I am a statistics fanatic, and really appreciate all of the effort that has been put into making the statistics pages.
That being said, it would be great if there were an additional option for account status: where one is not listed in any ranked tables (or is listed as "Anonymous"), but is included in the statistics for how many users have solved a given problem, have a given achievement, are at a given level, etc.
In particular, I think it would be great if this were made the default account status for all new users, and what users who registered in the last three years would be switched to if they haven't updated their account status.
I say this because I know that there are reasons (presumably privacy) for making new accounts unlisted by default, but also am bothered by the fact that the statistics could be skewed by the fact that accounts from before a certain date are included in the statistics by default, but other accounts are not. As a case in point, there were, according to the statistics ~763,000 registered members at the end of 2017, ~1,033,000 at the end of August 2020, and ~1,039,000 now. This means that an increase of ~270K members in 32 months was followed by an increase of fewer than 6K members in 35 months.
Additional option for account status
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euler
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Re: Additional option for account status
I've just realised that I didn't get back to you. Sorry about that. After your post we entered a long and careful discussion. As you can imagine these issues strike to the heart of privacy options and that is something we take very serious at Project Euler. But I'd like to thank you for enabling these discussions, as it is always good to review our policies from time to time.
You may have noticed, but we have changed the "Did You Know... ?" page to show total numbers now, including unlisted accounts. As this data is represents general statistical counts and does not allow any individual member to be identified, we felt it was acceptable and it also gives us an opportunity to celebrate the number of members we have. As you pointed out, since we made unlisted/private the default status for all new registered members about three years ago, it is quite possible that many of members were, and possibly still are, totally unaware that they are not visible in any of the tables. It is certainly not our business to change the status of any existing accounts to make them more visible because even though they may not have read the privacy policy, it did state during that time that the default status was unlisted with a clear indication of what that meant: "Unlisted accounts will not appear in any public ranked tables, including the fastest solvers". So any changes that crossed that line would need to be a decision made by the individual members for themselves. However, we have changed it now so that for all new registrations there is a tick box allowing members to initially register as unlisted or public. The default status of the tick box is not checked and the privacy policy has been updated accordingly. We felt this was the best approach, as it made the choice for members more visible at the point of registration.
You may have noticed, but we have changed the "Did You Know... ?" page to show total numbers now, including unlisted accounts. As this data is represents general statistical counts and does not allow any individual member to be identified, we felt it was acceptable and it also gives us an opportunity to celebrate the number of members we have. As you pointed out, since we made unlisted/private the default status for all new registered members about three years ago, it is quite possible that many of members were, and possibly still are, totally unaware that they are not visible in any of the tables. It is certainly not our business to change the status of any existing accounts to make them more visible because even though they may not have read the privacy policy, it did state during that time that the default status was unlisted with a clear indication of what that meant: "Unlisted accounts will not appear in any public ranked tables, including the fastest solvers". So any changes that crossed that line would need to be a decision made by the individual members for themselves. However, we have changed it now so that for all new registrations there is a tick box allowing members to initially register as unlisted or public. The default status of the tick box is not checked and the privacy policy has been updated accordingly. We felt this was the best approach, as it made the choice for members more visible at the point of registration.
impudens simia et macrologus profundus fabulae