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Mainspace outing

Does, and should, the WP:OUTING policy apply in mainspace? Currently, I don't see any discussion of it in WP:OUTING; "mainspace" doesn't seem to be mentioned at all.

Not-really-hypothetical scenario:

  1. Person "John Doe" is notable and the subject of the article "John Doe"
  2. Multiple RSes publish articles stating that John Doe is the same as "User:X" and has been using the account to edit the article John Doe
  3. An editor adds content to John Doe, cited to the RS, summarizing what the RS is reporting: that John Doe has been editing John Doe as User:X
  4. That edit is oversighted as a violation of WP:OUTING, because User:X has never self-outed on-wiki as John Doe

What if User:X isn't John Doe; what if the RSes are wrong? Well, if that's true, no actual personal information about User:X would be revealed; rather, it's incorrect personal information (linking the editor to the wrong RL identity) that would be revealed. Does this harm User:X? It harms their on-wiki reputation, perhaps, but it wouldn't harm their RL person (because the account has been incorrectly linked by RSes to some other RL person). User:X could post a denial on their userpage if they wanted to, and interestingly, that hypothetical userspace denial could conceivably be reported by RSes and then make its way into the John Doe mainspace article.) But if User:X makes a statement saying they're not John Doe, then, under the current WP:OUTING policy, we couldn't report that in mainspace (because it's not an on-wiki link to a RL identity, but the denial of said link).

What if User:X is John Doe? Then allowing the mainspace edit would reveal User:X's personal information. But would there be any harm done if that information was already revealed by RS, e.g., multiple international newspapers?

Consider this: Is the statement "User:X is alleged to be John Doe" the same as "User:X is John Doe"? If we are reporting on an allegation, is that outing, at all?

Also consider this: If the RSes had reported that John Doe was abusing a Twitter or Facebook account, we would include that in mainspace without hesitation (see, e.g., Mitt Romney#Social media, which discusses Romney's Twitter account "Pierre Delecto"). Why should it be any different just because it's a Wikipedia account instead of some other website? That's the part that, to me, looks like we are censoring our mainspace articles in order to protect an editor–"circling the wagons". Wikipedia policy seems to call for "hiding" relevant information from readers in order to "protect" Wikipedia editors.

I'm thinking an exception should be added to WP:OUTING to allow reliably-sourced, WP:DUE, WP:BLP-compliant, etc., content in mainspace articles. If a person is high-profile (notable), and the information is already reported by reliable sourcing, and including it would be DUE and otherwise policy-compliant, then it seems there is no harm done by including it in the mainspace article (it's already public), and not including it would violate core editorial principles (e.g., WP:NOTCENSORED).

This raises a lot of questions: should there be an exception? If so, what should the parameters be? Has this come up or been discussed in the past? What does the community think? – Levivich 18:08, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

I don’t agree with your framing of the issue, which I think is an overly Wikipedia-centric view of RS that conflicts with WP:DUE.
To answer the question: if the New York Times alleges a notable person is User:Example, we have suppressed that in the past, and I think our current interpretation of the policy would be to suppress it in the future. People are more important than articles, and the harassment policy is designed to protect people. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:18, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
I agree with Tony - no exception is needed or even desirable. In most cases "User:X is alleged to be John Doe" is going to be undue and should not be in the article. In the few cases where it is not, we can write "$RS alleges that John Doe edited their own Wikipedia article" without outing anybody. Only if user:X has made it clear on wiki that they are John Doe should this even be considered for inclusion in the article.
The main namespace is our most visible and so outing there has the potential to cause very significant harm. Incorrect outing has at least the same, if not greater, potential to cause harm as correct outing as you could be causing real world problems for two unconnected individuals: Imagine if John Doe is in the USA and User:X is in Iran, John Doe is openly gay, user:X edits with a strong anti-Israli POV. Link the two and user:X is potentially facing the death penalty and John Doe's career could be over. Thryduulf (talk) 21:37, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
I think "$RS alleges that John Doe edited their own Wikipedia article", without naming the username, is a reasonable compromise, but doing so is (I believe) currently prohibited, if the statement is cited to a source that names the username. – Levivich 21:49, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
It depends on the weighting issue. If it is only one article and that article names the names, I'm inclined to suppress because you'd have a DUE violation (i.e. overreporting on Wikipedia about a BLP when only one source cares) in addition to the outing issue, so there wouldn't really be a content case for inclusion.
If there has been significant coverage that it is merited, you could likely find an article that doesn't mention that username/name of the accounts and work with it that way. I'm not sure what point we'd consider linking to the source that has names acceptable in this context, but it's likely an "We'll know it when we see it" type thing. These are always complicated cases, and I don't think anyone is in danger of getting blocked. We'd just suppress and let them know to not include the link/not discuss it. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:08, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
I will alter the functionaries list to this discussion with a neutrally-worded post. Thryduulf (talk) 21:39, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I think, Levivich, that there is something missing from your analogy. Nowhere in the example you've given has "John Doe" agreed that he (a) ever edited Wikipedia, (b) edited Wikipedia using the username that the RS claims he used. I know there's an absolute obsession with the concept of COI on this project, and in many cases there may well be a COI involved, just not the one being alleged (and I use the word advisedly) by the RS. (Keep in mind that we don't publish a lot of allegations, particularly allegations that are perceived to be negative. This is not new and is standard BLP policy.) For example, most candidates running for office are way too busy to even think about their Wikipedia entry; it's infinitely more likely that any edits related to a candidate are made by a supporter of that politician (whether on paid staff, a volunteer, or just someone who likes them) than the candidate themselves. Occam's razor applies here. Frankly, unless someone posts on their page that they're the User X that was linked by RS Y to real life identity Z, posting that information is going to be outing. Risker (talk) 22:11, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Concur with the other functs above; OUTING specifically states we (the editors) do not confirm or deny the accuracy of the information, and we (the OSers) have a job to remove such outings. There are tons of COI editors; it's not notable for a subject to create an account and edit their page. If a user doesn't post their real-world name, and it's not a significant part of their life, then there is zero reason to leave such content in the article. And to respond to an earlier comment, there is almost zero reason to say "so-and-so has edited their own article." Primefac (talk) 22:26, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
  • And as a non-functionary (and some people may also consider me nonfunctional!), I agree with all of the functionaries above. The deciding factor on whether or not it violates policy to link a real person to an on-wiki account is whether or not the on-wiki account has voluntarily posted that information here, and nothing else. (A difficult case comes when John Doe has said publicly that they are User X, as opposed to other sources saying so. My inclination there would be to oversight it pending off-wiki communication with User X, but not to treat the editor who posted the information as someone who needs to be sanctioned.) And attempted, incorrect outing is identical for our purposes to accurate outing. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:39, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
  • My view may be the exception, but I see no reason to conceal what is already published by widely read sources that are generally considered reliable. Not putting the (attributed) relevant information here does not protect anybody, but merely complicates the rational presentation of fair information. I think of this as a rare exception, to be used very carefully: I've included a number of caveats in my sentence: "published" ; "widely read" ; "generally considered reliable" ; "attributed" ; "relevant" ; "fair". What the NYTimes (for example) publishes is known to the world, and it's greatly over-rating our own importance to think we can conceal it. BLP policy has always taken account of that what is already widely published responsible information is public. The judge of what is public is not WP ; it's the sources. The judge of what is fair to publish, or publish further is not WP, but responsible careful sources. We're an encyclopedia in the actual world, not some more private world we may wish existed. This does not mean we should do what we can get away with by stretching ever rule to its limit ; it does mean we should not interpret rules so they become ridiculous. (I don't think of myself as being radical about this; in actual instances, I've almost always supported the more conservative alternative. ) DGG ( talk ) 00:24, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Heh. We had a very involved arbitration case centered on the statement, published in just about every single MSM source in the United Kingdom, that a couple of accounts were a specific person. The Wikipedian who started that chain of events wound up desysopped, with checkuser and oversight removed. If he hadn't been an admin, he would have been indeffed for outing. It also illustrates that even someone with years of experience in interpreting diffs and understanding Wikipedia isn't really able to say definitively that User A = Real Person B, unless either Real Person B or User A confirms the connection. (And there are situations where I'd be hesitant to believe User A, even.) Risker (talk) 01:46, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the responses so far. The hypothetical posed is one in which (1) multiple RSes report the content, (2) the content is DUE (assume there would be consensus among editors that it's DUE), and (3) the person and the account deny the connection. If any of those three things weren't the case, then it would be an easy scenario. Let me pose a couple more hypotheticals:
    1. Multiple RSes report that the president of Nation X has been editing his Wikipedia articles as User:X. Both the president and User:X deny the connection. The president is impeached because of their deceitful editing.
    2. Multiple RSes report that the government of Nation X has used a team of intelligence operatives to edit Wikipedia articles to favor Nation X. RSes report the user names of the alleged Nation X operatives. Nation X and all the accounts involved deny the connection. Nation X is expelled from the United Nations as a result.
In either case, assume the best RSes (most reliable, most in-depth) all list the username(s) involved, but other sources that treat the topic more superficially do not include the username(s). Do we not include the content at all? Do we link to less-than-the-best RS in order to avoid linking to an RS that identifies the username(s)?
You might phrase the question as "Should WP:OUTING prevent the inclusion of otherwise WP:DUE content?" It seems that at some point, a person-to-account link, even if denied, could be so DUE that we couldn't possibly omit it from the encyclopedia (e.g., it causes the removal of a head of government or the expulsion of a nation from the UN). The question would then become: how DUE is DUE enough to overcome OUTING? How do we measure that? "Case by case" seems to be the obvious answer, but then how do editors discuss it without, for example, linking to RSes? Do we leave it up to functionaries to make the editorial decision about whether it's DUE enough? – Levivich 03:53, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
The real problem is that if there is any wriggle-room (for example, that editors can link to outing regarding an obviously significant event reported in an obviously reliable source), then editors will link to outing with claims that the justification is obvious. It's cleaner to have a simple rule—you can link to self-outing currently visible on-wiki, but anything else is bad. Johnuniq (talk) 04:23, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
this avoids the dilemma by removing a key factors. We're talking about multiple very reliable source, not "a reliable source". When it's obcvious enough, it amounts to pretendingthe real world doesn't exist, or at least is less important than our own internal game-play. DGG ( talk ) 04:44, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
My (biased as an OS) view: unfortunately these situations are a case where content judgement and use of tools overlap. The community has established the oversight and harassment policies as a guide, and it’s ultimately up to the oversight team to interpret and implement them. These situations are always put up for discussion and the only reason something that is controversial ever stays suppressed is because there is a consensus amongst oversighters that it should stay suppressed. As the oversight team is the group the community has established to handle situations involving this portion of the harassment policy, to me this seems like sufficient review. The team has a culture of self-reporting for review, and while this can’t be seen by non-OS, I think anyone who is on the list can’t testify that “I’ve suppressed, please review.” Is a common occurrence and leads to active threads. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:53, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
I actually find this all a great example of Wikipedia's own culture of self-importance being abused to create controversy. The only reason anyone else cares about this is that...well, Wikipedians care, and we as a community tend to make a big deal about it (whether or not there's any truth to the story). For some reason, there are some people who think that the act of editing Wikipedia is (or ought to be) notable. Generally speaking, it's not notable at all, and it should almost never be included in an article; no, not even if they did so against our incredibly convoluted and complicated rules. Reporters have figured us out: if they report on something involving Wikipedia, some Wikipedian is going to do everything in their power to get that article cited on Wikipedia - thus giving them a second story. We're our own worst enemies here, and the kneejerk overreaction and efforts to include any article that mentions Wikipedia (especially someone breaking our arcane and convoluted rules, or otherwise criticizing the site) somewhere into the project is exactly why journalists (who generally have no idea how to properly read diffs, contributions, or other "back of shop" pages) keep writing these articles. They don't know what we know, which is that on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. But they do know that getting an article used as a reference on Wikipedia is a feather in their cap. Risker (talk) 05:39, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
On a similar note: part of the reason we have to be careful about this is that two sentences in one of our articles about a prominent person is very likely going to be read more than one middling NYT article. That is to say: often times the public doesn’t know unless we decide to report on it. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:51, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

I think there's another avenue we need to consider about this. Per our sourcing policies reliability is contextual, and it seems to me that our harassment policy supports the idea that the only reliable source to identify a real life user behind an account are posts stating the identity, made by the account themselves. --Kyohyi (talk) 14:39, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

  • I agree with DGG above, and disagree with several others. I think that if multiple RSs report that a given person is or has been editing the Wikipedia article about him- or herself, or has been editing other articles in ways that are clearly NPOV and favor the editor, or the editor's employer or organization, and if there is consensus that this information is not a matter of undue weight, that we not only should but must include such information, and that oversighting such edits should be clearly seen as illegitimate and an abuse of the oversight power. We should nbot, perhaps, include the alleged user name, but we can and should link to reliable sources that do mention such user names, if multiple sources agree, and no significant source disputes the fact, and the information is significant to the article. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 00:05, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
DESiegel, I can count on one hand the number of people for whom there is a legitimate case of notability, and whose editing of Wikipedia is also notable. Jimmy Wales, for sure, but not many others. I'd argue that most article subjects that involve Wikipedians and editing of Wikipedia are actually articles for which the person is notable for only one thing ("got a million edits", "first Wikipedian to hit 100,000 edits" and so on). There are rare others whose editing is notable. In the case we're talking about, an allegation that maybe this account might be so-and-so is not only not notable, it's also an unproven allegation that we should not accept in a BLP. Of course, again you play into the "editing Wikipedia is so important that it is de facto a notable fact" fallacy. Millions of people do it; we need to stop feeling so self-important. Risker (talk) 00:22, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Risker, Editing Wikipedia is not significant ("Notable" refers to whether a topic should have a separate article, and should not be used for decisions about what content to include in an article about a clearly notable topic.) Editing the Wikipedia article about oneself, or about related subjects in a non-neutral way, may be quite significant, particularly when it is done by or on behalf of a politician or other public figure trying to improve that figure's reputation or suppress undesired facts. There have been quite a few cases of this over the years, and I suspect that several of them ought to be included in the relevant Wikipedia articles but currently are not. I do not think that is limited to a small handful of cases. There have been cases of Staff members at the US congress editing Wikipedia to whitewash the representative's record. There have been cases of other government agencies editing to try to shape their public image. (And that is just in the US, this goes on elsewhere also.) Those sorts of things should, if well-sourced, be in the relevant articles. On other BLP issues "multiple quality sources have widely reported X" is good enough for inclusion of most facts, even allegations of crime. It is good enough for allegations of NPOV editing. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 00:37, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Allegations of NPOV editing aren't significant in about 99.9998% of cases, particularly when there is nothing but an allegation that the editing was being done by a specific individual. Indeed, one of the reasons we have such really bad articles about businesses is that it's almost a given that anyone editing an article about a business is going to get accused of being an UPE or having some other COI. It doesn't surprise me in the least that people who have a COI (such as staffers, supporters, or volunteers) will edit articles about a politician; however, I do not believe that it should routinely be mentioned in the article about the politician, because the chances the edit was *really* made by that politician (or even with their awareness) is infinitely small. I would lay odds that every article about every living politician on Wikipedia is regularly edited by someone who has a COI (particularly as a supporter or volunteer), and most of them will be "experienced" Wikipedians, including those with tens of thousands of edits and those with permissions beyond "extended confirmed". And anyone who reads a variety of news sources nowadays will be familiar with the trend to report that someone else reported X, or to just plain steal the report of Reliable Source X and claim it as fact, without actually verifying anything themselves. There are entire MSM "sources" that are nothing more than news aggregators, often stealing from other sources without attribution. This is particularly true for anything that sounds salacious or gossipy. Thus, the original story that says "maybe this happened" becomes "this definitely happened and is terrible and you should vote against him because of it" in about three steps without any additional reporting or investigation. In an era where media are constantly trying to get our attention, where there is intense competition and where the rewards are based on viewership and readership rather than accuracy and truthfulness, we should really start thinking about whether we want to rely on a lot of these sources. It's taken us how many years to get rid of Breitbart? Risker (talk) 01:07, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
In addition to Risker’s point, there is the fact that we do have editors who feel comfortable with the broader world that doesn’t care about editing knowing their account identity, and will state it in interviews with reliable sources, but feel very uncomfortable with people in the environment of Wikipedia knowing who they are. It sounds crazy, but in my experience most editors would be more comfortable connecting their account to a journalist in an article few people are likely to read than in an article that will be read by thousands if not millions. Yes, we base our articles on reliable sources, but let’s not also pretend that a mainspace article about a politician is somehow less prominent than a minor news piece in a 24 hour news cycle. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:36, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with Risker's point above. The claim that Allegations of NPOV editing aren't significant in about 99.9998% of cases is false precision, not supported by any source. Note that I am talking about a situation where such claims are prominently reported by multiple reliable major news sources. In this case, no actual "outing" can occur, the information is already widely published. Merely linking to such already published articles can have no further significant effect on anyone's reputation, and repeating well-sourced significant reports is exactly what Wikipedia does. As for the comments by TonyBallioni, they are quire irrelevant. If a report is sufficiently well sourced to be included in a BLP (as I am supposing, I am not speaking about any allegation not so sourced) then the degree of comfort about the matter should make no difference to anyone. If a person self-outs, then the matter is public, and that person no longer has a reasonable expectation of privicy in that statement. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 21:14, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
If they’ve “self-outed” you’ll have no problem providing an on-wiki diff. That’s all that is required. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:17, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
I include in "self-outing" public off-wiki statements, such as to reliable news reporters. Obviously there can be no on-wiki diffs for such statements, but a link to a reliably published quote should have the same effect, which seemed to be what was being discussed in your comment above, TonyBallioni. Or did I misunderstand your comment about we do have editors who feel comfortable with the broader world that doesn’t care about editing knowing their account identity, and will state it in interviews with reliable sources, but feel very uncomfortable with people in the environment of Wikipedia. It is my view that however such an editor may feel, such a public statement is no different from an explicit on-wiki statement (such as I make on my own user page). DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 21:43, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Under the current policy, no, it is not enough. There must be a link made on-wiki. People can claim to be different accounts that they aren’t, may think the outing protectors apply (which they currently do), face external pressure that we’d otherwise find unacceptable to reply to questions, etc. Under the existing policy, linking an account to a real life identity requires an explicit on-wiki link, which is all we’ve been saying since this has been raised, as well as explaining some of the reasons behind that. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:55, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Then the current outing policy is wrong, and must be changed, and in a proper case IAR should be applied to ignore it. Now I am no fan of IAR, as many know, but for once, there is a good use for it. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 22:44, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Not sure if I understand why a simple link to what is considered a reliable source in Wikipedia would ever be oversighteable. Yes, making an inappropriate connection/synthesis when posting the link could easily be, but just a link to an article that has done investigative journalism about Wikipedia? I agree with DGG that when the genie is out of the bottle, it's unneeded to use oversight without a log entry to try to prevent coverage of something that already has had a lot of attention in mainstream sources. The editor who oversighters are supposedly protecting hasn't even edited in 9 years. This is also crippling The Signpost's ability to critically cover COI issues, if they can't even link a MSM article about Wikipedia paid editing. I hope that Bri and Smallbones take a stand. --Pudeo (talk) 11:17, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
    • The Signpost is frankly the least important thing mentioned in this discussion by an order of magnitude. Outing is outing, and it is never OK, whether the outing is done by a Wikipedia editor or by a journalist. If all you have is an unproven allegation then you don't have an issue to cover, critically or otherwise. I fully agree with Risker that the whole $person might have edited Wikipedia at some point is overblown navel-gazing. Wikipedia editing is not special. Thryduulf (talk) 15:25, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
      • Yeah, but people care a lot more about what the Washington Post thinks is important/special than what some editor thinks is important/special. "I think it’s overblown navel gazing" is irrelevant when the content is on the home page of washingpost.com. (Also, by definition, it’s not "navel gazing" when it’s RSes gazing at our navel rather than us gazing at our own navel.) Not digging the idea of oversighters making secret editorial decisions based on what they personally think is important or special. – Levivich 15:39, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
        • Oversighters don't make editorial decisions. Oversighters make decisions, in accordance with community and Foundation policies, to suppress or not suppress based the goal of protecting people. Where there is doubt we suppress as a precaution and discuss it with other oversighters, unsuppressing if the consensus is that suppression is not required. Every oversight block is reviewed. In the case of an unsubstantiated allegation of wrongdoing on the biography of a living person based on a single source that (attempts to) out an editor, I struggle to understand why this would not be suppressed. That the allegation relates to Wikipedia does not make it more relevant. Thryduulf (talk) 16:29, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
          • ↑This. If a suppression is controversial it is always self-reported for review. Every oversight block that is made is reviewed within minutes of being made. The process is necessarily opaque because of the nature of the tool, but it is not some unaccountable system of rogue individuals who don’t check one another. In my view there is significantly more oversight, accountability, and review for suppression than just about any other tool or action on this project, which speaks to the culture of our team in a positive way. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:42, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
            This discussion is about a proposed change in policy regarding the application of outing policy in main space. I’m not sure why you’re repeating the details of how oversight currently works. We know that oversights are reviewed by the oversight team. That point has been made like three or four times in this discussion already. – Levivich 20:25, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
            • Because people seem to be assuming bad faith without realizing how things actually work. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:33, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
              No you’re just missing the point. You’re talking about what is, and I’m trying to talk about what should be. The question isn’t "do oversighters review oversights", it’s “should oversighters oversight this content”. Nobody is assuming bad faith, or even saying oversighters are doing anything wrong. There’s no need to fill the thread with defensiveness. It’s a policy discussion. – Levivich 20:53, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
              I must agree with Levivich hree, and strongly disagree with TonyBallioni. Outing policy does not, should not, and cannot trump the policy of NPOV, and of accurately reporting significant events reliably reported by multiple mainstreme news sources. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 21:05, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
              That’s not being argued. The point that those of us who have responded are making is that there is no mainspace exemption to the harassment policy. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:13, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
              Lol Tony. No kidding? Thanks for clarifying that! – Levivich 22:19, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
              But that is exactly what you are arguing, TonyBallioni If it is relaibly reported by multiple major news sources that Public Figure Doe has edited the Wikipedia article about himself (or about areas where Doe has a COI) dishonestly as User XYZ, and if the consensus at Talk:PF Doe is that much reports are significant an not Unbdue, then the article can and should link to those reports, and if the outing policy prevents that, it must be changed, and should be ignored in such a case until it is changed. If a person is reliably quoted as saying that s/he edits Wikipedia as user XYZ, and that is significant in an article about that person, it should be linked to -- failure to do so violates NPOV. If the outing policy prohibits such a link, it is wrong and must be changed. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 22:41, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
      • Re Thryduulf's "Wikipedia editing is not special": Then why do you want to apply special standards for repeating reliable reports of COI editing that you would not apply to any other kind of reliably-reported malfeasance? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:21, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Another scenario occurs to me after reading the comments here. Let's say that there is a highly notable person about whom we have a BLP. A highly reliable source has an article with various kinds of information about that person, most of which has nothing to do with Wikipedia, but a small part of the article links the person to a named account here. (The account here has not said anything about being that person.) An editor adds some encyclopedic information to the BLP, but nothing about Wikipedia, citing the source with a link to the source as part of the citation. (Let's say that no other source is available for the information that the editor added, and that all of the information added is very appropriate and desirable for the BLP.) Should that edit be oversighted? After all, it links to the kind of personal information that the outing policy says never to link to. The edit is entirely encyclopedic, and the source is an appropriate one. But yet... where that URL goes to. Personally, I think it would be wrong to oversight it. I do have some sympathy for the arguments made by some of the editors here that there comes a point beyond which oversighting stuff that is entirely in plain sight in the real world becomes an exercise in bureaucracy. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:23, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
    That's a very interesting scenario and raises another potential gap in existing policy. And it's a tough one, too. – Levivich 03:24, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
    Yeah, thanks. I'm curious how functionaries would deal with that situation were it to happen. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:05, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Nonrandom break (in Mainspace outing)

I was pinged here a while ago (Merry Christmas to all BTW) and I'm trying to figure out whether people think that the 2 paragraphs I've written at The Signpost have any relevance to this discussion. Signpost articles are in WP:Project space, not mainspace articles in any case WP:Outing and WP:BLP do apply as a general matter. But I don't know how anybody could try to apply Outing to what I've written there in specific - I don't mention anybody's RL name, User:Name, personal details, etc. the only link I make is to the Washington Post. They (WaPo) do make a link to a nationally recognized journalist who interviewed a former editor who admitted to having 2 specific accounts and living in a specific city about a decade ago. BTW, I don't think that oversiters, arbs, or anybody else on Wikipedia have any claim on the Washington Post or the other journalist on what they can or cannot print outside Wikipedia. So what might I be doing that raises Outing concerns? Are you taking your Wikipedia duties a bit too seriously and interpreting them to mean "I must save the world - as I see it"? Off to Christmas dinner. Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:02, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

I am having real trouble trying to wrap my head around a lot of what has been written here. Wikipedia deals in facts. Some of those facts will necessarily be negative or distasteful or embarrassing. We have policies concerning whether we include certain facts in articles, with special consideration given to biographies. We may chose not to give the names of someone's children, for example. If a reliable source identifies someone's Wikipedia username, we should treat it the same way, not oversight it. I can't think of many cases where a Wikipedia username would be relevant to someone's biography, but if reliable sources are researching and reporting it, then it probably is relevant. The idea that someone might voluntarily disclose their username to a journalist for publication in a reliable source but would not expect that that disclosure might be referenced in Wikipedia doesn't just "sound crazy", it is crazy. I think people here have genuinely lost perspective about how important Wikipedia's internal culture and rules are to the rest of the world. What's even weirder is that this case is about a high-profile public figure who is almost certainly not the editor named. This is going to come back and bite you in the ass. Bitter Oil (talk) 22:19, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Did a presidential candidate edit Wikipedia? You be the judge

The Washington Post explores the journalism of Ashley Feinberg in How the reporter who found Mitt Romney’s secret Twitter has turned online sleuthing into a beat. Similar work has been published by Verge and by LGBTNation as well as a piece by Feinberg in Slate. Feinberg's previous work has included an article on at least one paid editor on Wikipedia, Ed Sussman. Her most recent article focuses on whether a presidential candidate edited the Wiki article about himself. Despite not coming to a firm conclusion, the article is a masterpiece of online investigation. The Post quotes a tweet from Wired editor Caitlin Kelly saying that Feinberg is a "master at the height of their powers," and compares reading Feinberg’s investigation to watching Monet paint waterlilies. Kelly continues on her twitter account "when (the article) got to the metadata I was cheering."

The Signpost has seen a few online investigations in its time. We can state that we've never seen a more impressive one than Feinberg's last effort. If we were to see similar investigations into other participants in the US presidential elections, we hope we could bear the enormity of the information. –S

This is just a slight refactoring of what I've submitted to The Signpost. I added 3 reliable sources and removed all links and anything that looks like a personal detail, real name, or anything else that is connected in any way to the outing policy. So there is nothing here connected to outing. There are lots of reliable sources. There's nothing in our policy that prevents this (or the original) from being published.

I don't want to exaggerate but this tells me that we are very close to the situation where - if you are a notable person and have been playing around at editing for your own interests on Wikipedia - that the reliable press, including Feinberg, can very likely identify you (or close enough) and read out and print what you've been doing. This only applies to public figures as far as the mainstream press goes.

A year ago I published a piece on the then Acting US Attorney General and how he appeared to be playing games on (and related to) Wikipedia, but I insisted on saying that you really can't nail down a real "fact" this way - e.g. there might be Joe jobs. In the current Slate piece, Feinberg says she is doing stuff in 2 or 3 hours, that would take me 2 or 3 weeks. Stuff like this is going to be coming out all the time now, until the reservoir built up over the last 10 years dries up, and people learn not to play around online - 10 years before they become famous.

We should be able to have a reasonable discussion about how outing rules are going to work in this type of environment, without saying "we're going to ban some WaPo articles." We also can't say outing prohibitions are dead. The Signpost could do a point-counterpoint article for *next month* . Are there 2 folks who'd like to represent the sides? Maybe Tony and Levich? Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:56, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Well, there have been multiple "reasonable discussions", including one within the past year, where the community has consistently elected to take a broad view of what does and does not constitute outing. We as oversighters must operate within the definition that the community has created; we don't get to make things up out of whole cloth, and it would be a very bad idea for us to apply our personal opinions to the policies created and developed by the community. There's no obligation on any one oversighter to take a specific action, but one of the reasons we have so many oversighters is that at least one person on the team is going to apply the policy as written and discussed by the community, even if others either are unavailable or uncertain as to whether to proceed. The violation we're all talking about is pretty obviously and clearly a violation of the existing policy, and has been treated as such. If a broad section of the community wants to change that policy - and I'll note again that the "outing" issue has been covered several times before - then it needs to go the full RFC route to do so - similar to the one that occurred in May 2019. If someone initiates the RFC, it would be nice to post a notice on WT:Oversight so that oversighters can follow the discussion and make note of any changes to the policy, should they occur. Risker (talk) 01:55, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
I guess the part that I'm unclear about is "The violation we're all talking about is pretty obviously and clearly a violation of the existing policy, and has been treated as such." What violation is that? e.g. in the 2 paragraphs that start this subsection. There's no personal information, no links, no nothing that's referred to in WP:OUTING. If I'm outing somebody you should be able to tell me (likely off-wiki) who I'm outing, both the real life name and user:name which I've supposedly equated and perhaps other personal information that I've given away.
In the 2 paragraphs above, I haven't equated any rl and user names. I've mentioned 4 sources that come close to doing that (without linking to them) One shows the user equating his/her rl name and user name and the journalist reporting that (so 2 people plus a reliable publication standing behind that) and 3 other reliable sources (including the Washington Post) reporting that that was what was published. Is that somewhere in the Outing policy, that you can remove this material or even ban me for writing it down? You say this isn't made up out of whole cloth - where does it say that in the policy? Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:41, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
The issue is linking to the article that supposedly alleges one or more specific users is a certain real-world person, when no such disclosure has been made by the user, and official representatives of the RL person have categorically denied that allegation. This meets the current definition of outing - an external link to an allegation that a specific user is a specific RL person - and that's why those links are being suppressed.
Speaking personally, I have to wonder why you're using that headline when both the original article and all of the followups basically boil down to "this is what I found, this is what I suspected, but I don't really have any information that discounts the alternative theory (of a supporter being behind the account[s]) or definitively links The Candidate to either account". Incidentally, even if the allegation was 100% true, the person was a state-level or local-level candidate at the time of the edits, not a presidential candidate, so the answer is obvious. Betteridge's law applies to The Signpost, too. Risker (talk) 02:59, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
When you mention the May 2019 RfC, are you talking about Wikipedia talk:Harassment/Archive 20#RfC: Clarification of OUTING? That's the one that resulted in All in all, there is no consensus for a bright-line rule that posting personal information about an editor is outing, even if it was voluntarily publicly disclosed on another Wikimedia project. I'm not seeing the relevance of that to this. – Levivich 03:34, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
That one was about information that was, in fact, disclosed by an editor at one point or another; I was referring to that for the purposes of illustrating that RFC is the process for changing this policy, not people showing up on this page and being ticked off because there isn't an exemption to the policy when somebody wants to include material that violates the policy. Formulate the general question, be prepared to illustrate and discuss it, etc. - the usual RFC process. There has been at least one RFC in the past that allowed very limited exceptions for specific purposes in specific areas of the project, but most discussions and RFCs have either maintained pretty strict limitations or have increased the limitations. Of course, I've been watching this policy for over 10 years, so perhaps it is simply that I've seen things move in both directions. Back in the long-ago days (before mid-2007), this policy was much less restrictive, but became more restrictive when external linking for the purpose of harassing users became increasingly commonplace. Risker (talk) 03:49, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Gee, thanks for the explanation, and the ad hominem. I'm not sure how you're failing to recognize that this is a pre-RfC thread for the purpose of formulating the question. – Levivich 03:54, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you think was an ad hominem, and I say that sincerely. For you, this may be a special situation. For someone who's been watching this and other policy pages for a very long time, it's just another example of a specific situation making a group of people unhappy that a policy prevents them from doing something that they think they ought to be able to do on Wikipedia, and it's something that happens dozens of times a year. I don't think you or anyone else here is trolling. But I'm not seeing much here that looks like an attempt to formulate a question. I think part of the challenge here is that this isn't really a good case on which to formulate a change to the policy, because even the author of the original article admits the case is shaky and has already been disputed. Risker (talk) 04:12, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Smallbones has linked to the Washington Post article in the Signpost draft. Is it going to be oversighted? The original Slate article has been linked to on Talk:Pete Buttigieg for days. Is it going to be oversighted? WP:BLP and WP:OUTING apply in all namespaces, don't they? Bitter Oil (talk) 04:29, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
people showing up on this page and being ticked off because there isn't an exemption to the policy when somebody wants to include material that violates the policy is the ad hominem, and an assumption of bad faith. So is just another example of a specific situation making a group of people unhappy that a policy prevents them from doing something that they think they ought to be able to do on Wikipedia, which is doubling down on the sentiment. I'm not even sure who in this conversation you're referring to, who it is you think wants to do something and is upset that they can't. I'm glad you're participating in the thread that I started, but you've been very focused on the case that's currently in the news, and defending OS's response to it under current policy, and I think that's why you don't see much progress towards formulating a question. You haven't yet directly grappled with any of the hypotheticals I've posed, other than arguing that the premises of the hypotheticals do not match the current case (which they don't, and that's on purpose). I agree that the current case isn't a good case on which to formulate a change to the policy, and that's why I posed three hypotheticals that are different from the current case. But we've been talking past each other so far. My next subsection will attempt to re-focus the conversation. – Levivich 04:34, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
A significant distinction that I think needs to be made is between "famous person edits their own page" and "PR person hired by famous person edits famous person's page". Perhaps it's notable if a famous person, themselves, is actually editing here (or perhaps not), but PR editing is a day-to-day occurrence here, and it's very unlikely that our readers are interested to know the names of run-of-the-mill PR people. WP:PAID and WP:COI are what's relevant there, and there's really no need to make anyone's identity public in order to enforce those. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Issues at play

The discussion above has raised a number of issues:

  1. At what point, if any, does WP:NPOV or other policy require the inclusion of content (in a mainspace article) that would otherwise be prohibited by WP:OUTING?
  2. Should we treat a proven outing differently than an alleged outing?
  3. Who should make the determinations that, e.g., NPOV/DUE require inclusion, or that an allegation is or is not proven? (Oversight team, editors on a talk page, some other group?)
  4. If editors are to make the determinations in #3, how would they discuss it, but still comply with WP:OUTING?
  5. Should we treat including the outing allegation itself in the article the same or differently than linking to an article that contains the outing allegation?
  6. What do we do about the situation where an article that contains outing is linked to, but linked to for some content that has nothing to do with the outing? (Assume the source in question is the best source for the required content, and that the outing is a small part of the overall source article.)
  7. What about the Signpost? If the determination in #1 is made (by whomever) to include the outing or link to an article containing the outing, can the Signpost do the same? If the determination is made not to include or link, can the Signpost do it anyway?
  8. What about other areas, such as: WikiProject talk pages, draftspace drafts, and userspace drafts? Should any of these be treated differently or the same as mainspace?

Are any of these live issues, meriting a change to existing policy? Are there any issues I've missed? Should any of the above be re-worded? Thanks to everyone for their continued participation here, and I invite everyone reading this who hasn't commented yet to join in–the more voices, the better. – Levivich 04:35, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

My thoughts, in order:
1. Mu. NPOV doesn't require including anything (see WP:5P5), it tells us how to write about information already included. I also echo Risker (I think) above who points out that under pretty much no circumstances is an editor's username so important to writing a biography about them that it absolutely must be included to prevent us from non-neutrally covering the subject;
2. No, see paragraph 3 of this policy page (bolding original): do not confirm or deny the accuracy of the information. Doing so would give the person posting the information, and anyone else who saw the page, feedback on the accuracy of the material. For the same reason, do not treat incorrect attempts at outing any differently from correct attempts.
3. See 1, and if needed discuss inclusion like we discuss other sensitive material. I raised a fuss on this point a couple months ago, so I understand the impulse here, but if it really is that big a deal oversighters will give you a reasonable amount of leeway and I have publicly opined on the sympathy one oversight team member has for IAR when dealing with complex disputes. No one should be determining whether an allegation is proved or not (see 2). If the editor acknowledges, on wiki, that the article attempting to out them is correct (which they are under no obligation to do) then it is not outing. If the editor does not do so then no one should be trying to determine whether the allegation is correct or not;
4. I have managed to talk about an oversighted edit in this statement and have linked you to another example of me talking about an oversighted edit. If you understand my points without having to know the specifics of the supressed edits, this should show that we can in fact have high level, rationale discussions without needing specific knowledge about suppressed edits;
5. No, see 2. BLP and OUTING apply to all parts of the wiki;
6. See Wikipedia:Linking to external harassment#In articles. If you link to an article which contains outing material and it is discovered and suppressed, don't re-add it; odds are the information you care about can be found in another article which does not contain the outing information even if it is not the "best" source ("best" being subjective). If you seriously cannot do so, email a functionary and handle it on a case-by-case basis. Recognize that the community has taken a broad view of outing for the protection of harassment victims: the more expansive our anti-harassment protections the less feedback we give to bad actors attempting to harass not only members of our editorial community but members of the general public: linking to attempted outing is a BLP violation and on-wiki confirmation is the only reliable source for the link between an editor and their identity in meatspace. Wikipedia:Linking to external harassment gives a good workaround: don't link the url. Additionally, if the source is so reliable that attempted outing isn't a major factor in assessing reliability, the source should probably have a citation sufficient to find the article. No policy requires the inclusion of URLs in citations, so just cite the source without linking to it. Failing all of that, it is, to me, reasonable in some incredibly exceptional circumstances to link to a reliable source containing attempted outing as a reference for material not related to the link between editor and meatspace identity but this is always less preferable to using a source that does not contain the attempted outing;
7. if editors come to a decision that the article does not constitute outing The Signpost may link to it and report on the information that is not outing. If editors come to a decision that this is outing but where it is used to support information unrelated to the attempted outing, The Signpost may use it to support that same non-outing claim but they should not use it to report on the outing allegation and they must not use it or any information within it to further an attempted outing because that would rather plainly be harassment. If editors determine the link should not be included due to attempted outing in the source The Signpost may not link to it.
8. See 5.
— Wug·a·po·des​ 11:22, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Wugapodes, thanks for your answers. In #1 you wrote that WP:NPOV doesn't "require" anything. The first sentence of the WP:DUE section of WP:NPOV is: Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. [emphasis added]. So the situation I'm getting at is one in which multiple reliable sources publish the viewpoint that Person A is User:X, and User:X denies it (or doesn't admit it on-wiki). Do we include it in the article about Person A? What is the threshold by which we measure when it's "significant enough" to be DUE? Who should make that determination? If it's editors on a talk page, while in #4 you say you've been able to discuss an oversighted edit in this statement, that's a bit of a straw dog. In the situation where we need to determine whether the viewpoint published by RSes that Person A is User:X is "significant enough" to include it in the article on Person A, how do we make that determination without linking to RS 1, RS 2, and RS 3, for the purpose of deciding significance? If RS 1, 2, and 3 all contain the outing allegation, under current policy, those links could be suppressed. See the dilemma? – Levivich 21:15, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
@Levivich: I had linked to the fifth pillar to try and provide context for that statement, but perhaps I should be more clear. The 5th pillar: "Wikipedia has no firm rules". Without firm rules we cannot "require" anything. At its core, it's a value statement "neutrality is more than just boring writing about one side of a dispute". The rest is heuristics to determine how a topic should be written about so it complies with that value. We could change NPOV if we wanted to, or wikilawyer our way around it, both of which are as bad as strictly adhering to a single arbitrary word instead of using WP:COMMONSENSE to evaluate the underlying principles of policies. We cannot and should not have a rule for everything, let alone a "requirement", and that the impetus for the question and possible change is some kind of contentious content dispute makes me less confident we'll come up with something sensible (hard cases make bad law).
Beyond that, I fundamentally disagree with the premise: "multiple reliable sources publish the viewpoint that Person A is User:X". The only reliable source to an editor's meatspace identity is a post from that editor about their meatspace identity. If a media outlet were to report on that statement, i.e., multiple reliable sources report that User:X says that they are Person A, we can consider issues of significant coverage in reliable sources and any follow-up (Person A says they are not, further investigation shows User:X cannot possibly be Person A, etc) but none of that is outing and can be handled by our other policies. If User:X does not comment or denies the connection then the other sources are unreliable for that piece of information. I have this conservative approach because false allegations are dangerous; Redditors falsely accused Sunil Tripathi of being a terrorist and these accusations were repeated by a BuzzFeed journalist on their twitter showing the purchase these false accusations had in the media. Beyond this crowd sourced investigation, the contemporaneous Atlantic live blog shows all the various guesses otherwise reliable news outlets were making at the time. Now obviously COI editing of Wikipedia isn't terrorism, but if people were so cavalier with accusations that could have resulted in actual deaths, I'm really not willing to open our doors to accusations from newsroom writers looking for something to fill copy on a slow news day.
Even if I were willing to trust outing attempts by media outlets, Wikipedia is not news. Not everything that is reliably sourced is a significant part of a person's life and worth inclusion. Will their Wikipedia editing be remembered in 10 years as a major part of their life story, or is it only being included because we care about it? When I, and presumably others, say Wikipedia editing is not a big deal, that's the question being contemplated: is this actually due weight or are we letting our own egos and cultural norms influence us into writing non-neutral trivia? I tend to believe it is the latter. I really like how Thryduulf puts it below "we need to be very careful not to ... attach more importance to them than they deserve, and allegations that someone might have (but probably didn't) do something that might (or might not) have been contrary to best practice guidelines several years ago is not something that justifies risking anybody's privacy, regardless of how famous they are or are not." — Wug·a·po·des​ 13:15, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
  • My views on Levivich's 8 questions:
    1. When an allegation of improper editing is made by multiple reliable sources, and gets such coverage that were it an allegation of criminal action, it would celarly be covered in the article, then the allegation of improper editing should likewise be covered. The exact editor name may well not be significant enough to include in Wikipedia (probably not) but linking to otherwise reliable sources that do mention the username should not be blocked by outing policy if the name is not quoted in the article, and the source is being used to support relevant content. If other sources of comparable quality are available that do not include the user name, they should usually be preferred.
    2. Correct or incorrect identification should not be distinguished. But reliable sources that claim to have proven a connection should be distinguished from sources that merely allege or suspect one, and the latter will often not be relevant at all. Off-wiki Admissions by the person claimed to have edited improperly should be distinguished from either allegations or claims of proof by others.
    3. Like all other content decision, such decision should be made, in the first instance, by editors discussing at the article talk page, possibly subject to wider consensus.
    4. In most cases this can be discussed without naming a user, and often by identifing rather than linking to the source. But when a link to a widely-published source is needed to discuss the issue, and the actual personal information is not being discussed or referred to on-wiki, a link should not be forbidden or removed by oversight simply because the source includes alleged connections between a named person and a Wikipedia user name.
    5. Differently. Including any actual personal information in Wikipedia itself should be regarded as less defensible than linking to a widely-published, reliable source, in order to support relevant content in an article
    6. See previous point.
    7. I am less concerned about the Signpost, as it does not ffect what we present to readers. There is less reason to link to sources that may include personal info in the signpost, in my view, but once the information is widely oublished by multiple reliable sources, it si out there and linking to it cannot be considered outing.
    8. Article drafts, whether in userspace or in draftspace, should generally follow the same rules as articles, but a plausible discussion on the draft's talk page is less likely, so there may need to be some other forum where inclusion could be discussed. Project talk pages should follow the same rules as article talk pages.
Insofar as any of the above contradicts the current outing policy, the policy should in my view be changed. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 13:07, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Stop the presses! Turkey drops Wikipedia censorship. According to Turkey's Constitutional Court, AP, and the Washington Post the block on Wikipedia in Turkey is unconstitutional https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/court-rules-turkey-violated-freedoms-by-banning-wikipedia/2019/12/26/880f263c-27de-11ea-9cc9-e19cfbc87e51_story.html Hopefully, Wikipedia oversighters will also come to their senses as well. Just repeating the basic problem - some oversighters are saying the Signpost will be blocked if it publishes a 2 paragraph summary of a Washington Post story that doesn't out anybody, except perhaps by linking to another story in a reliable source that uses standard journalism methods to identify a user account's RL owner - the person involved told the reporter that it was their own account. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:08, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I will be trying to publish The Signpost today - I'm at the beach with a bad connection - otherwise publication will be tomorrow. The so-called "outing" will be removed - I'll almost certainly take it to ArbCom after the New Year. There was no outing, but there was censorship. I'll ignore this page while I try to publish. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:17, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
@Smallbones: I think it is disingenuous to for you to say The Signpost "were essentially accused of outing for linking to The Washington Post and thus threatened with censorship by some oversighters". WP:BLP and WP:OUTING apply to all namespaces. The fact that your draft was not oversighted despite containing the Washington Post link suggests that perhaps people here sense that they have overreached. As I pointed out above, the original Slate article has been linked from Talk:Pete Buttigieg for days. It is simply not believable that no oversighter has seen it there. I don't believe that there is a press censorship issue here. If you do, you should stand your ground, publish the original piece instead of pretending you are being threatened. Bitter Oil (talk) 20:17, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Censorship looks a lot different when it is pointed directly at me, rather than anybody else. I'm not saying I understand the logic of the oversighters - quite the opposite. All I know is that they have a weapon at their disposal that could mean the end of my participation on Wikipedia and even of The Signpost. I've made a gentle hint somewhere along the line (don't ask where right now) of something like "you wouldn't possibly use this, would you?" and got no response. I made a very direct statement about censorship, and only you have said anything. I conclude that nobody is ruling out banning me for publishing this in The Signpost - that's censorship and yes I'm a coward. I'll pursue this the "civilized, lawyerly" way. It's still censorship. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:41, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
This edit was suppressed They're serious as far as I can see. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:52, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Well, no one has "censored" you. If this Washington Post link in your draft were a problem, it should have been oversighted already. If someone has actually threatened to block or ban you for publishing that draft, I must have missed it. If you are fearful of publishing your piece then don't publish it, but don't tell people that you were censored until you actually are censored. Bitter Oil (talk) 06:16, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
Self-censorship because an authoritarian environment makes people uncomfortable speaking freely is definitely a form of censorship, often more effective than explicit censorship. It's especially effective when people like you then follow along claiming that nobody was actually censored and that if only Smallbones would consent to getting banned from Wikipedia we would see what actual censorship is like. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:44, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
Smallbones is being self-serving, not self-censoring. He wants to be able to cry "Censorship!" when there really is none. I have pointed out that the original Slate article has been linked at Talk:Pete Buttigieg since Deember 21st (and is still there). I have posted the link to the Washington Post article in this thread and it is still here. And an editor is appropriately adding links of media mentions on Talk:Pete Buttigieg. None of them have been "censored". I joined this discussion to say that I disagreed with the oversighting of the original link, so I am hardly advocating censorship, but it is good to see that your kneejerk reflexes are still working. Bitter Oil (talk) 17:24, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

I share David Eppstein's concerns, and the view raised by Pudeo above that This is also crippling The Signpost's ability to critically cover COI issues, if they can't even link a MSM article about Wikipedia paid editing. Whether the external links in question are still available in obscure places doesn't change the fact that relevant, reliable and journalistically unobjectionable material was struck from our project's newsletter of record. And disapproval from people with practical power doesn't have to escalate to blocking or banning in order to have a chilling effect. XOR'easter (talk) 19:18, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

I have blatantly posted a link to the Washington Post article in the Signpost comments, as well as here. I am not blocked. The link has not been oversighted. I am nobody. If I can do this, surely the Signpost staff can do this. They 'can link to the article, as I demonstrated here before they published. Smallbones claim that he is being censored (or threatened) is unfounded. This simply is not a question of censorship (or even of authoritarian pressure). Sorry, but it just isn't. Bitter Oil (talk) 00:37, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Wow, this is a lot. This conversation seems to have gone very into the weeds on policy, and while there's a place for that, I'll leave that discussion to those more familiar with WP's harassment rules. I do, however, want to take a bit of a step back regarding this specific situation and look at it through a WP:COMMONSENSE lens. What we have here is basically two competing interests: protecting privacy on the one hand, and reflecting published sources on the other. Regarding the first, it's a fundamental principle of privacy that the more of a public figure you are, the less expectation of it you should have. And the subject here who's privacy is at risk is a public figure of the highest degree (if the account is actually someone else, their privacy is not at risk). Regarding the second, WP:RS is one of the most important policies we have; it's absolutely essential to our mission. Taken together, I see a clear-cut common sense case that we should not suppressing the information. Sdkb (talk) 07:50, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

@Sdkb: as explained above, it is incorrect to say that there is no risk to a living person if the link is incorrect. Not harassing anybody is, to my mind, far more important than coverage of a very minor story in a minor internal publication (The Signpost). COI editing, paid editing and undisclosed paid editing are three separate (albeit sometimes overlapping) issues and we need to be very careful not to conflate them or to attach more importance to them than they deserve, and allegations that someone might have (but probably didn't) do something that might (or might not) have been contrary to best practice guidelines several years ago is not something that justifies risking anybody's privacy, regardless of how famous they are or are not. Thryduulf (talk) 10:47, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I am with User:DGG on this one. All oversight does in these cases is amplify the Streisand effect and thus has the exact opposite effect of the stated purpose. One can remove the material based on UNDUE or it being trivia, but claiming outing to remove a reliable source from mainspace... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:02, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with DGG. Reliable sources are public. We should be able to cite them. It doesn't matter if that person has been editing their article on Wikipedia, a Fandom wiki, Everipedia or Uncyclopedia. If it's relevant to include the username and backed up by a RS, the username shall be included. No exception for Wikipedia itself, Wikipedia is not special in this regard. - Alexis Jazz 18:23, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles

In the discussion above, several people have stated that unless an editor identifies themselves and does it on English Wikipedia, it is outing. To quote TonyBallioni, "Under the existing policy, linking an account to a real life identity requires an explicit on-wiki link". If this is how WP:OUTING is being interpreted and enforced, then Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles contains literally hundreds of instances of outing. Having gone through the first ten listings, half of them do not have an on-wiki self-identification.

It would probably be a good idea to oversight the entire history and start fresh. Bitter Oil (talk) 04:25, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, my home page on the English Wikipedia says "If you want to know more about who I am, check out *blush* Harald Tveit Alvestrand." I guess this counts as an explicit self-identification? --Alvestrand (talk) 14:30, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

While I am waiting for some feedback here, I will go ahead and remove new additions so the problem doesn't get worse. If I find the time (and I doubt that I will), I will start removing older entries but that won't fix the history. Seems like a lot of work is needed here. Bitter Oil (talk) 18:38, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Correction: "If this is how WP:OUTING is being interpreted and enforced, then Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles contains.. WP:OUTING is wrong." Wikipedia shouldn't reserve a special position for itself. Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles should not be held to any different standard than Wikipedia:Fandom editors with articles, Wikipedia:Twitter users with articles or Wikipedia:Uncyclopedians with articles if those lists existed. - Alexis Jazz 19:07, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Threats

Threatening another person is considered harassment. This includes any real-world threats, such as threats of harm, and threats to disrupt a person's work on Wikipedia. Statements of intent to properly use normal Wikipedia processes, such as dispute resolution, are not threats. Legal threats are a special case of threat, with their own settled policy. Users who make legal threats will typically be blocked from editing indefinitely.

— Wikipedia:Harassment#Threats

IMHO it should be clarified what this is: an anti-drama clause for Wikipedia. It doesn't mean you're not allowed to report a user to the authorities if they confess to a crime on-wiki, it only means you shouldn't say you did on-wiki. It doesn't mean you're not allowed to make a YouTube video highlighting stupid things on Wikipedia, only that you shouldn't warn users that a contribution of theirs will be in your next video.

It should also be clarified that statements of intent to use Wikipedia processes are excluded from this policy instead of claiming that those are somehow not threats. Because those often are threats as well, by definition. Saying "if we can't resolve this dispute among ourselves, I'll report this case to a journalist" is just as much of a threat as "if we can't resolve this dispute among ourselves, I'll report this case to ArbCom". - Alexis Jazz 18:53, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

That is totally wrong. People get indeffed for repeating threats to report editors to various authorities because it has a chilling effect. Policies don't try to spell everything out in impenetrable legalese, and there is no need to state the obvious: any threat of real-life harm will not be tolerated, but it is desirable to point out the undesirable editorial behavior will be reported to an admin noticeboard or arbcom. Further, obviously a page at Wikipedia cannot and should not stop a murderer from being reported to authorities. Johnuniq (talk) 00:00, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
That is totally wrong. People get indeffed for repeating threats to report editors to various authorities because it has a chilling effect.
This is a non sequitur, I wasn't talking about that. Nobody was indeffed for reporting an editor to the authorities, right? - Alexis Jazz 05:04, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
I think the line should be removed so we don't have to deal with this same discussion in two places. See WT:NLT where AJ has started a parallel discussion. --Izno (talk) 01:40, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure what "the line" refers to. Both policy pages are saying some similar things, keeping the discussion about it central at Wikipedia talk:No legal threats#Break works for me. - Alexis Jazz 05:04, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

What to do?

What if you are in a content dispute with someone, look at their contributions and notice editing that you would normally strongly oppose? What do you do? VR talk 01:57, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Request for comment on marriage opinions

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Procedural close. This RfC was initiated by a user who was evading a block at the time of the RfC, and the position of that user has not been shared by any other participant. Additionally, the question is not well-formed, and few users seem interested in engaging more fully with the question as presented. Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 07:33, 26 August 2020 (UTC)


Is it a violation of the Wikipedia Terms of use for a Wikipeda user to display on their user page the sentiment that marriage is between a man and a woman, or words to that effect? John Hardington (talk) 10:13, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Survey

Edit: struck as I don't trust myself to give a good opinion on this. --Danre98(talk^contribs) 01:03, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
  • No with WP:NOTCENSORED we should not censor opinions that are likely held by a significant part of the world population. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 15:02, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
    • Would people please read WP:NOTCENSORED before posting their thoughts. Try WP:NOTFREESPEECH also. This is a comment on the misuse of WP:CENSORED (which applies to encyclopedic content in articles), not an opinion on the RfC. Johnuniq (talk) 23:34, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
      • Even when the exact wording of NOTCENSORED isn't about content outside of encyclopedic content, the RfC is essentially about taking a side in a political issue where you have billions on people on either side. I think it's within the spirit of NOTCENSORED to strive for Wikipedia upholding it's position as being politically neutral and not removing content from one side of a political discourse. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 09:37, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
  • No, it is not a violation of the Terms of Use. OP hasn't suggested which section of the Terms of Use such a statement would violate, but most likely the test would be against section 4, "Refraining from Certain Activities", which includes "Engaging in harassment, threats, stalking, spamming, or vandalism" as its first bullet point. A user expressing their widely-held position on a controversial topic on their user page isn't harassing anyone; they may be committing a laundry list of other offenses, but that is not the test. The user page guideline in fact does address this under "images that would bring the project into disrepute", saying "Simple personal disclosures of a non-provocative nature (such as userboxes or statements about sexuality and relationship status) are unaffected", and also under "Advocacy or support of grossly improper behaviors with no project benefit" with "'Acts of violence' includes all forms of violence but does not include mere statements of support for controversial groups or regimes that some may interpret as an encouragement of violence." Basically, except for Nazis, we're not in the business of deciding which opinions are acceptable nor policing opinions we disagree with or find objectionable. However, Wikipedia is not a forum for free speech; if a user with a disagreeable opinion starts trying to skew NPOV to suit their worldview, or they go around directing that opinion at users they know would be offended by it, we'll get rid of them. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 10:59, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Agree with Ivanvector. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:07, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

my full thoughts on the matter John Hardington (talk) 10:13, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

How could an LGBT user possibly feel safe and welcome when they know at least some people in the Wikipedia community think this is the sort of place where it's considered acceptable to publicly denounce a person's right to marry on the grounds of their sexuality? As if that were merely a matter of reasonable debate, rather than straight up discrimination? Obviously there are those who defend this sort of speech on religious freedom grounds, and will argue endlessly that they mean no harm by it (and no doubt, in their world view, it is not harmful to spread the entire word of their holy scripture, anachronistic warts and all). But it is hopefully recognised by Wikipedia that gay marriage is a matter of civil rights, which are necessarily not considered subordinate to the right to free speech, for example, of which religious freedom is one small part. Which, it should also be noted, is not a right Wikipedia users even have (free speech), this being merely a private website.

It is also noted that some religious bodies and adherents do now accept gay marriage, but that is neither here nor there, since their permission is neither requested or required. It typically being perfectly possible to get married in a civil ceremony in those jurisdictions that do allow gay marriage, and it remains the case that many don't (accept it). I am obviously not seeking through this proposal to prevent anyone from believing that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Unlike, say, pedophilia advocacy, it's not a view that is so abhorrent it should be disqualiying to participation on Wikipedia. I.e., you shouldn't be banned from Wikipedia if the thought police catch you saying marriage is between a man and women anywhere, in a manner that can be indisputably linked to your Wikipedia account. I am just saying those other places are more suited to public expressions of views like this. Sites where it is not considered harmful to the mission of the particular website, or that embrace the principle of free speech in its entirety, for whatever reason. Including, of course, personal websites. As already said, the latter is not Wikipedia, for good reason.

Wikipedia is meant to be a place where, say, an LGBT Ugandan feels safe and welcome. And the Terms of Use are the primary, some might say only, means to achieve that. It being the case that Ugandan Wikipedia would not be allowed to adopt a policy that said LGBT users are not welcome on the basis of their abhorrent views on things like marriage, even if a majority of Ugandan Wikipedia users supported such a policy. Hopefully they would not, but there's no guarantee, given the decentralised and open nature of any particular Wikipedia community. Open does not necessarily mean tolerant, and tolerance is not only measured in who you let edit, but who you make welcome. I hate the word inclusivity, suggesting as it does an acceptable rebuttal to the idea that LGBT people are not people too, but it works in this context, because there unfortunately still is a widely accepted counter-point, in some parts of the world.

That a Ugandan user is likely to feel welcome is unlikely to be the case even on the flagship Wikipedia, if they see this sort of opinion being broadcast not just by his fellow countrymen, Uganda being perhaps the most homophobic country on Earth, but from Americans, as most (English) Wikipedia users still are. Accepting as we must that the only reason a user would put a sentiment like that on their user page, is to connect with other like minded individuals, or indeed, warn others who think differently that they may not be received by that person as a valued colleague (not saying that is the case for any particular individual, but it's a reasonable assumption in the round).

If there are religious or even free speech loving users here who want to argue that denying people their alleged right to air these views publicly on Wikipedia is somehow also an example of intolerance and therefore cannot be allowed, I would merely ask them to prove their case. Prove it as if you were arguing for this to be included as a fact in a Wikipedia article. For if Wikipedia is useful for one thing, it is for proving that "marriage is between a man and a woman" or variants, is a mere opinion, and a very biased and very hurtful one at that. It is by contrast a widely accepted fact, to the point of being a universal human right, that discriminating against people based on their sexuality, is wrong.

I have deliberately avoided use of the term hate speech here, because that immediately puts people on the defensive, not least because nobody likes to believe their heart is capable of hate for their fellow humans. Well, almost nobody. But it is hopefully the case that now, as America reviews its previous assumptions about what casual racism looks like, where things are said by the majority in the honest belief they are mere opinions, not harmful tools of oppression, perhaps now is the time that it can also reflect on what a casually homophobic statement looks like on Wikipedia these days, and what effect it probably has on the minority it is so clearly targeted at.

Not that it matters, but if it helps anyone come at this issue with an open mind, I am a straight white Western male who, outside of this discrimination issue, has no strong opinions on marriage at all. I am anti-religion in all its forms, but I am not so foolish to think the world is ready to accept that there probably is no God. It's enough for me to try and ensure that our time on Earth as humans is not spoiled by being unkind to our fellow humans for things they cannot help, such as their sexuality. John Hardington (talk) 10:13, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

  • It would appear to be against WP:UPNO, more specifically, WP:UP#POLEMIC. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:16, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
    Would it bring Wikipedia into disrepute for the world to learn it has users whose user pages contain this statement? Regrettably, probably not. Do they have the capacity to cause widespread offence? Hopefully. That word "widespread" does rather imply that it's OK to offend minorities, regrettably. Best fit appears to be, "don't be inconsiderate", since it cannot really be argued that a person that displays a message like this, probably hasn't considered how it comes across to an LGBT person, or an LGBT ally, or worse, has considered it, and simply doesn't care. I like the passage "Your user page is about you as a Wikipedian, and pages in your user space should be used as part of your efforts to contribute to the project", since it also cannot really be argued that homophobia should be part of anyone's effort to contribute. It would be interesting to see if anyone can offer a good reason why it would be a relevant way to describe oneself as a Wikipedian, if they reject the idea that it is a homophobic statement. What use is it to anyone else intent on contributing to Wikipedia to know this is what a user believes? I suppose it might prevent them being offended by any unwanted invites to collaborations aimed at improving LGBT related content, but if that was the case, they could put a more straightforward message on their user page - "This user is not interest in LGBT topics", for example. John Hardington (talk) 17:41, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
On the other hand censoring opinions that are are hold by large numbers of people can bring Wikipedia into disrepute as it gets people to stop believing into Wikipedia being politically independent.
The idea that transparency is about what people who edit content believe is of no use to anyone seems to me a very strange view. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 09:30, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Can you offer a practical example of where it would be of benefit to Wikipedia for one user to know another user believes "marriage is between a man and a woman"? It seems rather obvious that this sort of transparency can only lead to negative outcomes of the sort I have already described, specifically, making LGBT users feel unwelcome or excluded. John Hardington (talk) 06:37, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
  • NOTCENSORED applies only to encyclopedia content, no? Ergo, it appears to be entirely irrelevant with regard to user pages. John Hardington (talk) 17:23, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
    John Hardington, Please give me some time to post my full thoughts. The reason I referenced it was that stuff on Wikipedia gets removed if it doesn't contribute to an encyclopedia, not if it is offensive as you seem to claim (note: offensive material may tend to not contribute to an encyclopedia). One way that it could help is if someone wanted to list their opinion on this topic in a list of biases that they have (I've seen someone do this, not sure where), like how you stated at the end of your full thoughts that "I am against religion in all forms", stating your bias against religion. Such biases could be helpful to other editors and help the encyclopedia as a whole. I am against a hard rule like the one proposed against opinions on marriage, but do think editors should be careful to make sure that they aren't being mean. Danre98(talk^contribs) 18:03, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I am not understanding where this political neutrality argument ia coming from at all. As I have already explained, "marriage is between a man and a woman" is already a non-neutral statement - you couldn't, for example, have that as the first line of the marriage article in English Wikipedia, because it is biased. So it falls to those who want to display it on their user page as if to declare thir "side" in a merely political matter that they can somehow one day "win" on (or with the help of) Wikipedia, or indeed just to display their longstanding unhappiness at having lost, to explain how their apparent need for others on Wikipedia to know this is their view, outweighs the offensiveness of it to those who see it as more than just a political view, but homophobia. Wikipedia as an organisation and a community is umambiguously not neutral on that issue - it sees homophobia as wrong. Wikipedia is neutral on gay marriage strictly as a matter of politics or religion in the sense it has no intention of getting involved, either as an encyclopedia or an organisation. It does not follow however, that Wikipedia is a place for airing views which the holders choose to see only as matters of politics/religion, but which others find wholly offensive. John Hardington (talk) 07:25, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
  • "Basically, except for Nazis, we're not in the business of deciding which opinions are acceptable nor policing opinions we disagree with or find objectionable." - as has already been shown, this is directly contradicted by what the user page guidelines actually say. A user would not be allowed to display, for example, "I do not believe gay people should be allowed to edit Wikipedia", because it would (hopefully, but I am starting to wonder) cause "widespread offence". Stating "marriage is between a man and a woman" is not simply an expression of a user's likely sexuality or relationship status, it is a statement that passes judgement on other user's likely sexuality or relationship status. A very hurtful judgement. I find it offensive, and I am straight, and may or may not get married (in a civil ceremony) when the times comes. It is not simple advocacy either, since there is another way to say it in advocacy terms - "I believe that only a man and a woman should have the right to marry". It should be enough for opponents to go through all these potentially different ways of saying this supposedly merely political/religious viewpoint, not finding a single form of words that would not offend an LGBT person or their allies, for them to accept it is homophobic. It would be different if a user was displaying, for example, "I support [insert denomination]'s right to choose who can and cannot get married in their Church" or "I support Congressman X's proposed bill to repeal gay marriage". Nobody who believes in religious freedom or political neutrality, could oppose that (but they might still wonder how knowing that helps them contribute as a Wikipedian, rather than helping others understand that they might be here only to harm Wikipedia's efforts to be neutral). But of course, that's not really the intent of these messages, is it? John Hardington (talk) 07:51, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Universal Code of Conduct

For those of you who do not know, the Wikimedia Foundation is organizing the drafting and adopting of a "Universal Code of Conduct" to apply to all Wikimedia projects.

Consider as you like. The first draft is now open for comments. I am unaware of a central place for discussing this on English Wikipedia.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:50, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Pinging harassment

I have a user whom I have asked to stop pinging me several times and he won't quit. I have since put him on mute but he is following my edits across pages to continue drawing out a conflict. Would this repeated pinging after being told to stop constitute harassment according to this policy? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:43, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

@Koavf: At Preferences → Notifications, add their name to the "Muted users" list. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:06, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
Redrose64, I'm not sure why you're telling me this. As I wrote above, "I have since put him on mute". ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:48, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes, it would constitute harassment. And I just got through commenting on pinging as a form of harassment. Various admins have considered it harassment. I don't see that specific mention of pinging (or thanking someone via WP:Echo) needs to be added to the policy, though. The policy is already clear that harassment "may be to make editing Wikipedia unpleasant for the target, to undermine, frighten, or discourage them from editing." And the WP:Hounding section is clear that "the important component of hounding is disruption to another user's own enjoyment of editing, or disruption to the project generally, for no overridingly constructive reason." Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 21:59, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
Flyer22 Frozen, Thanks. Just confirming that others consider this hounding. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:50, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
  • IMHO if you've asked them to stop pinging and they continue it whilst at the same following you around then Yes that would be harassment and if that's happening to you Koavf you need go to ANI and put an end to it.
(But then again I guess even if they weren't following you around pinging each time would annoy you and could still be tantamount to harassment., Meh either way I'd nip it in the bud once and for all)–Davey2010Talk 19:42, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
Exactly!, Life's too short for bickering and whatnot, Thanks and you have a good day too! :), Take care, –Davey2010Talk 19:53, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Following around/hounding, yes. Pinging, no. Now that you have them no mute, you won't receive pings anymore. I haven't been here that long but one of the more annoying and weird aspects of Wikipedia culture is that some editors say "stop pinging me", other editors get mad if you don't ping them in certain situations, and some editors want to be pinged some of the time by some editors, but never pinged by other editors, and so forth. I for one am never going to remember who wants to be pinged and who doesn't. There are socially-acceptable times to ping someone, such as when you want to draw their attention to a page, or when replying to them. Intentionally-over-pinging someone can indeed be a form of harassment, but muting someone is a much better solution than asking someone to stop pinging you and expecting them to never ping you because of the request. The are too many editors to keep track of. Lev!vich 02:13, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
    I don't think anyone has a problem with people genuinely forgetting that they were asked not to ping someone. All the threads at ANI that I can recall that have been about this have been something stupid, like 'I have the right to ping them because they pinged me' or 'I have the right to ping them because they're an admin' or some other utter silliness. It's simple, if someone asks you to stop pinging them then you stop. The whole point of pinging someone is to get their attention, when they've said they don't welcome you doing that then you don't. Yes you can mute them, but you shouldn't have to and it is harassment if someone doesn't obey a simple request like that, again within reason (genuinely forget). This is no different from how much of the rest of the world operates. Most email systems let people set up filters to block senders. Most mobile phones allow callers to be blocked. Yes these can be circumvented, but even if they aren't if someone asks someone else to stop emailing them or stop calling them, they need to respect that. They can't just tell the other person 'you can block me'. In fact, they could get into legal trouble for failing to respect such a request, especially the phone calls, and could definitely lose their service. Nil Einne (talk) 12:03, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
    Just wanted to add that common sense should also apply. Editors do not need to make perfectly formed requests for their wishes to be respected. If someone has told you they're still pinging you because you're pinging them, that should be taken as a request not to ping them as long as you've asked for them not to ping you. If you're really confused you can ask, preferably without pinging. You shouldn't bring an ANI simply because the editor didn't make a well formed request for reciprocation, that's just silly. Note also on a personal level, if someone kept pinging me when I asked them to stop, I'd probably just mute them. But I also fully support the right of an editor to bring an ANI case rather than doing so, since IMO we shouldn't accept harassment just because there are tools to stop it, and indeed have supported indefinite blocks for any editor who intentionally ignores such request. I don't think it's ever happened, but this isn't because the editor was told simply to mute the other but instead because once it's been brought to ANI, and it becomes clear to the editor that yes, they do have to respect such a request and no they don't have the right to ignore it for whatever reason they seem to think they can, they've agreed to stop. This isn't an ideal use of ANI's time but it's better than the alternative of editor's thinking it's okay to do something which is effectively harassment. Better that editors understand that basic rules of decency here on Wikipedia, as in much of the world, is that such requests should be respected. (Again, I'm not referring to cases when an editor simply didn't remember, since that's not been the cases that I've seen at ANI.) Nil Einne (talk) 15:23, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
    More or less agree with this. Some people want to be pinged always, some people once per discussion, some people want others to know which pages are on their watchlist to avoid pings... pinging is a pretty fundamental part of communication around here, and we even have reply tools now that build a ping into the discussion structure such that it would require effort to avoid pinging. I entirely disagree with the idea that we are all required to remember everyone's pinging preferences lest it constitute harassment. Yes, you can request not to be pinged further, and others should try to remember, but if they don't, and that is the sole point of contention between you, then I'd have a really hard time calling that harassment or even actionable without a heap more evidence. Any time I see the threads along the lines of "so-and-so won't stop pinging me" I expect to see a flood of pings intended to generate a bunch of notifications/emails, but it's usually just a couple instances. If someone can't stop forgetting your preferences, among the hundreds/thousands of other users who have their own preferences, use the mute button. If that user is harassing you (beyond a ping or two), bring the evidence to ANI (not just the pinging). Now that there are tools in place for this, if you make a request and someone forgets or still pings you a couple times, use those tools. It's in your control. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:08, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
    I agree entirely with Nil Einne above: if you make a request from someone to stop communicating with you then they should stop. It also is not your responsibility to have to use technology to account for their harassing behavior. I also agree that if you make a request like that it would be practical and useful to mute them anyway and also to similarly avoid contact with them otherwise they may get weasel-like about "yeah but they pinged me first" etc etc. Having just gone through an ANI where an editor had continued to edit my userspace after being asked to stop, I can say that the community standard at the moment will likely result in an Admin requesting them to stop along with a side order of additional drama resulting from all the weighing in and airing of laundry. Definitely take the precautions to remain as civil as you can bear, knowing that the goal of the person you accuse of harassment (or their allies) will be to get a boomerang. WP:HA is any unwanted or annoying contact. The means by which that occurs doesn't matter. The hinge is that you must let them know it is unwanted. If someone requested to me that I not ping them I would probably simply move on and make no contact with them in any way outside of necessary contact on Article pages (even then, I'm not obligated to edit so I might choose to just move on to other articles that interest me) TheMusicExperimental (talk) 18:00, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
Exactly. The idea of "If someone can't stop forgetting your preferences" comment by Rhododendrites above? I understand if the editor has a serious issue with their memory and/or doesn't interact with the other editor much. But if you are in a discussion with an editor, and you keep pinging that editor in that discussion after the editor asked or told you to stop, and it's clear that your pinging is annoying that editor, that is plain harassment unless you have a valid "I just can't remember" argument. In such a case, the vast majority of editors (including admins) aren't going to buy that you just can't remember. Not unless you have Alzheimer's disease. And they don't know if you have that if you claim it or some other memory issue. And if it's someone you interact with often, and especially if your relationship with that person is tempestuous, the vast majority of editors aren't going to buy that you just can't remember. Not unless you have Alzheimer's disease. But they don't know if you have that if you claim it or some other memory issue. Still, if you are going to claim "I just don't remember" in cases like those two, it had better be due to a medical issue with your memory. In this discussion, an editor kept pinging me and tried to justify it as though I needed to be repeatedly pinged by him. Like Alexbrn stated, there, "WP:Ping is not policy, but WP:HA is. If an editor asks not to be pinged and this is ignored, the community is likely to take a dim view."
Some editors know that I prefer not to be pinged to talk pages I'm watching. But pinging me in that case isn't harassment. It's only harassment if an editor keeps pinging me after I specifically asked that editor to stop. If I'm in a heated discussion with that editor, it certainly can't at all be argued that the repeated pinging after being asked to stop is innocent. I remember pinging an editor on my talk page after they asked me to stop doing so, and I should have stopped. This was years ago, and I don't think I realized how much repeatedly pinging him in that case bothered him, but I certainly do now. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 20:16, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

See RfC on changing DEADNAME on crediting individuals for previously released works, and in quoted material

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#RfC: updating MOS:DEADNAME for how to credit individuals on previously released works
This potentially would affect a significant number of articles.

Note: More input is needed from people really steeped in WP:OUTING and WP:BLPPRIVACY as pertaining to TG/NB/GQ persons (including those who appear in WP material only as authors of cited sources). There are complexities involved – sometimes not instantly intuitive – that do not seem to be recognized by the majority of commenters in this now two-part RfC, due to the other 2020 pandemic, of polarization and stance-taking. :-/ Things are civil enough, and no admin intervention is needed. I'm just concerned we're going end up with another RfC like the last one on this, which "closed with consensus" and then immediately just turned into even more chaos, confusion, and invective.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:26, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Addition to WP:HUSH

I would like to edit WP:HUSH so that the first paragraph will read (change indicated via italics, to be added normal-face to the article):

A common problem is harassment in userspace. Examples include placing numerous false or questionable "warnings" on a user's talk page, restoring such comments after a user has removed them, placing "suspected sockpuppet," "older warnings," and similar tags on the user page of active contributors, and otherwise trying to display material the user may find annoying or embarrassing in their user space.

This would specifically name the "Older Warnings" template as an example templates used to harass active users. The usage of Older Warnings is to keep IP and inactive users from cluttering the "What Links Here" portions of Article pages, see description of this by the template's creator, BD2412, in response to a question I raised in a recent TfD for OW. [6]

While some suggest this template is used against vandals with varying degrees of success, there are other templates and processes better suited to that task. TheMusicExperimental (talk) 17:36, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

  • Oppose: The current policy is not broken and does not need to be fixed. Anyone who has dealt with vandalism, spam, or COI edits for any length of time has received bogus warnings from vandals/spammers/etc. These are easily dealt with by deleting the "warning" and reporting the user if they persist. The other side of the coin is someone who not only deletes legitimate warnings (which is allowed) but does not want the warnings to be posted in the first place and does not want the warnings to be easy to find by the next person who posts a warning.
The documentation for the {{ow}} template, which currently transcludes to over 555,000 pages, is is clear: "Usage: This template can be used on user talk pages when warning or block notices have been removed. It serves as a reminder that the talk page history should be checked for prior warnings." There is no restriction on where it may be used other than "use on user talk pages when warning or block notices have been removed." And of course the user is allowed to remove the {{ow}} template, and is free to ask the person who posted it to stop posting the their talk page. This is the current policy, and it works well. Again, the current policy is not broken and does not need to be fixed. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:25, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Likewise, I don't see a need for a change. The TfD for {{OW}} will decide its fate. A troll can harass people by repeatedly posting "have a nice day!"—we don't list all the bad things that are not allowed. I would recommend that the documentation for {{OW}} clearly state that it should only be added when there is a good reason to do so, and should never be batched. That is, no one should go looking for pages to add OW to. Johnuniq (talk) 23:09, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. As far as I'm concerned, {{Older warnings}} should be mandatory on the talk pages of those [who have received warnings] who habitually nuke stuff off their talk page instead of putting it in talk archives like 99.99% of us do. That practice really ought to be finally brought to an end by the community, because it's a massive ass-pain for everyone (except of course those who are trying to hide how much trouble they've caused and gotten into). Even if we never go that far, to call this template "harassment" just badly misunderstands the harassment policy. (That said, if you put that on some editor's page and they remove it and you put it back, and etc., etc., you'll be tripping over WP:USERPAGE and WP:EDITWAR as they presently stand, so don't do that. The problem of people trying to avoid scrutiny by whitewashing their talk page from casual examination has to be fixed with a policy change; you can't do it by force of will one page at a time.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:32, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Don't call people by their real name

I just drafted an essay at Wikipedia:Don't call people by their real name to try to briefly summarize an issue I see come up often. Basically, even if it's not "outing," using someone's real name on-wiki should be avoided unless they explicitly invite you to do so.

WP:OUTING applies when a name hasn't been revealed on-wiki (or has been removed), but sometimes revealing one's name is highly context-dependent (or a long time ago). IMO it's still inappropriate to use someone's real name when referring to that person (unless, again, they invite you to do so). In other words: use people's username by default.

I scanned a couple relevant pages and didn't see something to this effect, and wonder what people think about linking to it here or elsewhere. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 19:45, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, that's a very helpful essay, so thanks for creating it. If others agree, I think it might be appropriate to link to it from the phrase using the other person's real name in discussions near the end of the first paragraph of WP:OUTING. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:46, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
I think that's a good essay, though it should be written to specifically exclude situations in which the user has identified themselves by their real name and uses the real name as his user name. e.g., User:JimboWales. Coretheapple (talk) 19:39, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Outing and external accounts

I am informing the functionaries mailing list with a neutral worded message about this discussion.

For a while now, there has been a clash between the wording of the outing policy and established oversight practice. It should have been brought up a while back, but at least we are here now. Right now, in the "Posting of personal information" section, external accounts aren't considered personal information. Yet they are still mentioned later on in the section as something that is "allowable in specific situations". This is leading users to believe that they can post links to any accounts, and I've seen several instances I can't point to because they are oversighted. Then when I point them to this policy...it's not worded in a way that makes it even remotely clear what can't be posted. I get this may be partially to address paid editing, and I'm not trying to hamper that effort regardless of my opinions, though I still think a lot of those links get disqualified by other things in the policy. I'm talking about just generic links that the RfC of 2019 seemed to claim It is generally more acceptable to reference information if it is clear the user does not mind wider dissemination (e.g. posted on a user's public userpage) and less acceptable if it requires much "research" to find (particularly information later removed by the user in question). I couldn't come up with a reasonable change yesterday, without seemingly stepping on previous discussions, so I figured it was best to talk about it here and propose a cleanup of the section also. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 19:08, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. My understanding is that links to other sites are unequivocally "personal information" – the definition in WP:OUTING says personal information "includes" a list, but the list is not exclusive. In any event, links to other sites are "other contact information". As the closer of the 2019 RfC, and as is clear from the text of the close, I can tell you that the RfC addresses only the case where someone has revealed personal information (e.g. a link to their twitter) voluntarily on another Wikimedia wiki and someone else wants to post a link to the twitter on enwiki, and the answer is that it depends. But as the RfC closure makes clear, "It remains a bright-line violation of OUTING to post personal information that has not been voluntarily disclosed on a public Wikimedia project." (emphasis in original). The simplest solution that I support is to add "links to accounts on other websites" to the list of examples of personal information. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 19:14, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
I've also added a clarification to the note that it applies only to the edge case in which someone voluntarily discloses personal information on a Wikimedia wiki that isn't enwiki, and someone else references that information on enwiki. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 19:42, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
Saw this on my watchlist. I boldly added a clarification. I think accounts on other websites is covered already by “contact information”, but I’d also agree with Kevin about adding it explicitly. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:17, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
Repeating what I said elsewhere on this particular topic: There are some rare circumstances in which it's okay to [suggest that a Wikipedia user operates a specific account elsewhere on the Internet that they have not themselves disclosed on-wiki] (usually to do with paid editing investigations) but unfortunately it's an extremely grey area and enforcement varies among the admin and functionary group. Personally I think some edits that were made to WP:OUTING to try to reflect the existence of this gray area were irresponsible because they may suggest linking accounts is more acceptable than it really is, but that's perhaps veering off-topic a bit. I appreciate the clarification to the policy, which I do think brings it far more in line with practice, and makes it much less likely that well-intentioned editors with concerns over COI, off-wiki canvassing, etc. will cross the bright line on outing due to the vague wording. I even think what I said was okay in the green text is maybe not even so allowed, but was rather BOLDly edited out of line with policy by folks who were hoping paid editing investigations could happen on-wiki. I have always been on the conservative side of things when it comes to that, and think that is an absolutely terrible idea. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:27, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
Just did some digging on the history: The sentence was initially added in February 2015 as Posting links to other accounts on other websites may occasionally be allowed such as when those accounts are being used to transact paid editing, with the adder (Doc James) writing in his edit summary that it was as a result of the 2015 RfC on "Should the policy extend harassment to include posting ANY other accounts on ANY other websites?" (which was closed with a simple Consensus and practice say No.). This was changed minutes later to "...is allowable on a case by case basis" with the summary "does not accurately reflect rfc". Somehow this wording stayed for quite some time, including through several RfCs and long discussions about the flawed wording. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:05, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
GorillaWarfare, it came from a 2017 RfC. That being said, I’ll repeat my interpretation of the policy that I just posted to the functionaries list letting people know I made the clarification: If there’s a post on Upwork of someone asking for article Foo to be edited, it’s okay to post that at COIN, but it’s not acceptable to say “User:Example bid on this and is therefore John Smith on Upwork.”
I don’t see anything in policy or practice that would allow us to directly connect Wikipedia accounts to other internet accounts. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:43, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) For what it's worth, I firmly agree that your interpretation should be the status quo. However I think the wording of the policy up until yesterday allowed for quite a broad range of interpretations, and one could easily argue that the policy allowed one to directly link editor A on Wikipedia to account B offwiki in the way it was worded (and we certainly don't normally expected editors to go digging for the RfC that originated the policy when they wish to check if they're acting within bounds). GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:55, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

TonyBallioni and others, you have to be careful not to make things impossible for editors dealing with disruption, whether caused by COI or anything else. Tony, re: your addition:

While in the extremely limited circumstances outlined above, posts by public accounts on other websites may be shared on Wikipedia to demonstrate that a subject might be impacted by conflict of interest editing, they should not be directly linked to any specific Wikipedia editor if that editor has not disclosed it themselves.

Several editors are dealing with someone who has created BLPs about the same non-notable artist on multiple wikis (English, German, French, Japanese, etc). He insists he is not the subject, is not connected to the subject, and has no COI. Tony's addition seems to say that we must not link the other BLP creations to this account, must not point out that he is the author of some of the supposedly RS (he has posted source material using the same name on other websites). We're allowed to say that someone is doing all this, but we can't say that this someone is the person we're discussing it with, even though (or, in fact, because) the two someones have the same name? SarahSV (talk) 19:51, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

I updated it a bit to reflect your point above about non-English wikis. We do this all the time at SPI, and I agree that we do not want wording that makes that impossible.
On the authorship on other websites question, yes, the current interpretation of policy would be that saying you posted this on X website under the same name would be a violation of the outing policy's prohibition on opposition research:

The fact that an editor has posted personal information or edits under their own name, making them easily identifiable through online searches, is not an excuse to post the results of "opposition research". Dredging up their off-site opinions to repeatedly challenge their edits can be a form of harassment, just as doing so regarding their past edits on other Wikipedia articles may be. Threats to out an editor will be treated as a personal attack and are prohibited.

I don't think what I added is any stronger than the existing wording surrounding the topic in policy or creates any additional burdens. My understanding is that in addition to this being intended to prevent linking of personal details you might have shared on other websites, there's a real fear of joe-jobbing this type of stuff in order to take out "enemies" on Wikipedia. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:14, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
As I see it, there are a couple of issues here, and I think it will be useful to treat them individually. Amanda's original edit (in part) took what had been a paragraph of text, and broke it out into a numbered list. Tony has added a new paragraph following the list, and I'm going to put it here, but insert some numbering of my own – so the bold font numbers are added by me:
(1) Issues involving private personal information (of anyone) could also be referred by email to a member of the functionaries team. (2) To combat impersonation (an editor claiming falsely to be a particular person), it is permissible to post or link to disavowals from that person, provided that the person has explicitly and in good faith given their consent, and provided that there is a high degree of confidence in the authenticity of the source. (3) While in the limited circumstances outlined above, posts by public accounts on non-Wikimedia websites may be shared on Wikipedia to demonstrate that a subject might be impacted by conflict of interest editing, external accounts should not be directly linked to any specific Wikipedia editor if that editor has not disclosed it themselves.
Tony, I have some concerns about that, some cosmetic, some substantive, so I'm going to try to explain them here. What I labeled as (1) should be deleted, as it is entirely redundant with stable language in the paragraph just above the list, beginning: "Nothing in this policy prohibits... ".
The part I labeled (2) is about the joe-job issue. I don't have a substantive problem with it, but I see no reason why it should not be the 4th numbered item in the list that Amanda created. (But delete "and in good faith".)
And that brings us to the part that I labeled (3). I share the concerns raised by SarahSV. I think I understand what you want to accomplish, but if I take it literally, I cannot envision how someone would be able to say at COIN "I'm concerned about a possible COI problem based on this external link, but I'm not referring to any particular editor." The fact is that there are situations where the community does have a consensus that there needs to be discussion about individual editors.
I don't have a specific suggestion for how to say it better, but I just spent a depressing amount of time looking at the archives of this talk page, and it seems like we, collectively, have been trying to reinvent this particular wheel for years. Since the issue of joe jobs came up, I'd like to link to something I said exactly one US election ago, that I hope everyone here will read now: [7]. I also remember that a proposal to have a routine process to privately report COI concerns based on external links to functionaries was strongly rejected by the community, on the grounds that the community does not want to give functionaries that much authority to judge such cases in private. I think we need to be able to say: "don't reveal another editor's identity without their consent" without saying "you have to pretend that an external website seeking to disrupt en-Wiki does not exist". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:23, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
I only added part 3 :)
I understand what you and Sarah are concerned about, but that’s already in the policy without my addition: the paragraph on opposition research prohibits saying that someone posting under the same name posted something on another website. All my clarification does is specify that also applies to COI issues. My interpretation (and I think the majority interpretation of the OS team) is that the previous RfCs were discussing allowing job postings by clients and the like. Not allowing us to tie Upwork profiles to accounts that edit (i.e. the freelancer/vendor.) If you post a freelancer’s profile on en.wiki and say it’s User:Example, it’s going to be suppressed. If you post a job offering it more than likely won’t be. All my paragraph does is make it clear that there is not a policy exception to the prohibition on opposition research for COI.
There’s really no easy answer to these circumstances, and while I can’t speak for the oversight team as a whole, I can say that most oversighters I have talked to would view that as a violation of the opposition research prohibition in the outing policy and would suppress as the RfCs did not establish an exception for COI, but pointed out what wasn’t outing (i.e. posts by a BLP requesting an article, etc.) Because of that, I don’t view my addition as changing the policy, but as clarifying that the policy as a whole is internally consistent and that there are not exceptions to linking to external accounts because of conflict of interest. You’d need to change the opposition research paragraph to allow that, and so long as it remains there in its current form, most oversighters are going to have the interpretation that GorillaWarfare, Kevin, and I have discussed here. I’m not saying we get to dictate policy, but I also think that having something that reflects one of the most common interpretations of the OS team to an area where there was lack of clarity when taken out of context from the entire outing policy is good so that people know what to expect. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:27, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
Tony, my apologies re: (1) and (2). Definitely my f-up! But I did just move what I called (2) into the numbered list, without changing anything else. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:52, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
OK then, what you just said did, in fact, crystallize (at least for me) where there has been some lack of understanding on my part about what the Oversighters have been saying. You wrote: If you post a freelancer’s profile on en.wiki and say it’s User:Example, it’s going to be suppressed. If you post a job offering it more than likely won’t be. That distinction hadn't occurred to me until just now, but it hits the nail on the head. We should just say (in effect) that.
I suggest changing:
"While in the limited circumstances outlined above, posts by public accounts on non-Wikimedia websites may be shared on Wikipedia to demonstrate that a subject might be impacted by conflict of interest editing, external accounts should not be directly linked to any specific Wikipedia editor if that editor has not disclosed it themselves."
to:
"While in the limited circumstances outlined above, links to external websites containing solicitations to edit Wikipedia may be posted on Wikipedia to demonstrate that there may be conflict of interest editing, links to personal profiles on external sites should not be connected to any specific Wikipedia editor unless that editor discloses it themselves."
--Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
I hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday weekend. I'd like to follow up on what other editors think about my suggested changes here. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:50, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Tony, or anyone else, when you have some time, let's discuss this, thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:48, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
Apologies for the delayed response. I have no objections to your wording if you want to implement it :) TonyBallioni (talk) 22:23, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, and no worries (we all have so much else to weigh on our minds!). I'll wait another day or so, in case anyone else wants to comment, and if there are no objections I'll go ahead and make the edit. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:11, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 Done. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:16, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

This policy is a mess, but the specific cases under discussion have already been decided

Just an example of what I think is a mess in this policy:

"The fact that an editor has posted personal information or edits under their own name, making them easily identifiable through online searches, is not an excuse to post the results of "opposition research". Dredging up their off-site opinions to repeatedly challenge their edits can be a form of harassment..."

What do "opposition research" and "dredging" mean here? Something to do with doing research and digging up material I guess. But are we saying that all research, e.g. material about paid or coi editing, can't be done. That if we see evidence of paid editing, we can't check it out to see if there is some confirmation? Obviously not - that would mean that even though we have widely supported rules against paid editing, any attempt to enforce it could result in the investigator being banned. So what do the emotional words "opposition research" and "dredging" actually mean here? "I don't like it" is what I read. If we're going to have rules with such heavy penalties - we need to be more precise than that.

If we're just talking about e-lance and upworks here, there's no reason to argue what the policy is. As of November 19 RfC on Village Pump, it's that

"Paid editors must also provide links on their Wikipedia user page to all active accounts at websites where they advertise, solicit or obtain paid Wikipedia-editing services. ... Additionally, paid editors must provide links to the user page(s) of their Wikipedia account(s) on each website on which they advertise, solicit or obtain paid editing services, as well as in direct communications with each client and potential client (such as through email). If the paid editor has used or controlled more than one Wikipedia account, each account must be disclosed."

So paid editors must link to their advertising account, and the advertising account must link to the user page. Pretty simple really. If paid editors want to edit here, the policy says that they have to disclose this information 2 ways. I assume that any admin, if given info (presumably in private) that this isn't being done, would block the offending editor right away. The offending editor - of course - is the paid editor who doesn't post the required information - not the editor who did the investigating. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:08, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate your pointing this out, because I think it helps illustrate ways in which these issues are unclear (as in my response to Tony just above, which I posted later than when you posted this). It seems to me that a key part of your post is where you refer to contacting an admin "presumably in private". So I think that what some of the Oversighters are trying to get clarified is where the information may be provided on-wiki, and where it must be provided in private. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:21, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Let's look at the following scenario:
A person with a POV and a COI on a particular subject---he has gotten media coverage for that---has been posting under his real name on social media to recruit POV pushers for a Wikipedia article on the subject in question.
He then establishes a real-name account on Wikipedia to POV push, and admits to have engaged in the above activity.
How does this policy apply to that situation? Can an editor point out that the person with the real name account has been engaged in a campaign off-wiki to recruit editors to engage in POV pushing? Can one identify, link and quote from those off-wiki accounts (which contain inflammatory language concerning Wikipedia editors)? Coretheapple (talk) 19:27, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
My personal take is that the key portion of that scenario is that he establishes a real-name account here and says, on-wiki, that he is the person engaged in that activity. Unless he self-reverts that information and requests that it be further hidden, that means that he has voluntarily disclosed that information here. Therefore, it is entirely permissible under this policy, and probably a good idea, to say on-site that the conduct to which he has admitted is against policy. If he has referred here to off-site stuff that anyone can quickly find with a web search, there's nothing wrong with posting a link to it. It would be different if he had established the same real-name account but said nothing one way or the other about his off-site activities. In that case, the best approach would be to post at WP:COIN that he appears to be a connected account, without linking to other sites and without asserting that you know that the account is his real name (as opposed to someone else who just happens to have the same name). Just focus on the POV nature of the edits themselves. It would be a mistake to do a search on his name and link to what you found, because he had not disclosed that information here, just by virtue of having used a name. I know some of that sounds a little kludgy, but I think that reflects the existing consensus. Separately, something else you can do is to make a post about the online solicitation to make POV edits, without saying anything about the named account and without linking to anything where recruited editors respond to the recruitment. That draws attention to the problem without violating this policy, although again there's a bit of pretend ignorance. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:52, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
That's helpful, thank you. Coretheapple (talk) 20:04, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

WP:OUTING and abusing the harassment policy to further a personal agenda.

Relevant noticeboard discussions:

Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#Motion_regarding_Tenebrae
Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Tenebrae
(Once these get archived perm links to the discussions can be inserted)

If you need further reading on this issue, The Daily Dot has a news article on this, as well as the companion piece on Wikipediocracy.

We are now at the point (which has been warned about in the past) where the OUTING section of the policy has been weaponised in order to explicitly hide an editors conflict of interest, to allow them to continue to edit in areas without that conflict being able to be discussed, and to actively prevent content in an article being included because the outing policy to protect editors is being used to hide bad actions. It has made all the admins/oversighters who have been enforcing the OUTING policy complicit in the editors COI-editing. They have directly enabled COI editing.

I am not going into detail in all the background to the above, mostly because no doubt someone may have an attempt at muzzling this discussion too. Suffice to say the harassment policy should not be a tool to avoid having to abide by our content policies and making sure articles are not slanted by people with a COI.

This is a relatively simple fix: Add a sentence to outing (this is an example) that states that the section "does not apply when reliable sources have made the connection between a wikipedia article and a wikipedia editor engaging in COI editing.

This is a very narrow scope of exception, there are three conditions to satisfy: first it must be published in a reliable source, secondly it must have explicitly listed an article and thirdly provided evidence of COI editing by a wikipedia editor. If something of this sort had been included previously, Tenebrae would not have been able to get away with their COI editing for years despite repeated attempts by editors acting in good faith trying to point this out.

If people think this is an isolated case, then they should spend more time at COIN. Any suggestions on wording an exception welcome, but there needs to be an exception going forward to allow discussion of COI by wikipedia editors editing articles directly related to themselves. Its a laughable situation where Arbcom have banned an editor for having a COI, but the community has been muzzled from discussing it previously, Arbcom cant show us the evidence so we can look into it further, and the wikipedia article itself has content removed from it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:23, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

The linked COIN discussion includes a notice from arbcom that they "have advised the oversight team that after careful review, we do not believe linking to the article constitutes suppressible outing. The article includes Frank Lovece's denial that he is Tenebrae, and per WP:RSP the Daily Dot is considered a generally reliable source for internet culture. Whether any link to the article should be on-wiki is therefore purely an editorial decision." This should not be taken as evidence that no changes are needed to OUTING. It should not have got to the point where Arbcom had to directly intervene to declare something an editorial decision. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:34, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • If WP:OUTING has hindered NPOV editing, I would expect that would have been because of human failure not the policy itself. Outing prohibits outing people onwiki; it is possible, and is established practice, to discuss such information privately among editors, forward it to admins who work against COI/UPE violations, or the CU/OS functionaries, or the ArbCom. I would also add that WP:RS stands for "Reliable source", which is not the same as "Responsible source". So, I think I would oppose, but I am open to being persuaded otherwise. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 13:47, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I think something could be usefully said that the outing policy is not a license to violate other policies. In the context of COI, maybe something like "if you have a COI that you cannot declare publicly (e.g. to avoid outing yourself) you must edit in such a way that it never becomes an issue, including never editing the article(s) or topics concerned in any manner that would be prohibited if the COI had been publicly declared. You are also strongly advised to edit in a manner that does not raise suspicion of a COI as this will significantly reduce the likelihood that other editors will speculate about such a link, which might include accidentally outing you (not all undeclared COIs are outing issues)." That needs improvement, but what I'm trying to convey is that if I had a COI regarding e.g. Luxembourgish politics (I don't, this is just a theoretical example) that I did not wish to declare because it would out me, then it is acceptable as long as I don't do anything the COI policy would prohibit, and it's best practice to avoid any hint of suspicion - if you don't make any edits to a topic area that are even remotely controversial then nobody will feel the need to look in any detail at your edits in that topic area. e.g. nobody is going to spend any effort investigating whether I have a COI regarding Luxembourgish politics because I make (essentially) no edits in that topic area. Thryduulf (talk) 14:50, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
    well, NOW we feel the need to look into your edits to LUXPOL...GeneralNotability (talk) 16:03, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
    If you find any please let me know! I deliberately chose a topic area that plausibly might be controversial but where I can't remember making any edits at all! Thryduulf (talk) 16:37, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • In terms of both the original wording and Thryduulf's when policies (and sometimes guidelines, as is arguably the case here) compete BLP and this policy are normally given precedence. In other words, we will follow what BLP and Harassment says even if it runs counter to what we would do otherwise (an obvious example is that WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE which ends up in some articles being deleted that otherwise wouldn't). Putting some explicit guardrails around this policy would have been helpful, I feel, in the incident in question and likely again in the future. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:59, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree, and I just wanted to add that in one recent situation, in which an article was overwhelmed by multiple COI editors, I came within inches of outing them myself. However I consulted with an administrator, privately, and ultimately it was unnecessary to out anyone. Their behavior led to a sockpuppet investigation and a semiprotection of the page. If the hostilities begin again I don't see what practical value it would be to say "look! This editor is probably XYZ!" Coretheapple (talk) 22:52, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm not a fan of narrow exceptions that try to use the letter of the law, because folks always find a way around. I am a fan of the spirit of a law however. In this case, I think a spirit that "OUTING is not a suicide pact" would be useful. I agree wholly with Thrydullfs reasoning on the subject. Perhaps something to the extent of "Should OUTING concerns prevent you from disclosing a COI, or otherwise editing in accordance with any other policy, you are expected to simply not edit in that area." Should you edit in a manner that is suspicious, and editors put it together, you have really only yourself to blame. Now, this still isn't a license to out, but it's an expectation to not out yourself or edit abusively. It also means that Wikipedia should not cover for editors who use OUTING abusively. If you're a senator, and you edit your own page as User:IamnotTedCruz, and someone figues it out, it's not their fault they put two and two together, it's your fault for being a dumbass. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 15:32, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I'd be very wary of softening WP:OUTING based on a case like this that happens to come along very rarely. In all the time I've been here, I've seen WP:OUTING used to good effect probably hundreds of times. And I've seen cases like the Tenebrae one... hmmm... I'm struggling to think of another one, but maybe two or three times at most? What I would support, though, is an addition along the lines Thryduulf suggests above. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:51, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Hard cases make bad law. The change, as proposed, is an extremely narrow addition, I can think of very few cases other than Tenebrae (I can only think of...*checks notes* the Bnguyen incident from this past year) Tenebrae where this would have made any difference, and this just seems ripe for gamesmanship. I favor Thryduulf and Eek's comments above. GeneralNotability (talk) 16:01, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • This case certainly has highlighted the tension that can exist between the outing and COI policies, and I am really not happy with how Tenebrae abused the good faith of the team to hide their COI. That being said I'm not sure an actual change in the wording of the policy is called for here, but if we did "outing is not a suicide pact" sums it up nicely. I don't fault anyone for acting in what they sincerely believed was the best interest of the project in the past instances, and looking at some of them now, they clearly did run afoul of the outing policy, because users said "you are obviously this guy" instead of "you have an obvious COI when it comes to this person". There's a difference there, small but important. That's all arbcom has said, that there is clearly a COI, it doesn't matter one bit if he is who people think he is or not, the edits matter, and they show a long-term issue that could have been discussed without accusing him of being anyone in particular. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
    That is true, but it does require a reasonably subtle understanding of outing policy to do it properly. And that's an understanding that people who see abuse in cases like this often won't have - and it's easier for an admin to just slap them with an outing block than try to understand their concerns. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:15, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I have an assortment of comments to make. First, I was the person who expressed concern about the Daily Dot link at COIN and who contacted the Oversight team. I wasn't trying to muzzle anything, and anyone who seriously thinks that I was can (fill in the blank). Second, having read the Daily Dot article, I found it difficult to take seriously all the solemn references to "the researchers at Wikipediocracy". Researchers, huh?
Now having vented about that, I'll say in all seriousness that there is a real problem with reconciling the outing policy with the conflict of interest guideline. But I think we have to be very careful about changing the wording here, because it will indeed be vulnerable to gaming. The argument that whether or not to use the Daily Dot to evaluate COI is "an editorial decision" is, pardon me, absurd. This isn't a content decision. It's a decision about whether or not to link to something that says that "username" is actually "name of real person", after the cat is effectively out of the bag. Want to see where it gets really unpleasant to try to draw the line? Look back at how Jytdog got vilified. This has, for years, been something where Wikipedia has repeatedly failed to get consensus, but where there are no easy wording fixes. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:36, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
Thinking about this further, my recollection is that it has generally been understood here that, once the real-life identity of an editor who edits anonymously has become general knowledge in the news media, it's not outing to refer to that on-site. On the other hand, it does not actually say that anywhere in this policy, and maybe it should. As written, one is not supposed to link to something that says that "username" is the same person as "name of real person", unless that information has been posted by the user on-wiki. And what defines the boundary between "it's on a doxing site that anyone can Google" and "it's been reported so widely by all kinds of reliable journalistic outlets that it's become silly to pretend that everyone doesn't know it"? Does Wikipediocracy count as "all kinds of reliable journalistic outlets"? The consensus to that has been "no". Does one article in the Daily Dot? Apparently, it does. Or at least ArbCom found it a convenient excuse to say that the community can go ahead and discuss the COI after the motion was posted. But I have a very uncomfortable feeling that there is no clear way for editors working on COI problems to know a priori whether linking to something is OK, or will get them blocked. We should not pretend that the history of blocking editors over this issue has been anything other than inconsistent over time. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:05, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • As someone who hasn't been following this... since this is the crux of the issue and I'm not seeing it at first glance: Has WP:OUTING actually delayed or interfered with dealing with Tenebrae? At a glance over the existing links I don't see how it has - some people brought it up, and used it to remove links, but (at least from the things I saw linked here) only after the topic-ban was already in place and it was already firmly-established that Tenebrae's history needed to be examined. The bare minimum COI requirement of "Tenebrae has an irreconcilable COI in this topic area and all their edits in it need to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb" seems to be satisfied. Were there earlier invocations before this conclusion was reached, and did they actually interfere with the process? That would be the aspect that would concern me. As-is, at least from these links, it appears the system worked (albeit slowly, but in order to justify weakening WP:OUTING I'd want to see evidence that it was what actually slowed down the process) - if you have a COI concern that would out someone, you hand it to an administrator or ArbCom and they deal with it. --Aquillion (talk) 18:54, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
    My understanding from what I've read at the other linked discussions is that, in the past, some users were actually blocked for trying to report concerns about Tenebrae, and that certainly sounds like something that needs to be examined critically. (A long time ago, I started an RfC to have a more dedicated process through which editors could report COI issues privately to functionaries, and it was strongly rejected by the community on the basis that such investigations should take place in public, so go figure.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
    Blocked for trying to report them privately? As in, blocked for sending them privately to admins or to ArbCom? If so, then that seems clearly against existing policy. OTOH if they aired them publicly (and people are proposing we make it easier to air specific, personally-identifiable details publicly to accuse someone of a COI) then I'm more dubious. Why isn't it sufficient to send them to administrators and to ArbCom? How did that break down in this case? Obviously when an appropriate COI of this nature is acted on the person in question gets outed (this is inevitable and in that case they can only blame themselves), but I'm skeptical about saying "they were right this time tho" and using that as a justification to make it easier to publicly raise personally-identifiable issues. After all, it's hard to unringing the bell in situations where the accusation is wrong; and false accusations (either the wrong ID, or something that didn't actually rise to the level of a COI) can be quite damaging. --Aquillion (talk) 20:09, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
    No, I think that the blocks were for things that were posted on-site, although I don't know all the details. I think the controversy may be over the on-site postings being things that weren't really outing, but just concerns about COI. Again, I'm basing this on things I've heard second-hand, at best. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:14, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Why can the reliable source not just be sent to the Arbitration Committee or the functionaries? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:09, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
    Maybe I misunderstand your question, but I think that's more or less what did happen here, then ArbCom acted, and now the community is acting post-ArbCom. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
    ProcrastinatingReader, then what? The very act of blocking/banning/whatever based on the off-Wiki evidence will inherently connect the two anyway, as we've seen here. I'm working on a diatribe for WT:ACN that will expand on this in greater detail, but in short - in this case, by enacting the topic ban, ArbCom has confirmed the relationship between Tenebrae and (whoever), and that isn't something that needed off-wiki evidence in the first place! By enacting bans based on private evidence of someone's identity, you're pretty much guaranteed to implicitly OUT them in some way. GeneralNotability (talk) 21:16, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
    Well, ArbCom just stated that there's a conflict of interest. It's doesn't seem to be very specific on what form that entails which imo precludes outing concerns, though it's obviously not difficult to find out more elsewhere. COIN work requires some care to tread the line carefully, from what I understand, and am not sure weaking outing is the solution (the point of outing isn't necessarily that normal outing is unreliable/speculative, so I'm not sure why having a RS makes it any better). I feel like the current system (contact ArbCom, maybe functionaries), when followed, is fine, and would prefer not to have editors onwiki speculating about the identities of others. So I guess my question is if there's a specific reason the ArbCom process didn't work and the editor [got] away with their COI editing for years despite repeated attempts by editors acting in good faith trying to point this out, or did editors just not email ArbCom with details asking them to investigate? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:28, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
    Admittedly I don't entirely understand why the article can now be linked, so I'm probably missing something. Though I suppose the cat's out of the bag now anyway. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:44, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I deal with WP:COI issues frequently, and have on a number of occasions dealt with situations in which the identity of the editor is obvious and/or admitted off-wiki. However, I do not believe that we should change the outing policy to make it easier to out people in COI situations. I just don't think it's necessary. Maybe I'm lucky, but I have never run into an apparent but undeclared COI situation in which the editor has abided by the rules and behaved properly. Ordinarily they are heavy-handed. They use improper sourcing. They sock. They canvass off-wiki. If you change the policy so that you allow outing when determined by reliable sources, then you might as well just chuck the outing policy entirely, because the primary purpose of this policy is to deal with COI situations. Whether a source is RS or not is frequently in dispute. So an editor WP:BOLDly outs somebody based on a marginal source and he or she will be protected while it is being thrashed out. Though I don't find the outing policy to hamper dealing with COI editors, the community has encountered at least one instance, which consumed a great deal of time, in which an overzealous "COI fighter" harassed an editor he believed had a COI. Contacting her off-wiki, etc. Outing was not involved, but what this says to me is that we need to keep our attention focused on the output of COI editors, and not try to track them down, out them, etc. etc. Coretheapple (talk) 22:48, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

  • I'm reminded of Wikipedia talk:Harassment/Archive 21#Mainspace outing, a discussion which seems to contradict this suggestion or for that matter what happened in this case. It was suggested there it was normal to suppress even in main space links to articles suggesting editor A was person A. I wasn't aware of the discussion at the time, but when I came across it last year, I disagreed with this despite also considering myself a BLP hawk.

    To be clear, many editors can be too quick to add any mention of Wikipedia to any article and we would definitely have to consider each case on its merits to decide whether the allegation is significant enough to belong i.e. not WP:UNDUE etc. In particular, while I haven't reviewed it a great deal, I don't think the case that set of that last discussion merited inclusion in the article. And it's probably fine to suppress (oversight) links etc if discussion finds the info doesn't belong even if that makes it difficult to understand the decision later, we do sometimes do this for other stuff e.g. real names so I guess there are similarities. Although I don't think we generally suppress them if they've been covered by clear RS e.g. NYT, even if we decide not to include them, and I'm fairly sure we don't normally suppress such links, whereas it seems we normally do for articles no matter the quality of the RS, which link a Wikipedia account to a notable person.

    But I digress, I could imagine cases where the story has received enough sustained attention from quality RS that it clearly belongs in the article, and don't see why we should prevent that. It's just weird to me that we would potentially allow a source which alleges person P is fandom user A, blogger B, usenet poster C, Twitter user D, TikTok user E, Redditor F, ATITD player G, hacker H, secret whistleblower I, author with the pseudonym J. Or heck, even one which says they are child killer K or Stormfront user S. But a source which mentions they're Wikipedian W? Not allowed no matter what.

    Although COI got some mention in that previous discussion it IMO was really the main concern. I can't say I support this change as long as it's the norm that any mainspace mention is suppressed. While this change would nominally allow it when COI is raised, I don't see why COI has be the issue. If for whatever reason quality sources think this alleged connection is something worthy of sustained coverage even if it isn't because of a COI, why should we only forbid coverage but suppress it when we'd allow if if it involved any other website or whatever?

    As others have said, there are ways to deal with an undiscussable COI. While it's unfortunate what happened here, it seems likely it came about in part because editors persistently tried to raise those issues publicly rather than emailing their concerns. Indeed it's unclear to me how this proposal would have been a benefit, from what I seem once the RS made the connection it didn't take that long for action to happen. The problem was before there were any RS, so this almost seems like a solution in search of a problem.

    Yet it seems under current policy, no matter that nearly every source discussing person P in the last 10 years mentions it's believed they're Wikipedian W, our article would be a black hole on this. Heck as I understand it, even if person P has confirmed to multiple sources that they're Wikipedian W, if they refuse to do so here, we have the same issue i.e. cannot mention it in our article on person P no matter it has sustained coverage for the last 10 years. (I would add that I've never been a fan of the sign post and I'm unconvinced there needs to be an exception for them.)

    Nil Einne (talk) 16:26, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

  • I've been pushing at WT:ACN for some clarification from ArbCom about whether or not editors should regard the policy here as having been implicitly changed. One member of ArbCom has given what I think is a clear reply: [8]. The bottom line is that nothing has really changed about when one can link to something in a COI discussion, and nobody should take recent events as having opened up any new opportunities to link to off-site identities from COIN. It was eventually OK to link to the Daily Dot article, but that's not something that would be permissible to link to without prior permission from functionaries. I think that it would take a very large scale consensus to change anything in this policy about that. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:10, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I just wanted to amend my comment above to add that in paid editing situations I can see an exception to the outing rules carved out. But that would be tricky as hell. Coretheapple (talk) 21:34, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
    With paid editing there is a huge problem of people conflating suspected paid editing with confirmed paid editing (and some editors arguing that the distinction is unimportant), any exemption would have to be extremely carefully worded to restrict it to the latter (because of the risk of being wrong) and this would need to be strictly enforced. Thryduulf (talk) 23:31, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
    Thryduulf I agree, and that is one of the reasons I'm unenthusiastic about changing the harassment rules as they relate to COI situations. Paid editing needs to be carefully considered as it is a perennial issue, but some of the most egregious cases have been declared, which makes outing quite unnecessary. I have to confess that I'm a bit confused about how Tenebrae relates to all of this. I've reviewed the case, and admittedly have not read every word of the voluminous text. Am I correct in summarizing that this account violated BLP, and in the course of that an RS publication (the Daily Dot) ascertained that this account had a COI, resulting in an arbcom topic ban? Is that a good one-sentence summary or am I missing something? Coretheapple (talk) 12:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Coretheapple: My understanding (which is not necessarily complete) re Tenebrae is that over the course of several years they have (a) added many (hundreds, possibly more) of citations to/quotes from works by Frank Lovece, far in excess of what others think is due, (b) aggressively refuted any suggestion that they are and/or have a COI regarding Frank Lovece, including requesting oversight of speculation and accusations, (c) pushed hard and repeatedly for the inclusion of details about the personal life of other article subjects, including deadnames and the names and birth dates of non-notable family members. I am not aware they violated the letter of BLP (and I'm unclear of the relative chronology of his fighting/arguing to include deadnames and our policies on that matter) but did violate at least some people's interpretation of the spirit of it. Wikipediocracy began an investigation into whether he was Frank Lovece and this investigation was picked up/reported on (I'm not sure exactly which) by the Daily Dot. Based on that article and other private evidence the Arbitration Committee determined that Tenebrae has a conflict of interest regarding Frank Lovecae and Maitland McDonagh. Note that this does not mean Tenebrae is (or isn't) Frank Lovece, just that they have a personal, employment, financial or other close relationship with them, and it is worth noting that in the Daily Dot article Frank Lovece denies "any connection" to Tenebrae. Thryduulf (talk) 13:36, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    This is a fair summary of events as I understand them. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:03, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Thryduulf: Thanks for the summary. This is an unusually messy situation, and I agree with what someone said here or in the other discussion, that bad cases make for bad law. Reading through the Daily Dot article, I see as follows appended to the article: The author of this story previously clashed with Tenebrae and other Wikipedia editors and was ultimately banned from Wikipedia over political disagreements. That's creepy as hell, and seems to be similar to one of the things Tenebrae was doing. Reading the piece again reinforces my view that the outing policy should not be changed. Coretheapple (talk) 17:12, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    This is an unusually messy situation, [...] bad cases make for bad law, [and] my view [is] that the outing policy should not be changed. I agree with you on all of that. I do think though that adding the guidance along the lines I suggested in my first comment here to the COI policy would be good. Thryduulf (talk) 17:29, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Thryduulf: I don't see the harm of adding that, but my experience has been that COI editors believe in their heart of hearts they they are editing just fine, they are trying to provide the "truth," while you are the one who needs to shape up. That attitude propels ridiculously bad articles written by COI editors over a period of years. One infamous insurance fraud perpetrator, for instance, had an article (written mainly by his nephew) that read like it came from the program of a testimonial dinner. He's a "philanthropist" and good, decent man, etc. etc., unjustly convincted, unjustly sentenced. You can argue for years and there is no way that COI editors, especially relatives and the persons themselves, are ever going to believe that they are making controversial edits.
Further on this Tenebrae situation, I think that editors should weigh the implications of the COI of the supposedly "RS" Daily Dot article. I can't see a reputable publication using an article by a reporter with such a clear COI. The article writer is a banned Wikipedia editor who fought with Tenabrae. If we change the outing policy, we leave ourselves open to editors taking their personal grudges to the press and authoring or co-authoring articles then can be used to dox editors. Fighting fire with fire. Is that appropriate? Do we want to do that? Maybe we do. As I said, I think it's creepy, and that we can gauge editor behavior on the merits without relying on "investigative reporters" with major COIs pulling our strings from outside. Tenebrae apparently pushed a particular POV in numerous articles. Isn't that sufficient? If it wasn't POV pushing (I am not familiar with the subject area) why was he banned? We need to think about this. Coretheapple (talk) 17:46, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • While I fully agree that our current outing policy needs to be changed to avoid the problems we have seen in this case, and while I like a lot of what is being proposed above, what I don't like is the attitude of certain individuals that it was OK to violate the current outing policy instead of trying to change it. Outing is a serious business, and the current pules should be vigorously enforced with blocks and oversight until such time as the community comes up with a better set of rules. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:09, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I really think there has yet to be an actionable suggestion here for changing anything on the policy page. ArbCom evaluated stuff in private that the rest of us haven't seen, and the public advice from one member of ArbCom is that editors should not act unilaterally in COI or PAID discussions to treat the OUTING policy as being any different today, than it was a week ago. Test the boundaries, and risk an oversight block.
And although I obviously don't know everything ArbCom does, I'll admit to being uncomfortable with treating the Daily Dot piece as though it were genuine journalism. The author of the Daily Dot piece self-identifies as the same person who did the "investigation" at Wikipediocracy. The Daily Dot didn't "pick up on" what Wikipediocracy did; it was the same people at both. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:58, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
After going over everything, here's what it looks like happened: Six years ago, a new user (possibly a throwaway?), User:Nola Carveth, accused Tenebrae of a COI, outing them in the process. They repeatedly doubled down when told not to out people publicly, were blocked because they aggressively insisted on trying to out Tenebrae publicly and only seemed to be here for that accusation and nothing else, and evaded that block via sockpuppetry. Which is fair enough, but in retrospect regardless of what happened to Nola Carveth, the accusation should have been followed up on via appropriate channels, since there was clearly enough to raise concerns about whether Tenebrae had a COI. I'm unsure if an actual policy change is needed, but probably somewhere in our policies, there should be a reminder that if someone raises a valid concern in a disruptive manner, that doesn't make the underlying concern go away - we can block someone for disruption and still follow up on the original concern. It might also be a good idea to make it clear that when a user outs another while making an accusation like this, the first response should be a polite "we've redacted that because you can't out people publicly, but please submit it to an Administrator or ArbCom for review" or something like that (we could possibly have a template message for it, because it's something that requires precise wording - although I don't know if it happens often enough to require it.) --Aquillion (talk) 18:55, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
Sure, one can do that. But lef's be frank about this. Open-and-shut sockpuppeting and rampant POV nightmares are allowed to languish for years. Editors go in to fix and the socks pounce. When that happens you wonder "why am I doing this? What is the point? Nobody cares." That's because nobody cares. They only seem to care in situations like this, when an editor comes along and blatantly violates privacy policy. Is that we have to do to get people's attention? Because it seems that the only way you can get attention, sometimes, is by violating policy. It seems to me that we punish and reward doxxing. In this instance, doxxing resulted in a longtime open sore being lanced. But I am left with the distinct impression that we got rid of one COI situation by sanctioning another. Coretheapple (talk) 19:31, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
My problem with that is... were any admins contacted privately? Was ArbCom contacted privately? Those are the existing steps people are supposed to follow. It's not exactly fair to say "nobody cares, why should I do anything" when without doing the bare minimum to kickstart the existing process. I think that there's a problem with how new, inexperienced users are treated when they approach COI disputes incorrectly (ie. we should point them to the correct process and not immediately ban them, and should follow up on credible-looking accusations even if they aren't made via the proper channel), but unless someone can show that ArbCom or active administrators were sent evidence and ignored it, I'm skeptical that public doxxing was actually required - and I think it's easy to ignore the harm that false accusations could do or the chilling effect they could have on our ability to retain editors. If editing controversial topic areas on Wikipedia meant having your history and real-world identity publicly raked over the coals, few people would be willing to do it. --Aquillion (talk) 16:49, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
@Aquillion:Perhaps I was unclear, so allow me to clarify: I was expressing the irritation that comes from wading into a COI nightmare. But I was also trying to convey the frustration that it seems that only violating privacy, which we view as far worse than COI, seems to be the only thing that gets Wikipedia moving sometimes. I am actually concerned about some aspects of this controversy, and agree with your last point. I can't see how public doxxing can ever be required, because if the editor is behaving badly enough they can be dealt with on the basis of behavior. The only exception to that which comes immediately to mind involves concealed paid editing. Coretheapple (talk) 17:08, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
My understanding from what I've read on WO is that (1) at least one arbitrator was contacted privately, years ago (2) concerns were originally raised appropriately on Jimbo's talk page, i.e. alleging a COI, with evidence, but without speculating on the editor's identity, and even so, the whole discussion got suppressed. (Beeblebrox might be able to shed more light on this.) So the more problems of this sort remain unaddressed, the greater the likelihood they will attract press coverage. That applies not just to Wikipedia, but to any organisation, and is as it should be. --Andreas JN466 19:45, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Assuming the "one arbitrator" you are referring to is me, that's I suppose one way of phrasing it, but I was not on the committee in 2015, and I do not recall all these years later exactly how the matter came to my attention. If I was responding to an OTRS ticket I failed to note that in the log, but I did not used to be very consistent in remembering to do that (it isn't required but it sure is helpful when trying to figure out exactly this sort of thing) Suffice it to say that in hindsight I do see my actions back then as an overreaction, the whole thread did not need to be removed, just one specific comment. I didn't give it much thought after and had completely forgotten I had taken any previous action related to this matter until Thursday of this week, when I looked in the suppression log to see who had removed that discussion. Imagine how dumb I felt when I saw it was me. That was a fun moment. That being said, just for reference here is a diff showing the differences in the COI policy as it existed then and as it exists right now, and posting to Jimbo's talk page with obvious single-purpose accounts isn't really the appropriate procedure for reporting a COI regardless. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:24, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I can imagine. :) We're all human. As for the arbitrator, I wasn't referring to you; I recall someone saying they'd emailed Newyorkbrad. --Andreas JN466 20:40, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
As for single-purpose accounts, you may say that. But would you in all honesty advise a family member of yours, say, to make a COI allegation like that with their normal account? I wouldn't. The other day JJMC89 indeffed Hemiauchenia, for example, just like that. The chances of anyone raising this sort of complaint being indeffed on the spot are distinctly non-zero, at least where the person concerned is an established contributor. --Andreas JN466 20:52, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
People complain about COIs every day without creating SPAs and outing other editors. Just last month I dealt with a COI situation involving a self-declared (off-wiki) nephew of the article subject. Rather than get involved in a big outing fiasco I just focused on behavior, which was bad enough. I think it's a mistake to make sweeping generalizations based on the characteristics of this particular case. Coretheapple (talk) 21:32, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Depends entirely on how well-connected and established the editor is against whom an allegation of COI or NPOV violation is made, and whether they're an admin or not (e.g. Wifione, Cirt). --Andreas JN466 22:04, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Aquillion's suggestion that It might also be a good idea to make it clear that when a user outs another while making an accusation like this, the first response should be a polite "we've redacted that because you can't out people publicly, but please submit it to an Administrator or ArbCom for review" or something like that (we could possibly have a template message for it, because it's something that requires precise wording - although I don't know if it happens often enough to require it.) has merit, in my view, and would be worth exploring further. Less of a chilling effect. --Andreas JN466 22:30, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Yes! I agree that's a good idea. It's not difficult to distinguish between someone who is trying in good faith to report a problem, and someone who is acting in bad faith and should be blocked to prevent repetition of the outing. Unfortunately, there has been a history of such outrage over outing that there has been a longstanding tolerance of punitive blocks for it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:36, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
There's certainly nothing wrong with such a message. However, what's really needed is a change in culture so that whistleblowers don't feel they have to run to the press, which they must when dealing with a powerful Wiki editor. Jayen466 jogged my memory concerning past crises involving admins and he is correct. Most SPAs in such situations I suspect are established users who are fully aware of emailing arbcom.Coretheapple (talk) 14:46, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
@Jayen466: That's a valid point. I've been viciously attacked by administrators of long standing for raising the issue of their COI, in one case for skirting the paid editing rules to profit from their position at Wikipedia. I've seen instances of open, brazen behavior and you are 100% correct that such situations deserve to be thrashed over in the press since Wikipedia is not able to handle such people, and tolerates them. However, I don't know how common those types of situations are, and I am reluctant to change the outing policy because of a few arrogant bad apples that the community and Jimbo tolerate in their current positions, I agree also that an established user does take a risk in challenging such people and that it is understandable that an SPA would be created for that purpose. There is no question whatsoever that we have a double standard for administrators and non-administrators on COI issues, and I have advocated in the past (fruitlessly) that this be addressed in policy. Coretheapple (talk) 14:13, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Dynamic IP range

First, I want to make it clear that I am not now, nor will I be, seeking any oversight action or any sanctions against the other editor involved.
I am also aware of the Striesand effect. This is a matter of policy, not my personal privacy.

In another discussion, I suggested to User:ToBeFree that their posting the contributions of my dynamic IP range might be outing. I didn't really think much of it at the time, and told them as much. They responded by quoting the WMF Privacy Policy, which states that my "IP address will be seen publicly" (obviously) and WP:OUTING, which states "references to still-existing, self-disclosed information are not considered outing".
I didn't actually disclose my IP range before it was posted, just my IP address.
That begs the question:

Is an IP's range among the information made public by an IP every time they edit, or is it private information?

I think this is worth discussing, as "range" is not mentioned in the Privacy Policy (which I can't find a better venue to discuss) or in this policy. Thanks.
2601:194:300:130:250D:335F:8C60:4259 (talk) 22:23, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

It was a /64 range, and "WP:/64" is well-known practice (see also: mw:Help:Range blocks/IPv6). You have practically been using the same address all the time, MediaWiki just displays this differently than it did for IPv4. I'd even guess that the changes proposed at meta:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation will still provide transparency about /64 IPv6 subnets. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:26, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
It has long been practice and policy that the IP addresses of IP edits are never considered private information, and so they are not and should not be covered by this policy. (Posting the IP address of a registered editor, on the other hand, is against policy. Registered editors who accidentally make an edit while logged out are permitted to request that the IP address be hidden, although that only helps if the request is made reasonably promptly.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:33, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
We're talking about the address range, which isn't mentioned explicitly in either policy or in your post. Thanks. 2601:194:300:130:250D:335F:8C60:4259 (talk) 22:39, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
Same thing for the range as for a single address within that range. The range actually shows less individual information than a single address does. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
Technically correct. But it's weird it's not mentioned in either policy. Someone who's IP changes every time they edit might reasonably conclude that nobody (without advanced permissions) would be able to link the edits together, and they might endanger their privacy through their edits. I think that should be made clear, particularly in the Privacy Policy (which I still can't find any place to discuss. Jimbo's talk page is indefinitely semi-protected, in case you didn't hear 😉). 2601:194:300:130:250D:335F:8C60:4259 (talk) 22:54, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
You have been told how to gain privacy: make an account. We understand that contrarians think that not making an account marks them as free but that was a dated idea a couple of decades ago. At any rate, you will need to find another website if you just want to complain because that is not the purpose of Wikipedia. Johnuniq (talk) 00:28, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
Did you miss the part that says "This is a matter of policy, not my personal privacy."? I'm asking that the policy be clarified and the pages be updated to reflect the current practice, not objecting to it, though I can find no evidence that this has ever been discussed before or that the few comments here reflect a widespread consensus. 2601:194:300:130:78B1:37FF:1DC6:F52B (talk) 00:42, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
I saw the bold question above but it did not make much sense to me. You may as well ask whether disclosing your IP as 2601:194:300:130:78B1:37FF:1DC6:F52B allows other editors to notice that the IP starts with 2601. Of course disclosing that IP also discloses that it starts with 2601. It also discloses that it starts with 2601:194:300:130 which is the same as identifying the /64 range. Perhaps you want to know if IP contributors should be made more aware of how IP addresses/ranges work or whether they should be encouraged to make an account. Johnuniq (talk) 01:27, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

It is a fundamental fact that if you post as an IP then people will see your IP. It is just as fundamental that if there is a pattern that people can notice that pattern. There is no outing here, if anyone wants to hide this information that is what accounts are for. I don't think this page needs to be changed in any way to reflect that, it is abundantly obvious to anyone who understands how numbers work. HighInBC Need help? Just ask. 01:35, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

  • I just found out about something that may make most of the comments above moot. Please see WP:Village pump (WMF)#IP Masking Update. Apparently, the WMF intends, for what may or may not be legal reasons, to make IP addresses (and thus, I assume, IP ranges) "hidden" (or partially hidden?) from most viewers, and visible, at least in full, only to persons with to-be-determined permissions. Don't ask me; I'm just the messenger. (Around now, I'd start going off on how WMF are evil or something, except that I've reached the point of not caring anymore.) I would assume that, once this takes effect, the policy here will have to be revised to reflect any restrictions that WMF will require us to have. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:42, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
    • PS: I should add that I see that there is some discussion that perhaps en-wiki will simply ban IP editing if this plan takes effect. (Again, I'm just the messenger.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
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