Core-privacy Office Hours Summary – 17 October

Below is a summary of the discussion from this week’s #core-privacy chat. You can read the chat in its entirety in Slack.

Roadmap Progress

There was no roadmap related progress to report this week. The component’s focus until post-GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ remains the 31 bug tickets, with a goal of marking at least 75% of them as ready for commit.

Gutenberg Privacy Review

@allendav, @garrett-eclipse, and @azaozz have been reviewing Gutenberg for potential privacy issues.

In response to concerns about the source of the data presented on https://gutenstats.blog, @allendav will add a note to the footer on that site clarifying that the post counts come from Jetpack-connected sites. @allendav also reports that there is no Automattic tracking code in Gutenberg, and that if a site has Jetpack and Gutenberg installed, some of Jetpack’s Gutenberg blocks are loaded from Automattic’s CDN.

Related to CDNs, @azaozz confirmed that reliance on unpkg will not be an issue once Gutenberg is merged into WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. Third party resources are loaded from a CDN when Gutenberg is in development mode. Whether this carries over after the merge into WordPress core needs to be verified.

There is a bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. in Gutenberg regarding the display of the privacy notice tool. @desrosj has noted this as Gutenberg ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. 10448.

Gutenberg utilizes the Noto Serif Google Font for supported locales. @garrett-eclipse asks whether a font replacement should be proposed for the 5.0 merge, or whether the suggested privacy policy content should be updated to include Google Fonts verbiage.

The emojis in Gutenberg load from s.w.org and need further review. @garrett-eclipse seeks clarification on whether emojis are part of core and therefore covered by the existing privacy notice language.

Regarding embed blocks, @garrett-eclipse suggests that how core handles them from a privacy standpoint should follow whatever is done for embeds in general. He suggests it would be useful to propose to Gutenberg/core the feasibility of creating a “privacy flag” on blocks which could flag users about potential privacy concerns, and/or flagging admins that blocks with potential privacy ramifications have been added on their site.

BuddyPress and Privacy Reviews

@garrett-eclipse and @jjj have arranged to conduct a basic privacy review of BuddyPress.

This led to a discussion about privacy reviews being a service which the team could offer, akin to theme, pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party, or accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) reviews. All were in agreement that the parameters and deliverables of these reviews would need further discussion. All in attendance also agreed on the need to make absolutely clear that privacy reviews would not be legal advice, nor could they be carried out in regards to achieving compliance with any specific privacy law. Rather, the reviews would focus on general issues of data collection, flows, retention, and sharing. Any action items which reviews might identify would be the developer’s responsibility to address, and not the core-privacy team.

@allendav suggested that “needs-privacy-review” could be added as a tagtag A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.) in TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. for patches and tickets.

@garrett-eclipse and @allendav will document the processes they have used in their Gutenberg and BuddyPress evaluations, with a view towards using these steps as the basis of a potential privacy review checklist for the handbook.

Component Documentation Review

@allendav wrote handbook documentation as part of the V1 roadmap earlier in the year. All in attendance agreed it would be good to review the handbook for new material that could be added, and to see if additional audiences could be accommodated. @allendav and @riankinney will review the existing documentation and report back with suggestions. Documentation from other teams, including design and accessibility, provide good examples to follow.

@garrett-eclipse suggested that the Privacy by Design standards used by core-privacy could be more widely adopted across the WordPress project, and more visible documentation could help to promote this.

Team Issues

A healthy and constructive discussion was had on whether the core-privacy team should continue to identify as a core component or should seek to additionally become a team. The team agreed to consult with @chanthaboune on what options are available within the team and component structure.

Group MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Issues

Last week @desrosj circulated a Doodle poll to find a better time for weekly office hours. From the suggestions provided there, he has launched a second Doodle poll narrowing the selection down to the four most popular answers. Please provide your two best choices. The Doodle poll will appear in your local time zone, not in UTC.

@allendav has been looking into more privacy-conscious collaboration tools and reports he is not happy with the UXUX User experience of Etherpad.

Sarah Gooding interviewed @idea15 for an article about the team on WP Tavern. @riankinney is doing a privacy podcast with WPBob later this month.

The next core-privacy office hours is Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at 1500 UTC. A new office hours time will be decided in this meeting.

#core-privacy

#privacy