Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Privacy Rules and Informed Consent

The new rules: (created by students during in-class discussion without Steph present)

• Think about your audience; parents, police, and administrators can and probably are reading.

• This is not Facebook; do not discuss student events when it can be avoided.

• Students shall strive for constructive criticism whenever possible.

• A "paper copy" only is permissable. - students must still agree to edit.

• All students may leave identifiable information out of wiki versions of their work.

• No student may be compelled to sign up for the wiki with his or her real name.

Kate 15:37, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
MarieKate 15:37, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
Magicsofa 15:38, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
SharonC 15:38, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
? --Evarney22 15:38, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
MegFon 15:39, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
--BennyBoomBoom 15:39, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
--Dave 15:38, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
Eirving 15:39, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
Kathleenw 15:40, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
Jemma-Joy Coster 15:40, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
Sanowak 15:41, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
--Starwars 15:41, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
Lqi 15:37, 16 October 2006 (EDT)
Julia Naddeo --Aletr2elise 15:43, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
Jchalek 21:21, 11 October 2006 (EDT)

Hi everyone. It's going to take a week or two for all the ramifications of these rules to get figured out in practice. Some of them might require re-building (not a problem, just some time and learning how). I want to keep a history of our process in one location. For now, there is just the link to the section "Steph continues to write about YOU", but I hope to find time to backtrack to the other time/places where I made related announcements. Meanwhile, do post me a message or send me email if you've decided to pull anything off now that the reality of the site's public nature is established by experience.  :-) A couple of you have already posted that you'd prefer to start with paper - awesome! I realized after class that I probably don't have to know this right away, since it will be a week before more writing is due. steph (COM) 21:51, 10 October 2006 (EDT)

Response from The Management™

Hey folks, Neurophyre here. I think it's excellent that you are taking an active interest in your online privacy. Believe me, not enough people do. I do want to point out a few things however:

• Notable events are welcome on the current events and recurring events pages.
• It's likely possible for me to change usernames. I haven't installed the extension that allows me to do it, but one does exist. If you need a username changed (note that this may break signatures..) then contact me on my talk page.
• You can take up issues regarding deletion of content with me, though I'd prefer you figure out what to do about it with your teacher first.

Your presence is making UMassWiki a better place as I accommodate you all. It's also making MediaWiki (the software the wiki runs on) better. A bug that some of you ran across has been fixed because you found it and I reported it, and that fix is now live on Wikipedia which gets hundreds of thousands of users a day. --Neurophyre(talk) 22:52, 10 October 2006 (EDT)

Word!--Dave 16:28, 11 October 2006 (EDT) Double word! steph (COM) 11:30, 12 October 2006 (EDT)

Response to the Response :-)

Steph (continues) ... let's talk among ourselves first about changing usernames. Perhaps we can develop some consistency of coding so we can still recognize each other. Or maybe the class can generate alternate/identity-hiding nicknames for everyone who wants one. Or...something. But let's work it together, ok?

So far, no messages about anyone wanting to "nuke" your work, removing it even from the history pages. let's compile a list together and send it to Neurophyre so he can deal with them all at once rather than piecemeal, ok?

One thought I had, after hearing from a couple of you about taking things down, is that it might be worth printing a hard copy first. If we need to refer back to it again for some reason then at least you'll still have it and we can make photocopies if necessary. steph (COM) 11:30, 12 October 2006 (EDT)