[ckan-dev] Privacy of user activity in CKAN 2.0

Thu May 30 10:30:26 UTC 2013

I don't see why CKAN needs to even have a concept of whether an
activity is/was private, separate from whether the dataset is
currently private.

Activities hidden along with everything else when a dataset is made
private. After all, what's the point of seeing activities to a dataset
that you can't see? It is liable to cause confusion ('but this dataset
doesn't exist') and most unlikely to be useful.

Conversely, if a dataset is made public, everything else about the
dataset is visible so why not the activities? For one thing, this
could again lead to confusion when different users, looking at the
same public dataset, could see different histories.

An important thing in general is that the behaviour should be simple
enough that users should be able to form a clear model of what's going
on. For my tuppence, having activities with their own concept of
public-ness, separate from the dataset's, is complex and subtle enough
to break this.

Mark

On 30/05/2013, Sean Hammond <sean.hammond at okfn.org> wrote:
>> My assumption as a naive user is that every edit goes in the activity
>> stream, but that I am only ever shown activity relating to datasets
>> I'm authorised to see (either because they're public, or because I'm
>> in the relevant Organization). If a dataset is made public then so is
>> its history. After all the history is really just more metadata.
>
> Right. IIRC, we wanted to have private activities for private datasets
> as you describe, but we didn't have time to do that change (at the "last
> second" before releasing 2.0, this was in January iirc! :) so we just
> made a simpler change instead: no activities from private datasets.
>
> If and when we do have private activities for private datasets, then I'm
> not sure about the question of what happens to private activities when
> their dataset becomes public. Do the activities become public as well as
> you say? Or do the activities remain private (but any further activities
> that happen while the dataset is public are public)?
>
> I think the more conservative option of private activities always remain
> private, is maybe safer.
>
> The same question comes up when a public dataset becomes private: do the
> dataset's public activities now become private and disappear from
> activity streams? Or do public activities always remain public?
>
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