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Privacy

Posted by simon on 5 September, 2008 in Uncategorized

Privacy and the control users have of who can see there data is a hot topic at Kappa Prime as we approach our soft release. Kappa Prime has a number of elements of other sites all rolled into one. There are profile pages like MySpace or Facebook; Colloborative descriptions of papers and the relationships between them like Wikipedia; Aggregated tag clouds like Flickr; Discussions like a Bulletin Board; and Ratings and Reviews like Amazon.

Because of this huge array of data all generated for different purposes, data privacy and control is not an easy matter. One argument is that Kappa Prime is a place for researchers to come and share information so surely all the information should be open? The rebutal is that this is personal information and peoples data is a valuable thing. Of course, there is the already all-knowing Google machine. Do we want to feed it any more nuggets of information about us?

The conclusion we’ve come to is to split the data we collect at Kappa Prime into four parts: Personal profile data, user libraries, descriptions of papers, and private comments.

Private comments are only ever viewable by the user that left them. Descriptions and discussions of papers is a community discussion - open and un-anonymous. This is viewed in the Wikipedia style and is open to all. Personal profiles and libraries are left configurable by the users’ to choose the exact privacy settings they desire.

Our goal is to strike a balance between giving users control over their own information and encouraging interaction and information sharing. We want to create an environment where users feel confident sharing their data with the research community.