Board Thread:Wiki discussions and announcements/@comment-145064-20140320170332/@comment-11733175-20140325102805

Hi :) I just happened to be wandering past and thought I'd add in my 2 cents.

I'm from RuneScape Wiki where we've had chat logging for a long time now, you can find the logs here.

I can see various concerns regarding privacy. It's public chat. If someone stayed in chat long enough (s)he would have the equivalent of the chat logs in their scroll back.

If personal information is ever released in public chat without the person who's information it is giving their express permission for it to be released, the only realistic option is using the revision delete tool. Like the name suggests, it allows you to hide revisions in the page history from public view. This isn't normally available for local admins, but there are ways to simulate it if anyone's interested in how.

The other major concern raised is that it suggests your chatmods are untrustworthy. I wholeheartedly disagree with this idea. Chat logs are there for times when no chatmod is present or if there's a dispute over a ban from chat. We all make mistakes from time to time and if the user banned from chat wishes to appeal, there is now evidence to review. Similarly, when a chatmod joins chat at discovers another user has been behaving in an way that violates the chat rules, again there is now evidence to support that. There are very rare cases where a chatmod or admin may break the rules themselves, again there is now evidence to support that should it ever arise.

For the most part chat logs go ignored and everyone carries on with their day to day lives. They're just there for the few times they might be needed when there's no one else in chat. I know someone has suggested screenshot be used as evidence - it takes a small amount of knowledge of html and a browsers developer tools to be able to doctor a screenshot. It doesn't even require image editing software like photoshop.

So anyway, those are my 2 cents :)