Checkuser data retention Options

[gomi]

here:

Tim Starling tstarling at wikimedia.org
Thu Sep 11 03:11:52 UTC 2008

Jon wrote:
> I could not find this in the privacy policy... however, what is
> Wikimedia's current data retention policy? That is to ask, how long do
> projects keep data for use in tools such as checkuser?

CheckUser data used to be kept for 3 months, but Aaron recently increased
it to 5 months. I'm not sure why or on whose authority.

<http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/CheckUser/CheckUser.php?r1=39734&r2=40620>

-- Tim Starling

[gomi]

I should hasten to add that there are probably site-specific overrides possible, and it is well within the realm of possibility that Wikipedia uses one. That would explain why Starling was so cavalier about giving out the above information.

More on the subject, from the same thread:

Tim Starling tstarling at wikimedia.org
Thu Sep 11 04:26:16 UTC 2008

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> I think Jon was inquiring about more than just checkuser (notice the
> "such as"). I would assume that anyone asking about data retention in
> general is not overly concerned with the specific modes of retention,
> but is more concerned with the maximum retention time (across all
> modes) of any particular type of private data.

The other logs are not automatically rotated, and need to be manually
purged. The retention time is thus not consistent. Typically we have kept
around 6 months of data. There are error logs, and logs for various kinds
of special requests. They are not used for sockpuppet investigation.

I've said in the past that I think 6 months would be a reasonable horizon
for all private data -- it would give us plenty of data for operations,
and would be a far shorter period than that used by the large commercial
websites.

-- Tim Starling