[Imc-web] Re: [IMC-Tech] Adding Tags to Articles

[Mike Lehman]

Doing a little research, I came across these links:
http://digg.com/privacy
http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2006/06/03/web_2_privacy/1

del-icio.us is associated with Yahoo, which has long been infamous for 
its exploitation of user data through web beacons:
http://del.icio.us/help/privacy

technorati
http://technorati.com/about/privacy.html

The Google thing seems associated with the Google blog mechanism. Google 
has some big issues with privacy, too, and providing a direct link from 
an IMC seems problematic.

Interesting comments on the issue as a whole:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/openyou_the_limits_of_privacy.php

All in all, this makes the IMC site seem to look like a blog, even 
though we've got consensus that IMC is NOT a blog. Having these tags on 
the site will tend to encourage blog-type behavior, something which 
we've been struggling with  lately, even though we've explicitly 
rejected blogging as part of the main news site.

Note that I do not object to setting up a separate UC IMC blog, if some 
members feel we need it. But I think that making the IMC news page look 
like a blog is a mistake.
Mike Lehman

Mike Lehman wrote:
> I see that we suddenly have a variety of Google, Digg, Technorati, etc 
> tags added to articles on the website. I have a several concerns about 
> these.
>
> 1. They all seem to require user registration and this will presumably 
> compromise the privacy of those who use them on our site.
>
> 2.Having them on IMC makes us a party to their marketing efforts. This 
> seems to be a questionable policy for an IMC to engage in.
>
> 3. Does the software involved in these report or log IPs in any 
> fashion? I presume they do, given Google record on this.
>
> Since most internet users can presumably use the regular Google 
> search, I question the need for these additions, particularly so if 
> they raise privacy concerns as they seem to.
> Mike Lehman
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