3 ms·

Some open source product owners have understood the value of not tracking their users. Others, it seems, still think it's a benign thing to do. To be more cons

by Aissen 6y ago

Some open source product owners have understood the value of not tracking their users. Others, it seems, still think it's a benign thing to do. To be more constructive: if you need data, ask your users to enable telemetry (or in this case, provenance parameters). Some will understand what you need, and you'll get a usable sample from those users.

zackbloom 6y ago
That’s the definition of biased sampling.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Only if you have reason to suspect that those who opt-in are a skewed sample with respect to the things you want to measure.
orf 6y ago
The problem with this is that nobody will change the defaults, so that approach is utterly useless if you want actionable information. People label a number of different things, some bad and some good, under the general umbrella of "tracking". I'm not sure that name conveys enough nuance. Wikipedia wants to evaluate how effective a particular feature is and so they are slightly modifying a URL to do this. It's not tracking you, your family or your dog. It's basically appending "&source=ios". I'd think that is perfectly fine to any reasonable person.
- kelnos 6y ago
  Maybe I don't want to share a URL like that and tell everyone what OS and app I'm using to browse. I get that a lot of people (yourself included) don't care about that, and I think it is fair to ask what the big deal is, but that's just how I feel. I can't back that up with data or worries about a threat (though I imagine some people might be able to)... I just don't like it, even if it's one of the most benign forms of tracking. > I'd think that is perfectly fine to any reasonable person. I reject the assertion that I'm not a reasonable person. Please avoid arguments of this form, as it essentially says "if you don't agree with me, you're an idiot/wrong/defective", which is not productive way to argue your point. (I know I'm guilty of doing this on occasion as well, but I'm trying to get myself to stop.)
- stefan_ 6y ago
  This shit is added without even a thought of what the hell you are trying to evaluate. Insecure middle management types that want to have this noise added should be required to write up a study proposal and register a hypothesis. Instead its everywhere and for what? What is the actionable information?
  - orf 6y ago
    > This shit is added without even a thought of what the hell you are trying to evaluate. Instead its everywhere and for what? What is the actionable information? They are trying to evaluate the effectiveness of the social sharing features in their various projects. There are any number of reasons to do this - maybe nobody uses these features and they can remove them, or maybe "New Readers video in Hindi distribution on Facebook" has an insane click through rate that might have an impact on the allocation of resources in the future/feed into other products being developed. You know, stuff you need to do when you run one of the worlds largest websites. It's also quite clearly spelled out in the linked page, the mailing list thread[1] and the implementation. If you can think of a better way to get this kind of data that fits more comfortably within your strong personal feelings about the contents of URLs then I'm sure the "insecure middle management type" that proposed it[2] would love to hear your counter-proposal. 1. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2015-February/003426.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2015-Februar... 2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ABaso_(WMF) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ABaso_(WMF)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- jessriedel 6y ago
  > The problem with this is that nobody will change the defaults, so that approach is utterly useless if you want actionable information. This is not just about defaults. When sharing from the Wikipedia Android app, I cannot use the settings to disable this tracking tag from being appended. I have to delete it by hand every time.

by Aissen 6y ago

zackbloom 6y ago

That’s the definition of biased sampling.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
Only if you have reason to suspect that those who opt-in are a skewed sample with respect to the things you want to measure.

orf 6y ago

The problem with this is that nobody will change the defaults, so that approach is utterly useless if you want actionable information. People label a number of different things, some bad and some good, under the general umbrella of "tracking". I'm not sure that name conveys enough nuance. Wikipedia wants to evaluate how effective a particular feature is and so they are slightly modifying a URL to do this. It's not tracking you, your family or your dog. It's basically appending "&source=ios". I'd think that is perfectly fine to any reasonable person.

kelnos 6y ago
Maybe I don't want to share a URL like that and tell everyone what OS and app I'm using to browse. I get that a lot of people (yourself included) don't care about that, and I think it is fair to ask what the big deal is, but that's just how I feel. I can't back that up with data or worries about a threat (though I imagine some people might be able to)... I just don't like it, even if it's one of the most benign forms of tracking. > I'd think that is perfectly fine to any reasonable person. I reject the assertion that I'm not a reasonable person. Please avoid arguments of this form, as it essentially says "if you don't agree with me, you're an idiot/wrong/defective", which is not productive way to argue your point. (I know I'm guilty of doing this on occasion as well, but I'm trying to get myself to stop.)
stefan_ 6y ago
This shit is added without even a thought of what the hell you are trying to evaluate. Insecure middle management types that want to have this noise added should be required to write up a study proposal and register a hypothesis. Instead its everywhere and for what? What is the actionable information?
- orf 6y ago
  > This shit is added without even a thought of what the hell you are trying to evaluate. Instead its everywhere and for what? What is the actionable information? They are trying to evaluate the effectiveness of the social sharing features in their various projects. There are any number of reasons to do this - maybe nobody uses these features and they can remove them, or maybe "New Readers video in Hindi distribution on Facebook" has an insane click through rate that might have an impact on the allocation of resources in the future/feed into other products being developed. You know, stuff you need to do when you run one of the worlds largest websites. It's also quite clearly spelled out in the linked page, the mailing list thread[1] and the implementation. If you can think of a better way to get this kind of data that fits more comfortably within your strong personal feelings about the contents of URLs then I'm sure the "insecure middle management type" that proposed it[2] would love to hear your counter-proposal. 1. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2015-February/003426.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2015-Februar... 2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ABaso_(WMF) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ABaso_(WMF)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jessriedel 6y ago
> The problem with this is that nobody will change the defaults, so that approach is utterly useless if you want actionable information. This is not just about defaults. When sharing from the Wikipedia Android app, I cannot use the settings to disable this tracking tag from being appended. I have to delete it by hand every time.