Should the website should track your activity?

[rwanyoike]

Should there be an analytics service, tracking cookies, and social plugins to fingerprint visitors?

• We've got Google Analytics and Disqus on the site.

[ooduor]

If there was a way to make the data accessible... At the moment, how is tracking administered and how useful is it / will it be to improving website layout and content?

[rwanyoike]

They (Google Analytics, Disqus) require authentication to make the data accessible, and as far as I know, you don't control the tracking, only the access.

[rwanyoike]

Disqus was chosen as a solution for adding comments. I don't recall us researching on open alternatives at the time, e.g:

• https://github.com/posativ/isso (last commit: 2015)
• https://github.com/jacobwb/hashover (last commit: 2015)
• https://github.com/spf13/kaiju (last commit: 2015)
• https://github.com/monperrus/jskomment (last commit: 2014)
• https://github.com/phusion/juvia (last commit: 2014)
• https://github.com/drewp/commentserve (last commit: 2013)
• https://github.com/talkatv/talkatv (last commit: 2012)

[alanorth]

I am lately of the opinion that we should remove Google Analytics from the website. We all run ad blockers... so why do we track our users?

Recent article about how Facebook and Google are disgusting: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2015/04/21.html

It's nice to know whether we have 1 user or 1,000... but I don't know if it's worth the cost. :\

[alanorth]

As of today I've deleted my personal Google Analytics account and am in the process of removing tracking code from my sites as I find them.

See this great talk by Daniel J Bernstein (djb) about the state of HTTPS and our ISPs selling our information etc.

http://cr.yp.to/talks/2015.05.08/slides-djb-20150508-a4.pdf