User talk:Philippe (WMF)/Archive 7

J R Kowalski

Also pinging User:Jalexander: User:J R Kowalski claims to be WMF - is this the case? If not, can you take the appropriate actions? --Rschen7754 20:42, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

He is not affiliated with us. It looks like User:LFaraone got him though. Thanks for the headsup. @Jalexander: - no need to respond. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 00:00, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

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Question

Anon, no, I won't answer your questions. That would be totally a waste of my time. You have demonstrated an unwillingness to consider any point of view but your own, and my time is better spent doing other things.

Hi Philippe (WMF), you're the director of community advocacy, whatever it means. Maybe you could explain to me why your community is so desperately afraid of transparency and so desperately afraid of the truth to come out? What little, dirty secrets they are trying to hide? Besides preventing me from using talk pages within Wikipedia policies to defend myself not only violates all norms of humanity adopted in the civilized world ,but also violates my constitutional right of freedom of speech. So what say you? 69.181.42.248 (talk) 18:42, 12 January 2014 (UTC) Philippe is only responsible for relations between WMF and the Wikipedia community. He is not responsible for decisions made by the Wikipedia community. A decision made by the Wikipedia community (and another made by arbcom?) is that you are banned from the English Wikipedia, indefinitely. Philippe is not able to overturn those decisions. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:20, 12 January 2014 (UTC) @Demiurge1000:, that's about right. (One small correction: every staff member is responsible for the community/WMF relationship. My role is specific to the legal team, to supporting the community through a few specific and targeted interventions, and to change management for product deployments - but that doesn't change the substance of what you write.) In short, you're quite correct. I neither could, nor would attempt to override an Arbcom decision. Those few instances where the WMF exercises veto power are not related to community governance matters such as blocks or bans. In short, there's almost nothing I can do about those - other than occasionally bring my secret weapon... overwhelming charm Maggie... to bear. But in this case, I do not believe that's a correct or appropriate course of action. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:26, 12 January 2014 (UTC) PS - anon - you mention your "constitutional right of freedom of speech". Without getting into the particulars of the situation, you may wish to review a page built to discuss exactly this issue. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:04, 12 January 2014 (UTC) And I reviewed it now, except there were precedents when freedom of speech was allowed on private sites, and if it was allowed on shopping malls, surely it should be allowed on a site that belongs to a charitable tax-exempt organization. 69.181.42.248 (talk) 20:11, 12 January 2014 (UTC) But I did find something interesting in the link you provided. I mean "There are policies, like the blocking policy and the arbitration policy, that have been adopted by the Wikipedia community to govern matters related to restricting users' access, but these policies are subject to change. These policies also cannot, do not, and must not be construed by anyone as establishing any right or expectation that is legally enforceable, as the Wikimedia Foundation reserves the legal right to change them at any time for any reason whatsoever, whether with consensus, or without consensus, so as to further its mission, to prevent the Foundation or its projects from being brought into disrepute – or for any reason it sees fit – or even for the reason that it "feels like it"." (my bolding) So let's talk about policies. Your blocking policy states in a few places that blocks are not punitive, that blocks are used to prevent damage from Wikipedia. So I state: "I am not interested in editing any site that belongs to WMF ever, but being blocked is punitive in my particular situation. Unblock me in the full accordance with your own policies, and you'd never hear from me again." Now, Philippe (WMF), could you please tell me, where I am getting it wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.42.248 (talk) 20:30, 12 January 2014 (UTC) (ec) Philippe, I hope you realize that Demiurge1000 has been my worst and the dirtiest (used the lies he got from the hacker of my private email account to support my ban) wikihound and he harassed me by posting my private correspondence, and now he is trolling, and you are helping him in that. Have I asked you to to override an Arbcom decision? No, I have not. Have I asked you to talk to the arbcom on my behalf? No I have not. I asked you to explain to me why your community prevents me from exercising my constitutional right of freedom of speech in my quest to defend myself from false accusations. <redacted by Philippe> 69.181.42.248 (talk) 20:06, 12 January 2014 (UTC) <redacted by Philippe> -- really? Why do you think that? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:42, 12 January 2014 (UTC) <redacted by Philippe> 69.181.42.248 (talk) 20:52, 12 January 2014 (UTC) That sounds very interesting. To some people ;) And yes, I do like to give warnings. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:59, 12 January 2014 (UTC) <redacted by Philippe> 69.181.42.248 (talk) 21:08, 12 January 2014 (UTC) He wrote that I was "gay" as well. I wonder how that could have happened. A teenager, and all. Gosh. What do you think? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:11, 12 January 2014 (UTC) Anon, stop it NOW. You've strayed into territory that I won't condone. And I'm blanking those messages. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:13, 12 January 2014 (UTC) Wow!!!Rev-delete absolutely legitimate questions (not accusations) supported by on-wiki diffs? Anyway I came here not to talk to demiurge1000, but to talk to you. Will you please respond my questions I asked you above?69.181.42.248 (talk) 21:27, 12 January 2014 (UTC) @Philippe: Keeping an open door is fine, but in some cases vigorous application of WP:DENY is the only remedy. May I suggest that this particular user jumped the shark a long time ago, and allowing them oxygen is very counter productive for the project. If it were felt that further discussion would be worthwhile, it should take place in private, and my recommendation would be to delete this entire section. Johnuniq (talk) 23:08, 12 January 2014 (UTC) @Johnuniq: I'm not entirely sure you're wrong. But I'm going to say this first: Anon, no, I won't answer your questions. That would be totally a waste of my time. You have demonstrated an unwillingness to consider any point of view but your own, and my time is better spent doing other things. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 23:16, 12 January 2014 (UTC) Philippe (WMF), it is simply untrue. I said repeatedly and repeat it one more time: I am willing to apologize as soon as I'm presented with a valid evidence I harassed the admin or any other Wikipedian for that matter. So far nobody was able to present one. There were screams, there were lies, there was closed tribunals in which I was not allowed to participate, and there was a sick witch hunt, but no evidence of harassment. And what is you point of view(I hope you have one) which I demonstrated "an unwillingness to consider"? 69.181.42.248 (talk) 00:55, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• 76.126.141.88 and 69.181.42.248 appear to be sockpuppets of indefinitely blocked user mbz1.[1][2][3] SPI Filed. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:03, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

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Update?

I was reading this New York Times piece, which has been sent to me by a few colleagues and others. It's actually too bad it is getting so much circulation, because it has a lot of really awful mis-information. But I was wondering if there was any update on the Wiki-PR situation (I'm presuming they did not cease or desist) and/or the "statement" I heard the board was going to make taking a position.

The legal angle (astroturfing regulations and whatnot) are a big part of how I persuade companies to participate ethically and stand on firm ground when pressure comes down the pipe to stray from an honest contribution. So I am somewhat obsessed with it. CorporateM (Talk) 05:44, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

@CorporateM: I don't actually have an update on this - I know that we are continuing to ask that the community handle Wiki-PR socks as per standard procedures, so I believe we're still just watching for breaches of the cease and desist. Much beyond that, I don't know. I am unaware of any potential Board position, but I probably wouldn't be consulted beforehand on that. I'll ask around and see if I can get an update from legal that I can post. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:35, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

On a separate topic, do you think someone from WMF legal would be willing to speak at the WOMMnext conference? They are big on ethics and disclosure laws. Because of the emphasis on the legal aspect, I figured a WMF lawyer would be the best possible option if someone is willing to. CorporateM (Talk) 01:00, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

The question isn't so much "are they willing" as "are they available". Our lawyers are incredibly busy. But you could write them and ask.  :) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 09:14, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Who would I write to? CorporateM (Talk) 16:44, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I suppose it would help if I told you that, huh? Instead of letting you read my mind from however many miles away?  :) Sorry... yeah, I'd start with Geoff Brigham - gbrigham@wikimedia.org. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 22:17, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

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Template:OFFICE talk

Your template talks about "this protection" and "such information" despite not having previously referred to either of those things. Perhaps you should rephrase the first sentence to something like: "Information has been removed from this article under the authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, and edit-protection may have been used to enforce this removal." – Smyth\^talk 14:07, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

• It also seems like a good candidate for indef full protection, even though it's not used on very many pages, since... well... WP:BEANS. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:30, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
• It's a vague not helpful template. It should link clearly and explicitly to the specific restrictions in place. NE Ent 00:04, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Philippe: it's clear from the discussion below that more than a few people do not see any obvious reason why increasing the protection level of an OFFICE-protected page would in any way be "circumventing the letter or spirit" of that protection. Since you obviously disagree, can I again request that you place a notice on Talk:Conventional PCI explicitly saying what you want to prohibit. There is still nothing on that talk page which would discourage another admin who happens to have missed this incident taking exactly the same action in the future. – Smyth\^talk 13:45, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

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Now that the kerfluffle is nearly over

One thing that I have noticed is that you have never precisely stated why the problems with Conventional PCI require using a protection level that is proscribed on English Wikipedia. While I understand that there may be some level of secrecy involved, can you explain at some broad level why PC2 and only PC2 is appropriate?—Kww(talk) 19:17, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I posted this elsewhere, but it bears asking here too:

PC2, as far as I can see, just means an approver needs to have "Reviewer" or "Admin" before the change is visible:

Template:Pending_changes_table

Now, granted, that seems to stop vandal changes being instantly visible, relying on "Reviewer" status before that can happen - but I don't think we're talking about vandalism here, are we? I'm a reviewer, and I'm not looking out for the PCI organisation if I review - nor, I doubt, are the hundreds of other "reviewers" who were given the right while it was being tossed around like candy while PC was being steamrollered through as the latest, greatest thing. I didn't ask for the right, or pass any "tests" - so I'm not really clear how including me in the group of people who can approve these potentially illegal edits helps. Nor have I ever agreed to be included in such a group or been trained or briefed on such a thing.

I strongly suspect, anyway, that an organisation concerned with preventing publication of copyright infringements on their property, and with ensuring compliance with a legal take-down request concerning such, gives far less of a shit about all that crap than it does with the legal requirement of having the infringements removed - permanently - reliably. I'm damn sure the courts would give no shit at all.

Can you comment on that, or does secrecy forbid?

Sorry for jumping in here, Kww, but the questions were fresh in my mind... Begoon ^talk 17:09, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

only in the broadest of senses and it will likely be unsatisfactory to you both. Generally speaking, the WMF has a fixed set of tools at our disposal. Anytime a project restricts one of them it takes a size able hunk out of our inventory. This may mean that at times we do not follow a local community rule about a tool, because, frankly, those rules did not take our use case into account when they were being crafted. As an example, as the content host, no judge in the world is going to let us get away with an argument that we had a *tool* to do something but could not do so because of a local community rule.

we pick our level of protection with a great deal of care. Generally speaking, we have an almost fanatical concern that the article be open to editing by as many people as possible while meeting the goal of the protection. That was always the case here. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:27, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Pro tip: "No" is only 2 characters. Would have saved a lot of time, been equally dismissive, and answered as many of the points raised. "Stop asking me to justify what I can't, it's embarassing, and I can only bloviate" is somewhat longer, so I can kind of understand why you didn't choose that.

I am, however, disappointed with your reaction. You are, I believe, an employee tasked with "community advocacy". As a member of the community I brought you concerns. There's no reason to ignore them other than reluctance to address - which is fine, I suppose, in it's way (except it's your job) - but tell me you're not going to answer the question if you like - don't try to brush me off with non-answer crapspeak. That's insulting. Many of the points I raise have nothing to do with legalities or confidentiality. Many of the things I asked are easily addressable with no recourse to the bullshit in your answer. The only thing in your reply that means much at all to me is that you give a reason to use tools which local communities don't use or permit. That's fine, but you abjectly fail to give any reason why PC2 could be the best tool, let alone the only tool - useful in any circumstance (let alone this specific one), and the direct points I make about the user group concerned with its approval? No response whatsoever. What makes PC2 better than PC1, except that it restricts approval to a very oddly selected group? What advantage does it give to the PCI group, or to us? It should, surely, be an easy answer, since you clearly must have understood why this was the best scenario when selecting it, given that you always give these things a huge amount of thought? Begoon ^talk

Distressing. I suspected you wouldn't be thrilled with my answer, so I cross checked it with a couple of people that I trust here who also are privy to the full details. I don't think I can provide you with further detail that will satisfy you, but I truly do hate that you seemed to see it as an amplification of the situation. It was intended to disclose what I could, while protecting the legal situation, which remains an actual active case. I could certainly make this go away, I suspect through a couple of paths: first, to lay down my accounts and say that I'll never touch an office action again. I'm unwilling to do that. I'm proud of my record with Office actions - we've drastically curtailed their use and - but for this dust up and one with the article about Damon Dash - we've done so rather quietly. As a whole, I think you would find that folks who work with me on wiki will tell you that my responses tend to be well-reasoned and logical. I would request that you think things through by looking at the totality of my time on wiki, in which I have consistently and strongly defended the community. Now what makes you think I would abandon that now? I continue to take the actions that I do in order to protect the projects and the Foundation. Some of them are controversial and loud. Most of them are quiet and cause no fuss because of the careful way that we execute them. But occasionally something happens, and I'm forced to take a stand... any action that erodes the OFFICE action policy compromises a threat to the safety of the projects. Not the Foundation - the project. So yes, I reacted strongly to that. I said before and I'll say again, I wish it had gone differently. No doubt I made the situation worse. I won't convince you that I'm telling you the truth, I know. But I do believe that the actions taken with the Conventional PCI article were correct. Pending changes level 2 is the level of protection warranted, in an effort to maximize the number of people who can edit that article. People of good faith can disagree. I suppose you and I will never agree on that; thats okay. I respect your right to disagree. I wish I could show you everything I've seen about this. But I can't. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 23:45, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, I was forthright in my dissatisfaction, and, reading what I wrote again, quite harsh in places. But I do find extremely disappointing both your initial reaction to Kww, and your lack of what I see as satisfying reasoning for your actions, and I do find your explanations, particularly with regards to specific questions which really shouldn't be sensitive or troublesome at all, less than frank or full. That's as far as this can realistically go, I think - I've said what I felt I needed to, and you've said what you think you can.

To give it a little context - I have been, in general, disappointed with the community facing side of the WMF for some time - finding much of the interaction there sub par, from ACTRIAL, through Visual Editor, and overall attitude when WMF and community are at odds. You (WMF) should be better than us - more professional. You're employed to be that, and to know how to be that - and all too often I find that is not how reality pans out at all. So maybe here you personally got a bit of extra backlash from me because of how I view the bigger picture. Maybe that's unfair to a degree. It is, though, somewhat telling the number of times I've seen the term "Lèse-majesté" used in relation to this contretemps - that could be indicative of a perception that exists... There are ways to answer difficult questions without seeming dismissive, aloof and evasive - and there are many ways the WMF could work at being seen as a part of what we do here rather than apart from what we do here... I think, all things being equal, it might be worth considering whether enough time and effort goes into that, and, if you think it does, why it isn't working. Thanks for the time you spent answering my posts. Begoon ^talk 12:02, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

In my opinion? No, not enough time and energy goes into that. I think that the product design process has not always been as welcoming of community input (specifically, at the right time in a product's design cycle) as it could be. I further believe that we need to more heavily resource community liaison/advocate teams, and I have been heartened to see that resourcing growing steadily from the time when it was just Cary, my predecessor. If I were king of the Foundation, I'd invest quite a bit more in community functions (and possibly end up stepping on feet in the process (through having too many people on wiki, rather than too few). It's a delicate balance. But no, to be totally honest, I don't think we invest enough in those community resources. And the ones we have end up overworked and overstressed.

With that said: I can't fix the past, either ACTRIAL or last week's language by me. All I can do is to ask you to understand that we're trying pretty hard, and we're getting some of it right - and some of it wrong. But we're constantly learning and evaluating, and sharing our learnings. I'm in a 90 minute meeting today talking about how we consult with the community as part of a project by the LCA team to write some best practices. We really do try. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Good answer. Try harder then. As off topic feedback for your "meeting": insist your colleagues try harder too. Don't tolerate the community liaison employees who act like their job is to defend themselves and the WMF against all the "mean" criticism. It isn't. Or at least it shouldn't be. Don't continue to have people in that forward facing position who the community has censured for unacceptable behaviour. That's a thumb of the nose, and creates untenable situations. We're either in this together or we're not. Shuffling job titles doesn't solve problems. Get rid of the "Lèse-majesté" approach. That stinks. And yes, you can't fix the problems or mistakes of the past - but y'all can acknowledge and apologise for them, and, god forbid, revisit them with a view to doing it right... That would make a difference. We're all watching. Translate the fine words into action. If you can't do that all at once, we'll understand. We're good at seeing intent. Begoon ^talk 17:11, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

• PC1 would be slightly wider, would still require review of the edits by others, and is supported by our policies and practices. PC2, as it stands right now, permits approval of the edit by a group of editors approved during a trial that occurred in the past and still possess a user-right that is rarely given out today. Are you certain that PC1 would be insufficient? I take it that you are also affirming that full protection, while not meeting the WMF goal of providing wide access, did not actually cause any legal issue.—Kww(talk) 20:25, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Where did I affirm that? I've said no such thing. I don't recall making any comment on the legal issue or lack thereof that was caused by your action. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 23:35, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

It's a reasonable extrapolation from "If there were a valid protection reason to raise it, independent of the OFFICE action, then it should be raised. I've seen no demonstration of that, however". Note that I did not then, or now, believe that the article should be in a full-protection state, and personally think that semi-protection or PC1 would be appropriate given any stated requirement by WMF. I'm surprised by your statement above: restricting approval to admins and an essentially random group of people that were on the project two years ago doesn't seem to correspond to any external need. Were the people you consulted with aware that we have no process to grant reviewer permission?

On a purely philosophical level, I'm very disappointed in your willingness to express the office's needs as opposed to simply taking unilateral action. I understand that the needs of the office are paramount. As an admin, one of my responsibilities is to make certain that things are in a state that meet the needs of the office and correspond to community consensus. It's only in extremely rare cases that we should be unable to accommodate both, and I find it unfortunate that you have forced us into that position but will not explain.—Kww(talk) 01:00, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)As an aside, nevertheless a relevant one, I read with incredulity your reaction to Kww's change in article status. The fanatical concern you describe above appears to extend to the manner in which you defend "your" responsibilities. However, I am not the only one to have expressed concern about the approach taken by you in this instance. I note your relatively early but rather token apology. Having presumably read the entire AC motion, how would you deal with a similar situation in the future? Do you consider yourself rebuked by the comments in the Arbcom. motion, including by members of the AC relating to your behaviour? Leaky Caldron 17:49, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Believe me, I'd love nothing more than to not have to defend these actions. They are one of the parts of my job that I like the least. Nobody is ~ever~ happy about an office action - and no one is ever satisfied with the resolution of them. I have not read the entire AC motion at this point (due to several other critical issues at work), so I don't wish to comment on it (and likely won't wish to comment on it, even after I do read it). If an admonishment to me exists, I'm sure that I'll feel admonished. I think I said clearly in my statement that there are things that I wish I'd done differently. I suspect Kww feels there are things that he wishes he had done differently too, although I haven't spoken to him about that, and don't really want to put words in his mouth. Would I approach it differently? Absolutely. ~How~ would I approach it differently? I respectfully decline to answer that, because I'm not anxious to put both an actual action and a hypothetical one on trial. I hope you'll understand that. I'm sorry that you felt my apology was token. It wasn't. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 23:35, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

My primary regret is that I didn't understand going in that you did not feel any obligation to take our policies into account. Had I understood that your action was intentional rather than a simple error, I would have used another route to attempt to correct this situation.—Kww(talk) 01:00, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

There is an issue raised above that you have not addressed and which needs a response. I am a non-admin reviewer, so I can approve edits of others. I know to reject vandalism, etc, and having dug into the archives found the DMCA take-down notification discussion, so I know to decline edits adding information on that topic. I understand the importance of the safe harbour provisions. Your actions and comments strongly suggest that there is more going on here. How am I supposed to act appropriately as a reviewer not knowing even in general what is problematic and why there is need for PC2? What advice can you give me, and why is not included on the talk page as a matter of routine for OFFICE-affected articles with pending changes? How would you respond to my inclination to avoid reviewing or editing on articles under OFFICE protection, both for fear of touching on an issue of which I am unaware and because of fear of being slammed by an over-reaction? EdChem (talk) 11:53, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

There is a section on the talk page of that article, Talk:Conventional_PCI#OFFICE_action_2, which spells out clearly what it is that was removed and could not be readded. In terms of your inclination to avoid reviewing, of course, we always respect that. All editors get to choose what they work on. I'm not asking anyone to look at OFFICE protected articles that doesn't choose to do so. You are more than welcome to skip past them. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 15:52, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I obviously can't speak for Philippe or the foundation and I know no more about this than anyone else, but it is worth noting that out of nearly four and a half million articles only five are currently the subject of office actions. I would assume the office is itself watching those five articles, and there are details listed at the OFFICE page which is prominently linked in the highly visible protection template used on this page, which appears at this time to be one of a grand total of two pages currently subject to page protection due to an office action, and the only one with any form of PC protection. So, your reference to what is a routine practice when doing this seems based on the false assumption that there is anything "routine" about office actions. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:11, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I would agree but then I would have also thought the WMF would assist in cleaning up the mess left behind from the implementation of Visual Editor and all the articles it broke and errors it introduced. Yet dozens of articles still have problems and the WMF has no interest in fixing them. It is apparently our responsibility to clean up their mess which would likely include office actions. It would be good for the "office" to clarify if they do or do not watch them and what if any action can be done on said articles. 138.162.8.59 (talk) 15:25, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

The office definitely watches articles under OFFICE protection. While I clearly hear your frustration, 138.162.8.59, bringing VE into this conversation just muddies the point that Beeblebrox made - while we do watch articles under OFFICE protection, we do not watch every article on the wiki, obviously. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 15:44, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Philippe, Beeblebrox, and/or other talkstalks, the point I believe EdChem is making, is that WP:OFFICE actions which do not give explanations of how to comply therewith cannot be sensibly complied with, even theoretically. EdChem is a reviewer, and therefore technically capable of clicking the button over on Conventional PCI, which approves some edit. The usual policy is to approve good-faith changes as a matter of course. EdChem is pointing out that there are plenty of changes which will *look* good-faith to a picked-at-random-wikipedian numbered among the 7448 folks that have WP:REVIEWER user-rights, but which in fact violates the quasi-public DMCA problem which EdChem was dutiful enough to look up... not to mention the non-public stuff which EdChem literally *cannot* look up. So in a nutshell, the question is this: should those five articles have a warning-notice, in big flashing red letters, that tell the WP:REVIEWER to exercise some vague "additional care", because the article in question is subject to WP:OFFICE action? If not, why not?

  Similarly, if a random admin cough*Kww*cough were to be about to adjust the protection-level, shouldn't they first get an equally-big-if-not-bigger warning NOT to do so without WMF permission? Again, if not, why not? I understand that in this specific legal example, pending-changes-level-one is considered too weak by the WMF, and full-prot is considered too strong by the WMF, and on the general principle of encyclopedia-anyone-can-edit, pending-changes-level-two was chosen (thereby quite purposely overriding "WP:LOCALCONSENSUS" at enWiki explicitly... in pursuit of the WMF's global not-just-English-language mission). A warning-message to enWiki folks seems like a no-brainer here, though I could be wrong. Of course, by that sort of on-the-general-principle-of-the-thing logic, the WMF could have asked some of the devs to implement an article-specific Conventional PCI approved-editors-whitelist (to be filled with admins + wp:reviewers + any additional UIDs && IPs deemed acceptable to the lawyers of the PCI association). This additional anyone-can-edit implementation work was not done, but I get the sense it was not done for pragmatic reasons related to the opportunity cost of using the devs thataway. Is that why implementation of the huge-flashing-warning-message is also being skipped? Pragmatic reasons, being there are only five such pages? Hope this helps, and thanks for improving wikipedia.

  p.s. I have no direct stake in this Conventional PCI stuff per se, but a suggestion was made recently that WP:Drafts-fka-WP:AfC 'reviewers' (aka the people who give advice to beginners on whether a new article is ready for mainspace) be given the WP:REVIEWER bit... and in fact, that the WP:REVIEWER-user-right be handed out automagically to anybody with 500+edits and 90+days (or even fewer than that criteria at admin discretion). If it happens, this change would significantly increase the number of WP:REVIEWERS from ~7500 to perhaps three or four times that figure... and thus qualitatively alter the 'meaning' of pending-changes-level-two. Since enWiki doesn't officially even *use* pending-changes-level-two at all, this expansion of the reviewer-userright seemed to me like a fine way to make good use of an otherwise unused mediawiki feature. Except now, it turns out we *do* use pending-changes-level-two, albeit only at the Conventional PCI article.  :-/     Insert broad $request here, for some general sort of enlightenment, regarding situations wherein everybody is pulling in different directions, and how to conceivably mitigate, in the future. Or is this the price we pay, for our commitment to the wiki way? — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:05, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

74.192.84.101, obviously, we think they should, and that’s why they do. :-) (The deleted articles, of course, contain the notice in the deletion log, but see Damon Dash for an example of the note.) Anyone who edits Conventional PCI receives clear instructions on where the issues lie. If the specifics of the notes used could be improved, we’re always open to suggestions. We're very interested in helping to make sure that these articles receive the requisite care without restricting the editing community any more than absolutely necessary. But I would add that, in a situation like this, there's a general rule that comes in handy - "Be bold, but please be careful." When actions may be controversial, it's a good idea to talk first. A simple talk page message to me prior to changing protection level would likely have resulted in a very different outcome all around. And we do try to encourage such conversations. For instance, at the top of Talk:Conventional PCI, it explicitly notes that "Questions regarding this action may be left here, addressed to the Foundation at legal@wikimedia.org, or addressed to Philippe Beaudette. " Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:28, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Philippe, the problem remains that you are installing PC2 based on what amounts to a personal preference on your part. If PC1 and semi-protection are insufficient to meet the office's legal obligations, the only remaining protection that conforms to policy is full. Full will certainly meet the legal obligations facing the WMF. WP:OFFICE was intended to ensure that admins don't take actions that place the WMF in legal jeopardy, not to prevent admins from ensuring that articles are in policy-compliant protection states.

Judging from the article history, semi-protection and the edit notices were doing a perfectly adequate job of preventing problems in the past, and you changed it when George Ho requesting that it be unprotected. Why do you believe that neither semi-protection nor PC1 would be adequate today?—Kww(talk) 19:27, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Kww, drop the stick and move on. The WMF does not owe you an explanation on why this particular WP:OFFICE action was taken, and you are not going to get one. Accept it. Robofish (talk) 00:35, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I've come to accept that I will never receive an explanation. I do ask that Philippe not represent my actions as hasty or careless, however. I set the article at the sole protection level that satisfies both WP:OFFICE and WP:PROTECT, and that was neither hasty nor careless.—Kww(talk) 02:36, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Kww. Thank you for letting us know your opinions. On behalf of the community, I ask you not to post here about this again. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:03, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

"The WMF does not owe you an explanation on why this particular WP:OFFICE action was taken, and you are not going to get one. [...]"
Oh no you don't... The WMF does indeed need to somehow explain to the community what is going on with PC2 being applied to this article.
If there is an active problem happening with this article which requires PC2 when semi-protection and/or PC1 wasn't working, then the community needs to know why. Because PC2 requires either the admin bit or the reviewer bit to accept changes, from what I've read so far it sounds like both admins and reviewers could be putting themselves personally at risk in editing or patrolling this article since they could accidentally accept a change that PCI-SIG objects to.
I've followed the WP:OFFICE saga with this article off and on over the years and I've actively avoided making any major edits to it precisely because I didn't want to accidentally step in this DMCA mess. Heck, several years ago I discovered we were giving readers bad information on the use of 64-bit cards in 32-bit slots (in fact, I'm using a 64-bit PCI card in just that way right now) and I still can't help but wonder if that bad information would have been corrected sooner had the official specifications been cited in the first place. The big notice at the top of the article (even though we have to have it right now) probably isn't helping us much either, since that sort of thing is going to put people off from improving the article.
Tapdancing around PCI-SIG while trying to also follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy seems to be a minefield and I can't help but wonder why this mess hasn't caught the attention of some of the tech-media outlets as well as Intel's own PR group... --Tothwolf (talk) 11:25, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Philippe (WMF), I don't know, and don't want to know what's going on between KWW and you, but if you allow somebody as demiurge1000 to use your talk page to speak "On behalf of the community", it means there's something terribly wrong with both community and you, which probably is the case.69.181.196.22 (talk) 13:05, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

IP, if you will notice the comment at the top of this page, I am not in the habit (with rare exceptions) of stifling anyone from speaking on my talk page. I no more represent who may speak in the name of the community than you do. And arguably, less.Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:53, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

This discussion is exactly what should have happened before all this needless drama. Kww is part of this community and this is an issue he obviously has an interest in. He is free to speak his mind anywhere he likes. Philippe, and everyone else, is free to stop commenting whenever they like. What nobody is free to do is to appoint themselves the official representative of the community and tell one party to the discussion they are no longer welcome to comment on it. If I had to pick a word to describe Demiurge's post that word would be "trolling". Beeblebrox (talk) 21:15, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I've struck the contentious part of my comment above. I continue to believe that further engagement in this issue by Kww is unconstructive. However, I will permit the community as a whole to calculate its own mileage on that. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:31, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

You are not in a position to "permit" the community anything. — Scott • talk 12:59, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I really don't need to add a smiley to a comment like that (it's been pointed out to me that one might've helped on the previous comment), but I do wholeheartedly apologise if you were at all troubled by the absence of it. Given that you're busy sealing deals over on Jimbo's talkpage, I'm surprised you would be so bothered by such a thing. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:10, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

• You know, I've hesitated to say anything here because I'm pretty open about my distaste for PC2; in fact, in the current RFC I've proposed that it not be used at all. Back in early December, I went around and did what Kww was doing, removing PC2 where it hadn't been specifically approved in a community discussion (and yes, I respect community decisions that allow for exceptions to specific policies for specific situations). Of course I found the particular use of PC2 that is the focus of this discussion. And because it was a WP:OFFICE action, I had a non-public discussion with Philippe about the use of PC2. That discussion confirmed to me that Philippe was well aware that this was a non-standard use of PC2, and that it had been a conscious decision to use PC2 because, in keeping with English Wikipedia community standards, it permitted more people (including unregistered users) to edit the article, but reduced the risk of the material subject to the DMCA being inserted into the article. In other words, PC2 was being used in an effort to bring the page ever-closer to the community-standard state of "anyone can edit". If Kww had bothered to take the time to ask the same question I did, either publicly or privately, I have no doubt he would have received the same answer: that the level of protection selected specifically bore in mind overall community standards, as well as the fact that the community itself had made exceptions to the "no PC2" rule. I have no idea where Kww came up with the idea that using PC2 was "illegal"; for that matter, WP:IAR is policy, and the use of PC2 in this case would easily have been an appropriate use of IAR.

  Reverting WP:OFFICE actions *is* a big deal; screwing up on them does seriously put at risk the WMF's Section 230 protection and also makes the WMF a sitting duck for a lawsuit that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend - even if the WMF eventually prevailed. Philippe has worked very hard over the last several years to educate the WMF legal team on how seriously DMCA actions can impact on the project, and it is largely due to his early efforts that the WMF legal team makes it their policy to fight off as many DMCA actions as possible, to limit their scope as much as possible, and to keep working on them to eliminate them as quickly as possible. The end result has been a major reduction in the number and frequency of OFFICE actions. This is community-sensitive behaviour we should be celebrating, instead of kicking sand in Philippe's face. Risker (talk) 10:00, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

• Worser and worser. Now we find out that WMF and a Wikipedia editor had an off-wiki discussion about this, making it clear there were community concerns about use of PC2. Neither thought it appropriate to document the discussion. This is not consistent with WMF's claim (WMF FAQ)"We strive to operate highly transparently, " (emphasis mine). NE Ent 12:24, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
• Actually, Risker, I would have been just as upset after that discussion. Using PC2 not only violates WP:PROTECT, without an established process to give editors the reviewer right, it isn't even a truly functional state. Violating community standards to suit his own needs because he disagrees with WP:PROTECT, as opposed to taking actions that he is required to do based on legal requirements facing the office, is not a valid use of his office powers. It's certainly true that in the face of an Arbcom admonition that I'm powerless to do anything to correct it and other members of the community will now be unwilling to try. I sympathize with the need to deal swiftly and positively with DMCA actions, but unnecessarily violating WP:PROTECT isn't an answer. Changing the state to full was not a reversal of an office action when I did it. To label it as such requires a perverse redefinition of "reversal".—Kww(talk) 02:56, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Oh, get off your high horse, Kww. You engaged in extremely high risk behaviour to pursue a personal objective, putting not only this project but the entire WMF family at risk. The community does not get to overrule *extremely rare* WP:OFFICE actions, and you personally don't get to do it just because of your personal interpretation of policy. Get your head around it. You had no idea whether that was a carefully negotiated deceleration of protection. You had no idea whether there was a court order. You had no idea what hornet's nest you might kick over. You had no idea whether your actions could have cost a lawsuit, hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, or even the loss of Section 230 protection. And let's note for the record that nobody would even be able to fork Wikipedia if Section 230 protection is lost: nobody would host the project then because of the extreme risk, and it would be a pariah. Screwing around with DMCA takedowns is a very high risk proposition; websites have been shut down over them. You got it in your head that you had the right to make that decision for the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who have compiled the hundreds of projects in the WMF family, without discussion with anyone. No, Kww. I don't actually care how upset you might have been. You messed up big time. And the biggest mess you have made isn't so much that you screwed around with a WP:OFFICE action, it's that your actions have exponentially increased the likelihood that someone else will do it in the future. This time, there was no immediate effect; the next time, the outcome for this project, or the entire WMF family, could well be very different. It's a bright line, you crossed it. There's no way you can justify it, and all the la-di-da "the policy says X" doesn't mean a darn thing. WP:OFFICE actions are outside of the control of this community, and always have been, and you know that. I cannot express how incredibly disappointed I am in you that you did this. Risker (talk) 03:20, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Ok... Let's step away from hypotheticals for a moment.

I won't argue that undoing some WP:OFFICE actions could be risky, however in this specific circumstance there was absolutely no risk to anyone or anything. Per your comment above of "In other words, PC2 was being used in an effort to bring the page ever-closer to the community-standard state of "anyone can edit".", it is now clear that Philippe's objective was to keep certain links from being added to the article while still allowing the article to be edited. Kww in turn setting the article to full protection and leaving a note on Philippe's talk page noting the PC2 issue did not make it any more possible for those links to be added to the article, therefore Kww's actions in no way endangered or harmed anything.

To respond to your comment further above regarding your private conversation with Philippe... Surely you have to realize that your position with Arbcom means Philippe is much, much more likely to discuss this issue with you compared to a random editor (or administrator). From what I've read thus far, what seems to have annoyed others here is not that Philippe used PC2 on the article, but that he has not been willing to explain why he set it.

My own opinion is that there has been a gross overreaction all around with this issue. Given the lack of harm or even the potential to cause harm, I find myself questioning why Arbcom would even admonish Kww, and I don't like the answers that come to mind. If Kww's actions could have had the potential to put anything at risk, sure, but since they didn't, I can see no reason for an admonishment other than to "send a message" to others not to question edits made by WMF staff.

Now, all that said, who wants to discuss the validity and reasoning behind PCI-SIG's DMCA takedown notice? While I think Arbcom owes Kww an apology, the underlying DMCA takedown notice is questionable at best. To me it looks like PCI-SIG is actually more interested in harming Wikipedia's coverage of Conventional PCI then preventing access to the PCI Local Bus Specification documentation itself.

The PCI specification documentation is widely available, from all sorts of major university websites to printed copies on Amazon.com and eBay. PCI-SIG certainly isn't targeting those universities because to do so would mean students wouldn't be learning about PCI.

Any halfway reputable software developer who has spent much time dealing with low level operating system code likely has a copy of the PCI specifications on his or her bookshelf, as does anyone who has spent much time doing hardware design or testing. As someone who has been heavily involved with both software and hardware design, I too have copies of the PCI specification documentation. There are no notices in the PCI specification documentation itself regarding redistribution or disclosure of the material. --Tothwolf (talk) 05:07, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

A couple of major points here: When a WMF staff member (whether it's Philippe or anyone else) is clearly labeling an action as being related to a DCMA takedown, or stating that it is a WP:OFFICE action, it's a Wikimedia Foundation action, not an action of the individual. That is the staff member's assigned role within the organization, and they are acting as an agent of the WMF. There seems to be some notion that Philippe was doing this on his own dime; let's drop that idea entirely. No WMF staff member acts in isolation and with only their own personal judgment on these matters. So let's stop shooting the messenger here. Secondly, there's also this weird notion that the nature and purpose of the specific DMCA has anything to do with whether or not a WP:OFFICE action can be altered by a single individual administrator. That is not the case; policy is clear that WP:OFFICE actions are exempt from community consensus, let alone the personal decisions of any individual user. Finally, this website belongs to the WMF, not to any individual user or even to its community. As such, it has the right and responsibility to "[m]anage otherwise the Project websites in a manner designed to facilitate their proper functioning and protect the rights, property, and safety of ourselves and our users, licensors, partners, and the public." [reference: Terms of Use, section 10, final bullet point.] WP:OFFICE actions are the WMF's method of carrying out this particular management responsibility. The Terms of Use supersede any policy on any project. The entire discussion should be focused on the overriding principles here, not on "well, I can find that information in a dozen different places". (For all we know, there may well be litigation going on with other groups that are publishing this information.) This is a black and white issue; the WMF gets to do this, we agree to it in the terms of use, and if we don't like it we can fork. Remember, the terms of use were developed with a huge amount of community consultation and participation and were approved in 2012. Risker (talk) 06:01, 3 February 2014 (UTC) Addendum: Ooooh look, the WP:OFFICE entry for Conventional PCI is practically waving a red flag for someone to contest the DMCA: "Article is available to edit except for inclusion of PCI Local Bus Specifications, as detailed on the article talk page. If you'd like to appeal, please contact User:Philippe (WMF)." So, if you're certain, @Tothwolf:, that there's no good reason for this to be under a DMCA, I'm quite certain Philippe will walk you through the process. Risker (talk) 06:20, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

"The entire discussion should be focused on the overriding principles here, not on "well, I can find that information in a dozen different places"."

That's not what I said and there isn't ongoing litigation with others who have hosted and/or linked to the PCI specification documentation. Had the underlying issue of the related DMCA takedown been dealt with long ago, we likely wouldn't be discussing any of this now.

I'll just go ahead and say it outright... If Wikipedia's Conventional PCI article were ever "complete", PCI-SIG is afraid that they wouldn't be able to entice people to pay membership fees and/or purchase printed copies of the specification documents.

The DMCA takedown notice in question can be found here.

On page 2 it states:

"PCI-SIG has recently learned that PCI Local Bus Specification, Revision 2.1, PCI Local Bus Specification, Revision 2.2, PCI Local Bus Specification, Revision 2.3, and PCI Local Bus Specification, Revision 3.0 are listed as "References" and available for download in connection with the Wikipedia entry "Conventional PCI" located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Component_Interconnect (the "Infringing Entry"). [...]"

...so it is crystal clear that PCI-SIG does not want the standards documents being used as references for the Conventional PCI article on Wikipedia.

On page 1 it also states:

"[...] The Local Bus Specifications are proprietary to PCI-SIG and their availability and use are limited to PCI-SIG members as a membership benefit."

This statement is false. Printed copies of the specification documentation are/have been available for anyone to purchase, regardless of membership status.

No, I'm not interested in "outing" myself in order to file a counter-notice, however I'd be more than happy to forward a community written letter to various tech-media outlets and the EFF. --Tothwolf (talk) 07:16, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

The issue concerns WP:LINKVIO links that have been repeatedly added to the article and its talk page, and to text added to both the article and the talk page that instructs the reader how to find the links. See the edit notice. Johnuniq (talk) 09:54, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I know what the edit notice says, however read the DMCA takedown notice itself. It is written to be much more general than that.

For example (page 1):

"Because PCI-SIG is the owner of all right, title and interest in the Local Bus Specifications, including all copyrights, PCI-SIG has the sole and exclusive right to use, copy, distribute, display, publicly perform, modify and create derivative works based on the Local Bus Specifications. [...]" (emphasis added)

Just before this statement is where they made the other statement I called out above:

"[...] The Local Bus Specifications are proprietary to PCI-SIG and their availability and use are limited to PCI-SIG members as a membership benefit."

(See http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/order_form for why this is blatantly false, specifically "NR16".)

The way in which the DMCA takedown is written reads as though one should not reference version 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.0, or really any version of the PCI specification documentation at all. It very much reads as though PCI-SIG does not want other "competing entities" critically discussing PCI itself.

On a related note, they specifically included copies of the copyright registrations along with the DMCA takedown for revisions 2.1, 2.3, and 3.0 of the PCI specification documents, however the registration for version 2.2 is absent. --Tothwolf (talk) 13:07, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Anyhow, my point above is the DMCA takedown notice itself was poorly written and overly broad, which very much seems to leave it open to be challenged. The PCI specification documents in question were not hosted on WMF servers or anything connected with Wikipedia. PCI-SIG should have been sending takedown notices to the universities and other entities that hosted the PCI specification documents if they didn't want people linking to and/or viewing those documents.

Because Wikipedia's Conventional PCI article was so visible via a Google search, PCI-SIG instead did a typical knee-jerk "How DARE they discuss our precious PCI specifications and link to copies of the specification documents?!" and instead sent a DMCA takedown notice to the WMF. PCI-SIG hasn't sent others such as Google takedown notices for these links. This is also very easy to check for, since if they had, a Google search for "PCI Local Bus Specification" would display a notice similar to this at the bottom of the search results: "In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org." A search at ChillingEffects.org for PCI-SIG also returns only one DMCA takedown notice [4] sent by PCI-SIG. This notice was in relation to the "PCI Vendor and Device Lists" (which is today hosted here) and a partial account of their troubles can be read here.

Now, coming back full circle, if all we needed was to prevent certain links from being added to the Conventional PCI article, why on earth was PC2 used when either semi-protection and/or PC1 would readily prevent others from linking to the PCI specification documents? Why did we as a community spend all this time dealing with a huge overreaction by others when Kww set the article to full-protection and left Philippe a note about PC2? WP:MOUNTAIN anyone? ...and with that I think I've said most of what I felt I needed to say on this issue. --Tothwolf (talk) 23:09, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I just want to note that I have stated no opinion on the validity of the takedown notice itself. While others may want to encourage WMF to take an activist stand about it, I don't think that it's reasonable for any of us to expect WMF to do so. All I desire is for office actions to violate local policy only when there is a pressing need to do so, and that actions that do not fulfill a legal obligation not be labeled as office actions. In this case, semi-protection seemed like it was working. The spam blacklist would probably be a more targeted response, and an edit filter would be even more targeted. All those options are available, so there's no pressing need to violate local policies by using PC2. There's certainly no legal issue that required downgrading full protection to PC2. "An effort to maximize the number of people who can edit that article" may be a noble goal, but it's not a sufficient motive to lock a specific protection level in place using the authority of the office.—Kww(talk) 03:11, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree, the spam blacklist or an edit filter would absolutely have done the job. The number of sites hosting the PCI specifications isn't all that large and has remained fairly static for a long period of time.

I don't think anything I've said should be construed as encouraging the WMF to take an activist stand regarding the DMCA takedown though. One of the specific functions of the WMF is to resolve these sort of issues, not push them to the backburner where they can pop back up and bite people later (and the unusual use of PC2 here absolutely would have bitten someone else eventually).

The main issue I've seen with how the WMF has handled PCI-SIG's DMCA takedown notice is that those involved seem to have only looked at two possible options. The first, to lock the article down in whatever fashion and try to patrol it to keep anyone from adding links to copies of the PCI specifications. The other, to contest the DMCA itself.

There is a third option that has so far been overlooked, which happens to be the option Jim Boemler, the creator and maintainer of the PCI Vendor and Device Lists chose when PCI-SIG's hired guns targeted him in December 2002, [5] [6] and that was to contact the president of PCI-SIG, Al Yanes directly. Jim got results in doing so, and I can't see the harm in the WMF doing the same.

Should that third option fail, a fourth option would be to take the issue to the tech-media outlets, which Jim also did. [7]

As for the validity of the DMCA notice itself, Flava Works Inc. v. Gunter (see also [8]) gives us even more to work with. In Judge Posner's ruling he stated: "A noninfringer doesn’t need a safe harbor."

Just like with myVidster, the WMF/Wikipedia isn't the copyright infringer, and is two steps removed from the infringement itself. The WMF/Wikipedia did not upload or host the PCI specifications and did not itself add the links to the articles. The people who uploaded/hosted them on third party websites were not even the same people who found them via a basic web search and linked to them for use as references in the article.

With this in mind, there is absolutely no reason for that DMCA takedown notice to stand. There is also no compelling reason for the WMF/Wikipedia to do anything special to prevent these links from being added to the Conventional PCI article since the whole issue of "contributory infringement" gets tossed out the window. That said, since Wikipedia itself has a policy against linking to copyright violations, we can (and should) still remove them using the normal means and processes we use for all the other 4,441,052+ content pages here on Wikipedia. --Tothwolf (talk) 06:40, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

per Kww - "The spam blacklist would probably be a more targeted response, and an edit filter would be even more targeted". Yeah that's what ran through my mind too. If the intention is to keep editing as open as possible, while preventing a specific type of well-known, well-defined and predictable edit then why not, oh, I dunno, leave editing open while preventing a specific type of well-known, well-defined and predictable edit by our existing and proven technical means?

Maybe, again, we can't be told why that's not a better solution (for top secret reasons), but it sounds like a damn good question to me - and a question to which PC2 doesn't seem like any sort of good answer for the reasons I and others have expanded above (and below).

If you can remove the judgement from randomly, strangely selected usergroups who are pretty much bound not to fully understand what and why they are "reviewing" (because parts of the information they would need are secret) and replace it with tried and tested technical measures which can be defined by the guy who does understand the issue, then I'm not seeing a downside. In Phillippe's defence, maybe he just didn't consider those measures - although, with the huge, careful, thought always applied to OFFICE decisions, I think he would have. It's a conundrum, indeed. Begoon ^talk 12:54, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

As I've likely missed something in the huge wall of text above, please could you explain why the spam blacklist or edit filter would be more effective than PC2? Thehelpfulone 22:47, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, Thehelpfulone, other than the fact that it would likely violate the DMCA notice, those would be great tools. I'm very fond of them. But the thing is, we were prohibited from linking to those specs. So that means that I couldn't, for instance, put together all the links to those specs in one handy place, like, say a filter list. Or the spam blacklist. Sure, it's possible we could have done it and gotten away with it, but the goal here - at that time, with the legal staff we had (one person) - wasn't to push the boundaries that far. It was to comply and get the damned thing off her desk. I think it's safe to say that were we to receive the same notice today, our reactions might be different - but we're legally better staffed now and financially in a better position to fight. Lots has changed. But the easy answer to your question, and the same thing I'd consider today, is "to do so would require linking to the specs." Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:40, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

An edit filter could easily be implemented that contained no link to the specifications. Edit filters don't contain links.—Kww(talk) 16:57, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

You are both reasonable people with a big Wikiheart, and you both seem to recognise and respect that in the other. Apart from the willingness to work together in principle, I still get the feeling there is still a lot of friction. Even if you're not, maybe you could arrange for a phonecall or a skype call to clear the (remaining) air? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:57, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Philippe, Kww is correct about the edit filter here. Might I suggest finding someone experienced with writing edit filter rules to help create a rule for this and get this whole PC2 mess cleared out before tackling the underlying DMCA issue?

As for MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist, it too supports regular expressions, and while technically the DMCA takedown notice as written only applies to the specific url "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Component_Interconnect", which itself was already a redirect to Conventional PCI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI) [9] when the DMCA takedown notice was sent in November 2010, [10] I don't think anyone would have any grounds to complain about textual links (not even "clickable" hyperlinks) or regular expressions in MediaWiki's blacklist used to keep people from linking to copies of the PCI specification documents. A targeted edit filter rule would probably still be better though.

The person who handled the original DMCA takedown notice might not have had the time to research this issue fully, but since we have a lot more information now (see how it can help to have issues out in the open where others who might have more knowledge about something can add to the discussion?), it doesn't make any sense to leave things in a state of limbo as they are now when a single phone call or email to Al Yanes might be all it takes to get it cleared up. For all we know he might not even be aware of what PCI-SIG's lawyers did. Even if he knew that they sent a DMCA takedown notice, he most certainly isn't aware that they sent it to the wrong people, how poorly written it was, or how the resulting mess has affected Wikipedia's community. After reading Jim Boemler's story, I get the sense both PCI-SIG and their lawyers are very much out of touch with how the internet itself has evolved and don't really know how to handle things. --Tothwolf (talk) 23:30, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

• Philippe and I were just talking and I know he's not opposed to doing something like this (abuse filter) if we can find a way to accomplish the same end results with the same or lower risk. My main concern, to be honest, is that it seems the idea is a filter looking for specific urls or file names. That worries me a bit because all it would require to get around it is uploading somewhere else or changing the file name. What exactly were you thinking? @Tothwolf:@Kww:@Begoon:. Jalexander--WMF 23:48, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

The quick and dirty way to handle this I think would be to create an edit filter/abuse filter rule with regular expressions of the established urls that contain pdf copies of the PCI specifications using just the host and path and simply omit the filenames. I'll email you a link for a targeted Google search that should be enough to get started. A search though the edit history of the article and/or any suppressed edits would probably help find any that a Google search misses. --Tothwolf (talk) 00:05, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Tothwolf is on the right track. If he e-mails the list to me, I can create the filter. Remember that the DMCA doesn't expect you to be able to absolutely guard against users readding infringing material, only to respond to the request and take safeguards against repeated violations. A filter that takes care of all known cases at the time the filter was installed would suffice so long as the filter was maintained.—Kww(talk) 00:10, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

James is right that I'm more than willing to consider alternative solutions. However, I'd like to caution that it won't happen today: I want legal review on it before implementation. That's not always a quick process. But I appreciate everyone (Tothwolf, Kww) for jumping in to help create this. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 00:29, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

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WP / WMF interaction

Abstract

Your unprofessional conduct is not beneficial to positive relations between English Wikipedia (WP) and the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). I urge you act more maturely moving forward and to rectify the unwarranted damage you've done to Kww.

Duties

Per meta:Legal_and_Community_Advocacy#Background, your departments' responsibilities are: "There are many Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, that are all hosted and operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation. As the Legal and Community Advocacy Department for the fifth largest website in the world, we oversee all legal matters for the Foundation and focus on key initiatives to help support the community consistent with our Foundation goals and values. We deal with a wide range of issues and projects, including policy drafting, trademark and copyright law, international law, employment law, litigation, fundraising and grant law, domestic and international contracts, privacy law, ethics, internet law, and non-profit corporate governance. We are also charged with carrying forward the Foundation’s goals of advocating for the community in new ways, including fighting for content online, facilitating community discussions about critical WMF initiatives that affect the community, better supporting Wikimedia administrators and functionaries, and providing information about legal and legislative issues that impact online content." (emphasis mine)

Background

Office listing

On 31 Aug 2013, for reasons long since forgotten, I came across the wp:office list of actions page and noted a link to a courtesy blanked page, which is of course, incredibly illogical, pointless and stupid, as it serves as a giant pointer from a reasonably prominent page to an obscure page most of us have never heard of whose contents are still visible in the page history. So I did the logical thing per our (English Wikipedia) pillars -- I removed it [11]. Unfortunately I've been here quite long enough to know that too often the commonsense, logical thing to do is "wrong" by the Byzantine way this place operates, so I left you a notification, figuring "no big deal," he can just click undo if it's the wrong thing to do. You left the reasonably polite note here. Upon reading that "potential for harm with office actions is massive," I did what any reasonably well educated and intelligent older American would do: I laughed out loud. (Not kidding.) This is a website, not a nuclear submarine, a hospital, a high school, a Police or Fire department.

Per path of least drama I made no further reply on-wiki and went about whatever I went on about. (In hindsight, I wish I had discussed your ridiculous overreaction then, before it caused real damage.)

As a note, if we accept the ridiculous hypothesis of "massive" harm, WMF is acting irresponsibly by leaving that section of wp:office in an unprotected page, instead of subpaging that section and fully protecting with the .

DMCA takedown

Although I choose to move on regarding the office listing, I was curious as to the extent of WP / WMF issues regarding office actions; depending on the nature and frequency I might have some suggestions, so I left this talk page watchlisted.

It wasn't long before you were called out for this edit here. You stated "reverting office actions is A Big Deal"; note that the edit reverted did "not" say "office" and was made by an account who username does not contain the traditional (WMF) annotation. The WP:AGF interpretation would be that the editor did not realize it was an office action. And again with the "massive," which makes you clueless. I understand its probably in large part because you hang around with WMF lawyers who are paid to be paranoid, but the political reality is someone who filed suit for a transient restoration of DMCA content would be pilloried in the media; normal people, for whom Wikipedia is just an awesome free encyclopedia like Wikipedia, even if they think the contributors are a bunch of cute weirdos.

I'll note that although you stated that was an office action, you have not listed it in wp:office list of actions.

Conventional PCI protection fiasco

There is no logical scenario in which Kww's full protection could have caused "trivial," let alone "massive" harm to WMF. It's not logical; since reviewer rights were handed out like candy [12]. User:Philippe says you only use the volunteer account for WMF activity "with the prior approval of the Wikimedia Foundation's counsel," yet the Conventional PCI (and other recent two) actions are logged as "own recognizance."

Either you messed up and decided to do this -- use a protection level specifically rejected by the community -- on your own and are unwilling to fess up to it, or you failed to, per the duties listed above, adequately explain to the movers and shakers in WMF why PC2 was a bad option for WP.

Your reaction is so illogical the commenters on the Signpost story mostly see it as obvious payback for the Visual Editor showdown.

Arrogance or tone deafness

You comments, such as I have not read the entire AC motion at this point (due to several other critical issues at work), ... If an admonishment to me exists, I'm sure that I'll feel admonished. come off as arrogant and condescending: I'm too important and busy to read the arbcom case that involves me, and flipping wise arbcom admonishment, which means nothing to you (not being subject to their jurisdiction) when it's now a Sword of Damocles hanging over Kww is insensitive at best and nearly mocking at worst.

You keep saying that people should just discuss things with you but when, for existence, they say the instructions on PCI aren't clear enough, rather than fix the problem you just say they're wrong.

I'm not sure if you come across as a prick onwiki because a) you are, in real life, a prick (hopefully not), b) you lack a self-awareness of tone, or c) the resources WMF has provided you are not adequate to execute all the tasks you responsible for. Let's agf a is false. If the problem is b, dump more of the communication responsibilities on the liaisons -- Maggie is very good at engaging positively, and this (new?) AKoval_(WMF) says "I'm here to help keep the community happy. :)" That sounds promising. If the problem is c, you just gotta to the bosses and say hey, we need more time to deal with those English Wikipedia problem children.

See also arbcom noticeboard discussion.

Moving forward

Proceeding forward, there are two good and one bad options for dealing with WP mucking up WMF office actions:

1. Make the instructions so crystal clear that none of us volunteer idiots can misconstrue them. So the top of PCI would not say "protection," but explicitly list the level of protection, which would also be added to the wp:office list of actions box.

2. Act like a professional and understand that when dealing with a bold rewarding, anyone can edit WP, ya'll are simply going to have to vigilant and revert inadvertent stepping in your sandbox, and politely and calmly explain that legal constraints require WMF to maintain the thing in that particular state. It's not obvious to me that it's obvious to you the for a normal Wikipedian, running into an office action is a black swan event, so violations are not intentional and expecting a priori knowledge of best practices is unrealistic.

Honestly, after observing for six months, I think 2 is the better option; 1 is really hard, as numerous discussions on policy pages have shown. The frequency of WP / WMF conflict on office actions seems to be sufficiently rare that 2 shouldn't really be a big deal.

The bad option is, of course, the status quo -- insufficiently clear direction and hysterical overreaction to transgressions. The problem is, of course, shear numbers. So, yeah, I will never, ever make any edits anywhere near "office" pages. Or pages linked to office pages. But there are 122,687 users, so correcting after the fact will be a task for Sisyphus. Endless, frustrating, and it makes you look bad.

So fix it

Obviously, the right answer for the PCI page is semi-protected, PC1 -- being a "reviewer" ain't that special -- they gave to right to me, after all, and there's no recent history of anyone doing bad stuff, is there?

Secondly, it would be a great step forward in WP / WMF relationships if you open a arbcom request asking they revert the admonishment of Kevin. What you or arbcom says to me doesn't really matter (the "N" in NE Ent stands for nobody: I ain't an admin and I don't actually edit very much), but admonishing an active admin with specific skills -- it's my understanding Kevin is one of the go-to guys for doing rangeblocks -- is a big deal. NE Ent 23:02, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

NE Ent, thank you for the long and detailed post. I'll read it and attempt to take it onboard. In the meantime, I want to point out that the reason I was too busy to read the Arbcom case is because I was dealing with issues like this one, which in my opinion is far more important than an arbcom case that I was involved in. In addition, there are any number of other critical issues (including suicide threats, which happen with alarming regularity), and staff management which are demands on my time. I say this only so that you understand that if I don't detail an answer to every point here, it's not that I haven't read and paid attention. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 23:25, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

NE Ent I agree that this situation could have been handled in a different way and there are improvements that could be made to the protection process. I am not sure I would have gone along with the reprimand of Kww since he increased the protection level of the page. However, I would also ask you to try to be calm when talking to Philippe. I think he has a difficult job and I honestly believe that he has good intentions. I would like him to want to work with the community. I know it's hard for the community to feel that WMF listens to us and respects us at times. At times I think they have a tin ear and that they should have seen certain problems coming from a long distance. However, I also think there are people at WMF who sincerely want to do a good job, and I think Philippe is one of them. He's human like all of us, and I think if you give him a chance, he'll be responsive to you. --Pine^✉ 08:41, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Exactly right. I think sometimes people need to focus on what might be constructive for the encyclopedia, not what might forward (or incite!) an ideological dispute with the WMF. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:12, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Note; my talk page is here, out of courtesy for the user talk page owner I'd prefer comments to me from third parties be directed there. NE Ent 00:56, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Nah, it makes more sense to post it here as a single discussion, where the target of your disapproval will see that others don't concur with your opinion. I'd suggest that is the courtesy that others are offering by replying here. Risker (talk) 01:46, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

I haven't commented here because others have already said what I would have said, but for the record, I am another editor who strongly disagrees with Philippe's actions. I fully agree that WMF Office actions are not and should not be subject to community approval, but in this case there was and still is an alternative (full protection) that is policy-compliant and provides a stronger level of protection against the infringing links being reposted. Yes, full protection is far less convenient for those who wish to edit the page, but we were fully aware that this was the case and would occasionally happen when we rejected PC2, and that is our decision to make. Philippe should change the protection to full until the Wikipedia community approves PC2 (which is being discussed). Also, because Philippe has made it clear (and rightly so) that nobody else should change the protection level or the banners/notices associated with it, Philippe should monitor the page and respond to edit requests such as my perfectly reasonable request that he fix the padlock image being the wrong color. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:36, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

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I believe that this discussion has concluded and, unless you remove this template, will be archiving this topic soon. If you disagree, please edit this section and remove {{ArchivingSoon}}. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:37, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Two new accounts

Hi Philippe, do you know anything about WMF Test User 30g02 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) or WMF Test User 304g0040g (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 05:39, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't, but I'll take a look. Thanks for letting me know. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:49, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

We found a third as well - although they fit some of the patterns for our test accounts by some teams, they don't fit all of them, so I had them temporarily locked until we can verify ownership. I'll unlock them if they're valid staff. Thanks again. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 06:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

No worries, if you have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AListUsers&username=WMF&group=&limit=50 there are some more which may or may not be the Foundation's. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:36, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Yep, we're looking at that too. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 06:59, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

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I believe that this discussion has concluded and, unless you remove this template, will be archiving this topic soon. If you disagree, please edit this section and remove {{ArchivingSoon}}. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:37, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

For the record ( a legitimate complaint to the Foundation)

No. As always, you've had a chance to say your piece. Over and over again. The thing is, I don't agree with you, and won't indulge you further. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:10, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Philippe (WMF), a few days ago I read this article. As you see even a NFL player could get bullied, but he has a right to complain to the officials. When a Facebook user is getting bullied, he could complain to Facebook administration. On Wikipedia, when a person gets bullied by a few users who call themselves "the wikipedia community" he could complain only to the same users. Philippe (WMF), the community bans is a way to bully people at least in some situations. If an arbitrator admits that "Everyone Mbz1 mailed it to looked at it and said "can't see it myself" and left it at that, often I suspect without emailing their response back to Mbz1.", and I still get blocked without any warning and any opportunity to face my accusers, it is bullying. If the community ban discussion looks like it is shown in this video, it is bullying. If the community ban is used against an editor who is blocked by the arbcom, with talk page access removed, it is bullying. If the first very anonymous, very involved, my worst wikihound user (user:Demiurge1000) who supports the ban is using the lies he got directly from the hacker of my private email account, it is bullying. If the user openly admits he has never read my rfc and still supports my ban, it is bullying. If half of the users who support the ban are involved, it is bullying. If an anonymous bully is accusing me, a named person, of a "criminal harassment" with no evidence wheresoever, and another anonymous bully states it knows an attorney, who will take me to court, and you Philippe (WMF) refuse to oversight it, while you have absolutely no problem with oversighting legitimate on-wiki diffs at this very page, it is bullying. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.196.175 (talk) 21:12, 17 February 2014 (UTC) If a very involved, very anonymous user says something lies like that and openly declares that the community ban should be used as a real life punishment it is bullying. If a very involved, very anonymous arbitrator openly admits he's involved, but still has no decency to stay off it is bullying. I could have continued, but I hope you've got the point. Treat it as a legitimate complaint to the Foundation about being bullied. I know it is useless, but I am posting it here for the record. p.s.And in case you want to send me to an anonymous list of your arbitrators, it will not do it either: When a few months (August of the last year) ago I asked the Committee to present some evidences I harassed somebody I got in response something like that: "The Arbitration Committee believes that the action taking regarding you on English Wikipedia was correct, and will not discuss the matter at all with you. Any further e-mails relating to this subject will be ignored." Once again there was no single bloody evidence of an alleged harassment, and it is bullying. Wikipedians, before you remove my post, please read the note atop of this talk page Mbz169.181.196.175 (talk) 20:06, 17 February 2014 (UTC) "No" what "no"? I did not ask you for anything. I only stated the facts. As I stated in the beginning I posted the above only for the record, and you collapsed because you're afraid of the truth. Just as your arbitrators and you community you don't agree with me without presenting any reason for your disagreement. That's why I cannot care less if you agree with me or you do not. Please have a wonderful day.69.181.196.175 (talk) 21:19, 17 February 2014 (UTC) Philippe (WMF), you said: "I don't agree with you" without providing any reason. Just out of curiosity (I am not asking you for anything, simply trying to understand your way of thinking) I'd like to understand what exactly you don't agree with me about. For example I stated "If the first very anonymous, very involved, my worst wikihound user (user:Demiurge1000) who supports the ban is using the lies he got directly from the hacker of my private email account, it is bullying." So what there is you, Philippe (WMF), do not agree with me about that statement: You don't agree that hacking of private email accounts is a criminal activity? Or You don't agree that using the lies told by the hacker (the criminal) of my private email account to support my ban is bullying?69.181.193.108 (talk) 16:37, 18 February 2014 (UTC)