Denis Gervalle wrote:

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 >

_______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs(a)xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs

-- Ludovic Dubost Blog: http://blog.ludovic.org/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost GTalk: ldubost

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Vincent Massol

9:21 a.m.

On Mar 26, 2009, at 9:15 AM, Denis Gervalle wrote:

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Hi Vincent, On 25 mars 09, at 16:08, Vincent Massol wrote:

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).

Yes, I have understand that but even without personal information, generating unique ID could be considered spyware. Do you remember the reaction when Intel has introduce a GUID in their processor ? Probably many people will not care and never noticed, but do you want to take the risk that one be shocked and start an internet compain saying you are developing spyware ? For myself, I would not, and I feel that privacy is a growing concern these days.

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.

As I have said, ensuring that some page trigger a RSS request to your site will probably not raise the same issue, and collecting data from web server logs is commonly accepted. I feel that with some clever algorithm, you may be able to derive some significant information. I hopefully, we can imagine that the wizard will be ready when more precise statistics will be needed.

The GUI could be a random number generated once and stored in the database.

This precisely what I dislike in this idea.

Do you consider that to be spying if there's no way to link that simple information to you?

Definitely, yes this is spyware practice. It is exactly the same as leaving a cookie.

ok I understand. Thanks for your feedback. That was why I posted this (to ensure there was no problem and I'm glad you caught it since there is a problem :)). As ludovic said he'll try to think about other ways to find active installs (it was his idea initially that I was trying to implement). Thanks again -Vincent

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