Talk:User data

No names have to be attached for there to be user_data.

For instance a typical user profile might be:

"The individual presently carrying this Consumerium checker has the following individual buying criteria:

• won't buy any product from the United States or from any company owned more than 30% by Americans, or whose stock is traded on a US stock market
• has someone they buy for who has a wheat allergy
• won't buy any fish that is not dolphin safe and doesn't care that there are problems with this standard label
• believes mandatory labels should be on GMOs and will therefore want to know if any GMOs are present, and not to buy from companies who have lobbied against GMO mandatory labelling, or who have promoted export of GMO seed to any developing nation without the expertise to evaluate it
• trusts Greens faction in content wiki to resolve factionally defined concerns where there is doubt about the yellow light concerns
• trusts Pinks faction to decide what slavery actually is"

We actually need more user data than we can really act on, and we need to know at least something about context and intent, so that the Consumerium developers always know which buying criteria are in broad demand and need to be supported next - this is the only way to balance faction ideology to make this kind of decision.

Such a profile might not all exist in a database, but some of these assertions may be scattered around the opinion wiki or talk pages in content wiki. In general we should not be shy about compiling all that is revealed by any end user in one place, if only so they know it's revealed, and can edit it if it's not right, or if they change their mind. Large public wikis very often run into huge potential libel problems by letting sysops or overly enthusiastic users talk about others' motives and make up adjectives to describe others' statements. This sort of thing must be strictly forbidden by Consumerium Governance Organization, it's actually worse even than outing.