Forum:Privacy Policy Change

Alright, so I need to bring up the topic about our Privacy Policy. I have looked at other wikis' Privacy Policies and it seems that our wiki's is... stricter. That is, it is disallowing certain personal information. Also, I would like to note that these websites are considerably larger than our miniscule site, and are consequently more vulnerable. In other words, what I am saying is since our website is so tiny, not many people know about it, and an extremely tiny fraction of those people may be cyber-stalkers or something. So, we are pretty much safe.

While I do realize that a Privacy Policy like that may be more suitable for a larger website, I do not think it is so suitable for Pikmin Fanon, due to its minute size (see my reasoning above). Therefore, I talked with Wraith about it, we had some disagreements, but we came to the conclusion, yes, I can change it. I was lacking one crucial component: the community's opinion. In my view, everything (well... mostly everything) should have an opinion and/or comments from the community, because I think that if the entire community is involved, it will make Pikmin Fanon a better place.

So now, our Privacy Policy is very strict &mdash; it disallows, according to the Privacy Policy itself, a user's middle and last name, a user's city, zip Code, address or general location, a picture of the user, a user's age; a user's grade in school, and a user's phone number. The biggest concern I have with is age. Why is age disallowed? All it is doing is confirming how many years a user has been alive. The others I can understand, but other websites allow those too, so I have mild concerns about those as well. I just want to adjust it to a more community-friendly approach.

So, please voice in your comments and opinions. I want to hear what the community thinks.

Support

 * - Per PikminFanatic's statements.
 * - I totally agree!

Comments
If a user gives out age, then it makes that much more information out cyberspace. We do not need to be endangering schoolkids, as so much information exists out on the web today. I just punched in an obscure name that is not widely used, and one of the results said (name replaced with blank):'' __________'s photos, phone, email, address, and public records for free! Find more about _________'s biography, profile, email, cv, curriculum''. I don't know about you, but finding something like this that is advertised as free is very disconcerting. I do not believe users should put out any more information than they have too.


 * What kind of website/advertisement was it? That sounds extremely fake to me; it's probably just a scam that gives out lies. Aside from that, your concerns are understandable, but I just want to give users the opportunity to give out age. Note that this is if they want to. I personally don't see how age harms anyone &mdash; it's just a number. That's all it really is. But your argument is backed up, I'll give you credit for that.


 * Retrieving information on the internet is much easier than many people think. And what Peach Bulborb said about the information being "advertised", he didn't mean it was an ad, advertise means to advert. Advert is described as "to turn attention to", so he meant it in the sense that that person's information was freely available for all to see on the internet via major data mining websites. I could literally use only your name and general location, as well as your age, (even if it is only implied) to completely find anyone. Phones broadcast your location on a daily basis, and to add to the negative effect is that social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter broadcast this information by default. Now I understand much of you on here may not use these sites, but for those who do, they can easily be found and tracked, and eventually visited. We want to prevent this from happening. The web is not a safe place for naive people. Now I am not calling anyone naive but I cannot stress enough how much of a big deal this is. Based on the information every user gives out now it is possible to find them, all I want to do is reduce the risk of this happening. Now I know that the chances of a stalker stumbling onto such an obscure website are trivial at best, but we can't become lax until some event like that actually happens! I care about all of the users on this site and I really would like for everyone to be safe here. I think the best course of action is to not allow such personal discretion simply because many don't know what can harm them. It is much easier for me to say that we can all say whatever we'd like, but in the interest of protecting you guys, I'm going to have to disallow this from happening. 11:55, 29 May 2013 (EDT)


 * My apologies for the misunderstanding about the advertising thing. Anyway, now that you have practically listed how people can find users, I'm a bit more concerned. Only thing is, some people, like you said, don't use Facebook or Twitter (I certainly don't, and I don't own a phone). Additionally, if you have just age &mdash; nothing else &mdash; then the chances of a stalker finding you are very low. But I'd like to acknowledge that age does narrow it down, yet not down to the point where they can find you with ease. Then there's the problem of a user on different sites. If a user has barely anything here, yet loads more info elsewhere, that can be a huge problem. That could be really bad. Mind you, I only want to allow age &mdash; nothing else. My proposal is placing a warning on the Privacy Policy, listing the risks and possible outcomes, but still allowing age.