Rename Privacy Policy to Privacy Notice

[xkon]

After a chat last night in slack ( ​https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C9695RJBW/p1524776649000189 ).

It would be good and more in-line to change the word 'Policy' into 'Notice' in patches waiting or anything that we have already committed as it's more GDPR friendly.

[audrasjb]

Hello,

I'd be happy to help on this ticket, since it would allow me to get in touch deeplier with the GDPR new stuff.

In 43875.diff, I replaced "Privacy Policy" strings with "Privacy Notice", in both translatable strings and comments/doc blocks.
Consistency: do we need to also edit PHP functions/classes or CSS classes as well? If so, I can manage it too.
Of course, I will update the patch with the future tickets.

Cheers,
Jb

Edit: I see @jainnidhi also sent a patch, cool! But I guess we should not edit *-rtl CSS files since it's generated automatically with the core build.

[audrasjb]

Replaces Privacy Policy with Privacy Notice

[xkon]

Replying to audrasjb:

Consistency: do we need to also edit PHP functions/classes or CSS classes as well? If so, I can manage it too.

I think that for now it's safer if we don't touch those since there are more patches waiting in line that depend on eachother.

Maybe after we get everything in trunk so we can all work from a standard base we can make a full final pass / or leave them for the next release even, just trying to avoid any last minute breaks here :D .

cc @azaozz

[azaozz]

The Slack chat in question:

Xenos Konstantinos [23:04]
so just to be clear, we don't have to change `privacy policy` to `privacy notice` everywhere ? (edited)

Heather Burns [23:07]
I would prefer you do. Policy is the old legal term. Notice is the use friendly GDPR term. Dangit.
Yay trac ticket editing is fun on mobile, on mobile data

Xenos Konstantinos [23:11]
ooooooook
I'll note that and will work my way on all tickets etc tomorrow to see where we already have it in
will make a ticket so everybody can remember to take a look as well

Not sure this is good idea. I don't see "Policy" being "old legal term" anywhere on the internet. The word "Notice" has a pretty different meaning in legal terms and in everyday language. Don't think it is suitable here :)

[azaozz]

Also see https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/43435#comment:73 about using "notice" vs. "policy".

[desrosj]

@allendav What are your thoughts here?

[xkon]

This is a good explanation between the difference of a policy vs notice imho. Seems to me that Notice would be the way to go after this as it's facing 'public'.

Taken from IAPP: ​https://iapp.org/resources/glossary/

Privacy Policy: An internal statement that governs an organization or entity’s handling practices of personal information. It is directed at the users of the personal information. A privacy policy instructs employees on the collection and the use of the data, as well as any specific rights the data subjects may have.

vs

Privacy Notice: A statement made to a data subject that describes how the organization collects, uses, retains and discloses personal information. A privacy notice is sometimes referred to as a privacy statement, a fair processing statement or sometimes a privacy policy. Special privacy notices are also mandated by specific laws such a GLBA and COPPA in the United States.

[azaozz]

Replying to xkon:

This is a good explanation between the difference of a policy vs notice imho.

Heh, not so sure about that. The iapp.org website conveniently uses "Privacy Statement" :)

Can you tell me how many privacy notices have you read in the last year? How many of them were 6-7 pages long? And how many privacy policies have you read?

As @idea15 mentioned in #43435 this is a recent recommendation to avoid "the Americanism of policies". However what it mostly does is confuse the users even more. I wouldn't mind changing this to Privacy Statement, or even Privacy Notice once any of these terms gain popularity and are easily recognized everywhere.

Currently this seems to be a difference between US English and UK English terms. In any case "policy" is very commonly used in America to describe what we are adding to WP, and since the default language is en_US I don't see a good reason to change it.

[xkon]

Replying to azaozz:

Can you tell me how many privacy notices have you read in the last year? How many of them were 6-7 pages long? And how many privacy policies have you read?

Well pretty much all the texts from all the websites that we've built in the company I am and some they are quite long.. but! That doesn't mean anything as usually I don't even know what on earth they are talking about most of the time :laughing: .

What I can say for sure is that the only English term I see being used in general is 'Policy' and I'm good sticking with that even np, we even use the same here in Greece ( even though translated we still do use Policy and not Notice [this has a totally different meaning] ).

I just found out the glossary and as it made the distinctions between 'internal use vs public' I thought maybe it was something actually 'important' for en_US that could clear things up. I guess that ain't the case :D !

[azaozz]

Replying to xkon:

I just found out the glossary and as it made the distinctions between 'internal use vs public' I thought maybe it was something actually 'important' for en_US that could clear things up. I guess that ain't the case :D !

Well, not sure how important or non-important it is, but look what Wikipedia has to say about "privacy policy": ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy (bigger entry, about 3000 words) and look what is has to say about "privacy notice":

The page "Privacy notice" does not exist. You can ask for it to be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered.

Enough said :)

[azaozz]

The best action here seems to be to see whether "Privacy Notice" becomes a popular term outside of the legalese jargon. If that happens we should probably switch to using it.

[desrosj]

Moving to the new Privacy component.