This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Harassment. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
No consensus.Overall, the arguments upheld by both the parties to this discussion seems fine and valid enough.The lone consensus out of this is to put up an entirely new RFC that comprehensively reviews this policy in it's entirety.Also, none of the two alternative proposals has been accepted by the community.Winged Blades Godric16:22, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion 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.
I do not see how posting public information found on the Internet about a non editor is "harassment"? This is a routine part of writing Wikipedia. We of course require it to be suitably referenced.
Support because in order to determine whether a source is reliable we sometimes have to know who the author is and what their credentials are. For example, if they're writing glowing reviews on a living artist in marginal source, then it matters whether they're a PR person or a recognized critic. Finding something in Google, like a university faculty website, can help a lot. That's not an intrusion on anybody's privacy if they place it in public view. Geogene (talk) 00:03, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
@Geogene: On your point about WP:V, you'll need to seek a consensus for the addition of a footnote to the sentence regardless of whether you think your change is rooted in policy. Unilaterally changing it and then restoring it when it's been contested is not a consensus which is mandatory for any policy based changes. Mkdwtalk07:25, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
(indented) I think that the existing sentence has become nonsense, and yes it should be removed. I don't think that we need a sentence to say that this applies to personal information of editors, because that's automatically implied: the entire policy page is about editors. This sentence has been the subject of previous discussion as well. Interestingly, the sentence was originally added by Jimmy Wales himself, in the early days of the project, before we had concepts like BLP, and was essentially intended to convey what WP:BLP serves for today. Consequently, I suggest replacing the sentence with: Revealing private information of non-editors may be a violation of the biographies of living persons policy. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:24, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
I agree with changing "private" → "personal". That's certainly more consistent. But I think that "may be a violation" is clearer than "is dealt with by". A policy arguably doesn't "deal with" violations; administrators do. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:15, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
IMO it is better to leave the details of the BLP policy there. Of course stuff may be a violation of the BLP policy, it may also be not a violation. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:43, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I think we all agree that there is no need for details about BLP to be listed here, but are you saying that you would prefer to just delete the sentence, and not replace it with the sentence you proposed just above? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:29, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
I'm not going to strike-through what I said above, but I have become convinced by the recent oppose arguments that I need to partially change my mind. I still think that the sentence needs to be changed, but I can no longer support framing the change in terms of BLP. We do need to consider that it is unacceptable to post personal information of non-notable people, too. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:16, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
After reading the most recent shout-fest here, I've decided to indent my comment, and make it clearer that at this point I oppose simple removal of the sentence. I just don't see much point in striking through everything already said. Deep in my heart, I really do believe that BLPPRIVACY actually does apply to all people in all namespaces, but the fact that editors can disagree about it leads me to conclude that this policy needs to be explicit about it protecting all non-editors, whether or not they are BLP subjects. But I still think that the existing sentence is ridiculously unclear, and needs some sort of clarification, because most clueful editors believe that one cannot "out" someone who is not a user here. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:05, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Support - it just doesn't make sense to say we can't investigate non-editors. Every time we write a BLP we investigate somebody (usually a non-editor). The sentence was probably put in by an editor who knew what it meant and had a good reason, but all that seems to have been lost. Time to trim it. Smallbones(smalltalk)00:59, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
Support. We need to be able to use the names of sources, and so forth. On the other hand, If you post (on your userpage or a talkpage for instance) "my neighbor is Pinckney Pruddle, and here's his social security number etc." we don't want that. We probably don't need a special rule, since I can't think of an instance where that would be encyclopedic. I guess you say "My source is Paul Krugman, I actually called him on his cell phone at 555-1212..." But I've never seen this come up. Anyway, it's not the remit of the Harassment page. Make a separate page for Protection Of Privacy of Random Non-Editors or whatever for that, if we don't already have it. Herostratus (talk) 02:05, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
Weak Support inasmuch that "harassment" should only be deemed punishable by Wikimedia project procedures for dispute resolution if it occurs in connection with the project. Otherwise, it should just be covered under WP:BLP, which in my interpretation, actually should be interpreted to cover all persons, editors or non editors. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess(talk) Ping when replying 03:45, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
support this is obvious, to me. OUTING is about protecting editors from being doxed and personal information is defined in this policy as: Personal information includes legal name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation, telephone number, email address, other contact information, or photograph, whether such information is accurate or not. Which is what we need, to protect the privacy of editors. BLP already protects anything written anywhere in WP about a living person and already deals with private information like phone numbers and home addresses in WP:BLPPRIVACY, and prevents people from pursuing RW disputes in WP (in other words, harassment) at WP:BLPCOI. If people want to strengthen BLPCOI to explicitly mention harassment, that would make sense. If people want to work a bit with the definition of "editors" to deal with people who have been indeffed or something, I guess that could be done, but that is getting into legislating CLUE a bit. Jytdog (talk) 08:42, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Support A basic principle of WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA and WP:HARASS is that they apply to editors. How to deal with uncivil or hostile remarks about non-editors is an entirely different issue—if repeated after a warning, a WP:NOTHERE indef may be in order, or WP:BLP might be invoked to sanction repeated violations. However, HARASS (and CIVIL and NPA) is aimed at restricting how editors interact with each other. The suggestion that BLP only applies to biographical articles is completely incorrect—someone could be blocked for repeatedly adding BLP violations on any page. Posting irrelevant details of non-editors is not what is meant by harassment at Wikipedia—such behavior is covered by WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:NOTHERE. Johnuniq (talk) 10:17, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Support because this is completely counter-productive to the purpose of building an encyclopedia based on reliable sources. Unless you are willing to lay down exactly when & what types of discussion are allowed, which as can be seen from the ridiculous conversations below is unlikely to gain agreement, its not only unenforceable, but as written would prevent a photograph on a biography. Needs to be nuked. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:16, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Support Removal of sentence. Job titles, work organizations, etc. are routine information needed to vet the suitability of sources. BLP already covers editors and non-editors alike. As currently worded there are likely hundreds of editors doing routine editing that are in violation of this policy at this moment. Capeo (talk) 14:19, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose
While I agree with some of what is being said about, I strongly oppose removing all reference to non-editors. Doing so would lead to a large loophole for pages which are not biographies, and arguments about whether a person is or is not an editor. We do not want to allow, or even imply, that it is OK to out people who are neither the subject of biographies nor editors - for example is a banned user an "editor"? And that is only one of many similar questions I can come up with after only a couple of minutes thought. What we should be doing is simply adding a sentence along the lines of "biographies (including draft biographies) are covered by the Biographies of living people policy, and continuing to apply common sense about whether someone is writing an unsourced biography or outing someone and, taking into account their intent and history (exactly as we currently do), deal with the situation appropriately. Thryduulf (talk) 10:24, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Thryduulf's points are sound. The section in question reads, Personal information includes legal name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation, telephone number, email address, other contact information, or photograph, whether such information is accurate or not. Posting such information about another editor is an unjustifiable and uninvited invasion of privacy and may place that editor at risk of harm outside their activities on Wikipedia. This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors. Obviously, identifying the work organization of a BLP subject will ordinarily (not quite always) be acceptable, as will posting an appropriate photograph. On the other hand, we will not be posting such people's "identification numbers," telephone numbers, and the like. In other words, there is no right to be an anonymous BLP subject (assuming one satisfies the notability threshold) the way there is a right to be an anonymous Wikipedian, but to say it is impossible to harass such a person is too broad. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:52, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose just removing it Support rewrite. "Non-editors" would be literally anyone not known to edit Wikipedia, not just article subjects. This is meant to protect regular people from being doxxed here. . It could be written to better reflect that intention but it should not be removed entirely. I can confirm as a seven-year member of the oversight team that this is fairly common. You don't hear about it much because it is our job to remove it as quickly and quietly as possible. Ther is no reason that only active WP editors should be protected form this form of harassment. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:15, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Strong oppose. There are certainly BLP subjects whose legal name, date of birth, job titles, photographs, etc. are extensively reported in reliable sources, and reflected on Wikipedia. However, just because someone is perhaps notable enough for a Wikipedia biography or because someone does not edit Wikipedia themselves should not mean that they are exempt from the same protections as editors, particularly against the posting of their identification numbers, address, telephone and other contact information, etc. I don't think the current policy can be reasonably be read as preventing the reproduction of information such as photographs, names, etc. on the biographies of notable individuals when that information is reliably sourced. I see that Doc James has used as an example the posting of information about relatives of a notable person. I agree with him that the posting of information about folks who are related to a notable person, but perhaps are not notable themselves, is a difficult situation, especially when that information is included (often tangentially) in reliable sources. However, I do not see how this discussion is addressing that issue, especially given the particular example from Doc James appears to be a new editor's misunderstanding more than an attempt at outing. It's fairly common for new users to add excessive information about people to Wikipedia—the information is typically removed and the editor warned; an immediate permaban under the outing policy would be pretty unusual unless the edit seemed like an intentional attempt to harass or out said person. I guess that's why I'm confused at this discussion, since it seems to have been started because of a situation that is typically quite easily handled. GorillaWarfare(talk)03:26, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose as proposed. I appreciate what is trying to be achieved here, but per Beeblebrox that clause is vital to protect non-editors from being doxxed here, and removing it as suggested would create an enormous amount of loopholes that we'll end up endlessly arguing over. Support further discussion to see if there's a wording change that can remove the ambiguity while still protecting noneditors. Lankiveil(speak to me)10:29, 4 April 2017 (UTC).
Weak oppose. [1] There is definitely a strangeness to the paragraph as it stands. It repeatedly refers to editors over and over again until it says both editors and non-editors. ("You may not hit girls. Girls are not allowed to be hit. Someone who hits a girl will be banned. This applies to someone who hits girls or boys.") But [2] It is conceivable that a user could harass an non-editor through Wikipedia. Further, BLP is a content policy, while Harassment is a conduct policy. I disagree with the notion that harassment of a non-editor is only a content issue. [3] I have a general "if it ain't broke don't fix it" approach to policies. Can someone point to an instance where this was misused?--216.12.10.118 (talk) 18:47, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Discuss
Here is an case with respect to this policy from yesterday. Here we have a user adding details about were this person's grandchildren live[1] without a ref. The user who added it was Tscharschmidt and the kids appear to belong to a Tiffany Scharschmidt. Have removed the content in question as inappropriate as unreffed. Not convinced that we should indefinitely ban this user for WP:OUT. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:50, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
In my view, we should look at that as an editor making a good faith attempt to create an article, and handle it under BLP Policy, rather than Harassment/Outing. I think the solution is to add some language that good faith attempts to create BLP articles should be handled under BLP policy, and are not subject to the policy here, so long as there is no connection made to a Wikipedia editor. Creating an article with the intent to harass would be bad faith, and could be considered under both BLP and Harassment policy. Monty84502:07, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure we should be debating the background of an author of material we want to use for a source. In most cases, we should be focusing on the reliability of the publication. If a credible author writes in an unreliable source, should probably not use it, and if a bad author writes in a very reliable source, we should presume the editorial standards of the source make the work reliable. I can see a very limited exception when we are dealing with very public information about an author, but we should be extremely cautious about sanctioning on-wiki investigations of individual authors, particularly if they are going to involve non-public information, or any type of outing. The standard rule should be, no personal information about a person should be posted, editor or not. We should then carve out any exceptions we feel necessary, such as an obvious exception for a persons who is subject to BLP Policy, as the subject of editorial content. But I'm very worried about the idea of removing the general assumption of protection unless you are an editor. Monty84501:53, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
I would be fine with strengthening the rules on what kind of publications can be used for sources, but that's not what we're doing today. I have personally have argued for a ban on self-published sources before, but I lost that argument: the existing consensus is that self-published books and websites are usable if the author is a recognized expert. Until that changes, there are situations where we will have to be able to talk about the authors. Geogene (talk) 02:20, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
That is definitely a fair point. But I do think we should be careful about just how much leeway we give people to delve into the personal information of a source. So, if we need to have that discussion, we should carve out an exception for discussions about an author's expertise. And if there are other areas with a strong case for discussing certain author details, then we should carve those out as well. But it creates a much more logically consistent policy if we always start with the proposition that you shouldn't post personal info, and then go look to see if your reason qualifies for an exception. For instance, it would be inappropriate to go investigate an Author's religion and post it, particularly if that wasn't something the author makes public. And I suspect there are many more instances of things that shouldn't be discussed in relation to source authors, than those that should. Monty84502:40, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
I agree that religion will usually be off-limits as something that's unrelated to author expertise, but not always. For example, I can already envision self-published sources by Young Earth Creationists being cited in articles. Many YECs have Ph.D.s from respectable institutions as well as publishing histories of completely mainstream work in scientific journals. You could make an argument that some of them are experts per WP:SPS, unless you happen to know who they are. Then, religion suddenly becomes of central importance. It'll be really hard to anticipate every carveout we're going to need, and I don't want an WP:OUTING block for trying to keep fringe out of an article. Geogene (talk) 03:08, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Geogene, having myself argued that certain sources are inappropriate for some articles on the basis that they authors are Creationists. This applies to any belief held so strongly that anything that contradicts it can't be accepted. Doug Wellertalk10:47, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
I agree with the point that the example here is a matter of BLP and not of OUT. A lot of this discussion goes beyond the issue at hand in this RfC, but I think that the tl;dr should be that, although we want to protect information of anyone, this policy page is about editors, and BLP is about non-editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 02:55, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
Many of the opposes are based on an entirely false premise. BLP applies to any identified individual, on any page. It's not just notable people with an article, and it's not just articles. WP:BLPPRIVACY applies everywhere and to everyone. If that is not strong enough, BLPPRIVACY should be given more teeth. Johnuniq (talk) 10:23, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Arbitrary break
I cannot claim that we have anything close to WP:SNOW in the forecast, but perhaps I see a small flurry. Not every issue requires a full-length RfC, and this one is increasingly looking to me like there really isn't any controversy. I figure that if both Doc James and I agree that changing This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors. to Revealing personal information of non-editors may be a violation of the biographies of living persons policy. would solve the problem, then there's not likely to be anyone else who wants to retain the existing language. If a few more days go by without any objections being raised, I think that we could close the RfC early and just go with that. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:11, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
I was invited here by bot just now, and I very strongly oppose this (per my reasoning above), so it is too early to say there is wintery weather. Thryduulf (talk) 10:27, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Well, Thryduulf, no one ever said I was much of a meteorologist! But what do you think about changing This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors. to Revealing personal information of non-editors may be a violation of the biographies of living persons policy., as discussed above? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:26, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
That misses most of my point. Revealing non-public information about a living person could be outing or a violation of BLP (or maybe both, but I need to think a bit more on that) and the policy needs to continue to make it clear that outing applies whether the person currently edits the English Wikipedia (the only group of people covered by the narrowest definition of "editor") or not. Thryduulf (talk) 21:07, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
I was wrong, and you, along with Newyorkbrad and Beeblebrox above, are correct. Thanks all of you for making me change my mind. I still think that the sentence as it is currently written is unintelligible to the point of being nonsense. But you are quite right that it would be an error to frame it in terms of BLP. (Frankly, I hadn't really understood before that there are users who attempt to use WP to "out" non-notable people.) So I still think that the sentence ought to be revised, but not in the way that I suggested before. Instead, how about changing it to: Revealing the personal information of any individual without consent, whether or not that person is an editor, is unacceptable.? I think that is clearer than the existing sentence. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:27, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
I suspect that's going to cause confusion in the other direction - e.g. there are plenty of cases where BLP subjects would not "consent" to having some unflattering but notable incident covered in their article, yet the material is appropriate and well-referenced. But Thryduulf et al. are right that there are several important functions of that sentence, and recasting it in terms of BLP fails to capture them all. I think part of the problem is trying to compress several different possible issues into a single sentence. I'd suggest something like the following rough draft, covering multiple categories of "non-editors":
It is inappropriate to post excessive or non-public personal information, to post the results of invasive research into another individual's personal life, or to link to such information located off-site. When the individual in question is the subject of biographical material on Wikipedia, posting such information may constitute harassment of the biography subject and/or a violation of the biographies of living persons policy. Discussion of personal information about other individuals, such as the authors of sources, people incidentally mentioned in source material, etc. is sometimes necessary, but should be limited and have a clear editorial purpose. Individuals who are neither editors nor biography subjects may still be vulnerable to harassment that uses Wikipedia as a venue; posting personal information about such individuals may violate the harassment policy as well as other policies (for example, it is against policy to create attack pages).
(Note, this is extracted from this post, which created formatting issues in the course of suggesting some formatting changes for the "posting personal information" section of the page...) Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:02, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, you are quite right about those distinctions pertaining to BLP subjects, so my suggested wording would not work. But I feel like what you are saying here would be overly long and venturing into instruction creep. It also duplicates points made elsewhere in the outing section. So I'm trying to think of a way to boil it down to something more succinct. Offhand, what I can think of is: The personal information of people who are subjects of biographical content is governed by the biographies of living persons policy. It is as unacceptable to post the personal information of all other non-editors without consent, as it is for the personal information of editors. I think that covers it, doesn't it? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:21, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
In my original messy post I reorganized some bits and added subheaders; I think there's a bigger problem with poor structure than with length alone. Your version is an improvement over the current text, but glosses over some of the issues raised in this discussion - maybe that's the point, but I'm not quite convinced that these disparate issues can be usefully treated as a group unified by the incidental fact that people under discussion aren't current editors. Your first sentence isn't quite true, in that it's perfectly possible to harass a BLP subject through their article, and of course some BLP subjects are also editors. Some people here have expressed concern about how this issue relates to discussion of sources or source material - we want people to be able to say things like "This blog is a reliable source on gremlins because its author is a professor of gremlinology at Snozzberry University" even if linking to her faculty page reveals that her office is located at 13 Flibbertigibbet Street. We don't want people to say "that blog isn't reliable because I found the author's brother's Facebook and he says she was arrested in 2005 for feeding a mogwai after midnight". About the only thing I can think of that makes "non-editorship" relevant is that current editors by definition are available to give (or deny) consent if asked, while others, like the authors of sources, may be difficult to contact, or won't respond to random Wikipedians, or don't understand the implications of what's being asked. My concern about the "consent" wording is that it implicitly suggests that a good solution to lack of consent is to ask for it. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
I actually think that the entire outing section needs a significant copyedit, with some re-ordering of sentences, but that is obviously a discussion for another day. I'm going to try to take the points you've raised one-by-one.
it's perfectly possible to harass a BLP subject through their article, and of course some BLP subjects are also editors. Yes, but that kind of harassment of BLP subjects is covered by WP:BLPPRIVACY, and any such harassment unrelated to personal information is unrelated to the outing section here. The BLP policy is the place to deal with inappropriate content, not here. And editors who are also BLP subjects are still "subjects of biographical content", so that's covered.
About sources and source authors, we need to really break that down to its component parts. The good example that you give seems to me to be about public information (university website), not personal information. (Says me, the editors who purport that we need to seriously discuss whether that's outing are being ridiculous.) The bad example combines saying that a source by the author is not reliable, linking to a relative of the author's Facebook page, and information about that relative's arrest history. The arrest history and the Facebook page that contains it are clearly defined as personal information here. If instead the example were "This blog is not a reliable source on gremlins because here is a genuinely reliable source that says the blog is unreliable", there would have been no problem. Come to think of it, that arrest record is a perfect example of the personal information of non-editors.
About contacting subjects and consent, a couple of points. We are here to discuss "the personal information of both editors and non-editors" because that's what the RfC is about. All the functionaries who came here have made a big deal that we must not leave out the issue of outing non-editors. It's relevant to all of that. I'm not seeing a problem with asking for consent, although I'm receptive to alternative wording, so please feel free to suggest something. If consent is lacking (no matter whether it was because they weren't reached or declined to respond), don't post it!
So I think that what I suggested – The personal information of people who are subjects of biographical content is governed by the biographies of living persons policy. It is as unacceptable to post the personal information of all other non-editors without consent, as it is for the personal information of editors. – still works. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:50, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
I will oppose this because the absolutist language is worse than what is in place now. Whether that will help or harm its chances is anybody's guess. Geogene (talk) 03:17, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
I also oppose that because it is not black and white. The personal information of living people is covered by the OUTING policy in all cases and by the BLP policy in some cases. Which applies in practice depends on context, content, venue, intent and possibly other things. For example, you don't get to wikilawyer yourself out of an OUTING block by writing what you've found about someone as a biography - regardless of the notability of the subject. Thryduulf (talk) 09:17, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
OK, I understand. If anyone else has a constructive suggestion other than the existing language, please bring it forward. It seems to me that the main problem with the existing language is that editors who are not intimately familiar with what oversighters see, and that's almost everyone, including a lot of very clueful people, find it very difficult to make sense out of. If you look at the early comments in this RfC, quite a few editors said such things as it's unclear how anyone who isn't an editor can really be harassed, as opposed to something like defamed. It may be obvious to you how this harassment takes place, but it really is not obvious to most users. So perhaps we should retain the existing rule while simply explaining it better. Here's a possible way to accomplish that: Posting personal information of any person is potentially just as harmful as revealing the personal information of an editor, so this policy applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors. I'm not convinced that this approach will satisfy the complaints about whether sourcing page content becomes a violation, but I also don't find those complaints particularly clueful, and at least it makes the intention much clearer. Again, if anyone else has another idea, please suggest it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:30, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
You may find my comments here "ridiculous" and "un-clueful", fine. But I find a subset of editors that I must routinely collaborate with to be both. They, and not you, are the target audience our policies should be written for. I can only say that since you smugly assume that everyone will take this the way that you intend it be taken, including with the fairly limited definitions of "personal information" you seem to be operating from, perhaps your usual interactions with other Wikipedians are different from mine. If so, then I envy you. But I will continue to advocate and oppose proposals based on my particular Wikipedia experiences, as the Oversighters are clearly operating from theirs. That means I'm going to assume that everybody is stupid, even though I know that most are not. This does not necessarily mean that I am in fact stupid. Thank you. Geogene (talk) 20:35, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
As an afterthought, perhaps we could instead use: Posting personal information of any person is potentially just as harmful as revealing the personal information of an editor (see also the biographies of living persons policy), so this policy applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:41, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
An aside about transparency
For an RfC that has been very sleepy, it's impossible not to notice the mass arrival of various functionaries in the past 24 hours. (I speculate that, after coming here via bot, Thryduulf sent a message to the functionaries mailing list, or mentioned it to someone else who sent it to the list, or someone else saw it separately and posted to a list.) Please don't get me wrong: I don't think that anyone was acting in bad faith, nor that anything was misleading, and I think that the recent comments have been very constructive and helpful. No need to blow what I'm saying out of proportion. But it would have been a good idea for someone to say explicitly how they became aware of the discussion, in the interests of transparency. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:03, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
That's exactly what happened. Since we are the group designated to deal with exactly this type of harassment, informing us was entirely appropriate as far as I'm concerned. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:05, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
I agree that it's appropriate, and was trying not to say otherwise. Thank you for making it clear, which was what I was looking for. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:30, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
I think many of us have this page on our watchlists (IIRC I saw the new posts here before I saw the email about it, but obviously had missed the conversation previously). But even fairly minor proposed changes to a high-profile policy would be well-served by being listed on CENT, posted at VPP, etc. for extra visibility. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Fair enough, although there is always a matter of judgment about how "minor" is not minor enough, and an editor can be acting in good faith in considering something to be definitely minor instead of fairly minor. And in this particular RfC, no amount of reach-out to non-functionaries would have had any effect, whereas that direct notification of functionaries (which should have been transparent!) clearly is what was important.
That said, while you and your colleagues are (hopefully) paying attention, please be advised that I am going to make some other proposals here in the near future. And please double-check #Proposal above. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:09, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
We need to rethink the RfC
My meteorological skills in re my earlier idea of a snow close obviously left a lot to be desired. But it now seems painfully obvious to me that the consensus has shifted significantly, such that the original RfC question has become the wrong question to ask, and that, instead, the focus should be on considering whether to rewrite the sentence. It's pointless to keep asking editors to respond to the original RfC question. In my opinion, we should just close the RfC with no action taken, and instead have a more focused discussion about possible ways to revise. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:03, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Actually in my view the inrush of opposes is based on some claims about the scope of both OUTING and BLP that have just about zero consensus in the actual practice of the community, including the practice of those who have opposed so far. I think this aberration will self correct. The only real question to me is whether that self-correction will happen in the timeframe of the RfC. Jytdog (talk) 18:02, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
What fresh hell is this? I am perhaps not surprised, but nonetheless truly ashamed that anyone, ANYONE, thinks that the chance to out undisclosed paid editors overrides common decency and the protection of those who are not in any way participants in this project. Anyone who thinks for a moment that the 15 year old kid who's just been called a "fucking faggot" on the article about his school is not being harassed, or that calling a well-known actress a "slutty whore" is not abusive, is wrong. That is what this particular line in this particular policy is about. Get over yourselves, all of you. Undisclosed paid editing is a problem, no doubt about it. But it's despicable that you'll take away the one line that allows us to get rid of online harassment of non-wikipedians. It's like some people have ONLY one way to understand edits on Wikipedia. You're all better than this. And I'm damned if I'll stop suppressing such harassment (the examples I gave are mild) should you succeed in taking this out of the harassment policy. Is there any policy at all that you will leave alone, that you will not taint with your campaign to eradicate UPE regardless of any other factor? Seriously, you should be ashamed. I am ashamed that I even have to point this out. Risker (talk) 19:33, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Seriously? We have plenty of policies that prevent unsourced stuff from getting into articles (it is WP:V and WP:RS). We do not need to make other policies overly broad to doubly deal with libel. And at the same time create a massive loop hole for those who wish to harm our projects and readers for financial gain.
The goal is not to "eradicate UPE" as I do not believe that is possible. The goal is to support the small community of editors who are working hard to address the issue and limit the damage done to some extent. We need to allow good faith editors to use some common sense. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:49, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
User:Risker, This is about the OUTING section of this policy, and about personal information. Nothing to do with people calling each other faggot. What are you talking about? Jytdog (talk) 00:02, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I know what it's about. "Removing unsourced stuff from articles" means reversion, and does not routinely lead to penalties. The use of pejoratives to describe a person ("X is a faggot") is harassment - I chose that word deliberately because it used to belittle and demean, not to celebrate a different sexual preference; it should draw a different response than the simple insertion of "the basketball team sucks!" in a school article, and that response would most often be at least a severe warning, and more likely an indef block. This was precisely the issue that led to the inclusion of the sentence that seems to have spurred this. That sentence should probably say "You may not use Wikipedia to harass anyone - members of the public, readers, editors or article subjects." Maybe that's the sentence you're looking for?
This page is full of references to UPEs - I frankly see more about them than anything else on this page. Functionaries have even taken a bit of a hit in not spending more time worrying about them, although that seems to have been mitigated subsequently. I do feel very strongly that trying to out UPEs is the wrong tack to take here, because they would have no jobs if we actually had some notability standards that would simply not accept the articles they write. I know that's a much tougher battle, because there are a lot more people who will take to the ramparts on the subject of notability, but it seems we are seeing the same people over and over again pushing the same ideas on the much-less-watched behavioural policy pages. It's not helpful. Perhaps a more organized attempt at working on the content end of things (which is really where the problem exists) might be useful, and I'd be happy to participate there. Risker (talk) 00:32, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I find it very sad that editors who really do care about Wikipedia, both about protecting people against harassment and about preventing its use for spam, feel the need to get angry at one another. There is a particular, focused, problem here: a sentence in the outing section is difficult to understand and is often misunderstood by perfectly intelligent people. We should at least try to make it clearer. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:52, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
RIsker your comments have nothing to do with this proposal. Which is bizarre as you are usually more careful. Jytdog (talk) 03:25, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
@Jytdog: I will avoid speculating on Risker's meaning, per your prior suggestions to me, but I cannot help but see my own view line up well with this, so I do want to suggest that his comment is related to the discussion (at least, part of it - I have no experience with the UPE issue). In short: since harassment of non-editors is possible (i.e. calling a non-editor a gay slur, as in his example), it makes sense to have a conduct policy that covers such harassment, rather than only having a conduct policy that objects to the inclusion of such information. Since almost everyone here is in favor of rewriting the sentence, I'd also like to say that I think we could probably agree on Risker's phrasing (above). Of course, we could qualify that statement, saying that it could mean posting an identity, an address, an insult, etc, and that posting a Wikipedia user's personal information against their will is almost always considered harassment. To my admittedly minimal knowledge, there has not been an enormous record of controversial harassment cases. Determining intent is always a difficult endeavor involving a margin of error, but I think attempting to define an exact range of behaviors to avoid examining intent is unrealistic. (Note: I am the same user as the IP with the "weak oppose" vote. Additionally, this is one of the last conversations I will be involved in for a while–heading back to work!–so feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt.)--137.54.29.17 (talk) 15:42, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
The language under discussion is about doxing (disclosing personal information.) Personal information is defined in this policy as real name, phone number, etc. That is all that this RfC is about. Calling someone a faggot has nothing to do with doxing. It is harassment and terrible but has nothing to do with the particular sentences under discussion here. Jytdog (talk) 16:13, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
@Jytdog: Again only speaking for how I (just now) meant it: the point is not that calling someone a gay slur is an example of doxing. The point is that harassment on a general level can be directed at editors or non-editors ... and that includes doxing. Doxing can be directed at editors or non-editors, just as calling someone a slur can be directed at editors or non-editors.--216.12.10.118 (talk) 22:13, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Alternative proposal
Change: This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors.
to: Posting personal information of any individual is potentially just as harmful as revealing the personal information of an editor (see also the biographies of living persons policy), so this policy applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors.
I don't think that this changes anything substantive, but it makes the reasoning clearer to inexperienced editors (as well as experienced editors like me, who find the existing wording cryptic). --Tryptofish (talk) 20:42, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose alternative
Sorry, but that wording makes things more confusing for me! I don't this we can solve this by changing only the last sentence. See below for my suggestion. Thryduulf (talk) 23:18, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
@Doc James: can you clarify which "both" you refer to here as there are three proposals regarding non-editors (the original proposal, the alternative and the second alternative). Thryduulf (talk) 09:57, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Sure. I do not consider either "This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors." or "Posting personal information of any individual is potentially just as harmful as revealing the personal information of an editor" good wording. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:59, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
So it sounds like you are really saying that you support the original proposal and oppose the first alternative. That makes it a bit strange to create an "oppose both" section. When I first read what you said, I thought that you were opposing both the first alternative and the second alternative. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:10, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
(Moving this from below where I mistakenly posted it) The main problem, with both the original and this alternative, is that when we write BLP articles we almost always reveal some "personal information", e.g. their birthday, where they work, their spouse's name and sometimes even their kids' names. I can't imagine writing a BLP that doesn't include some personal information. Anything like this that seems to limit what we can put in BLPs, I'm against. But let's be clear, whoever wants this in is not writing about BLPs. I'd just like to be clear what they are interested in. Smallbones(smalltalk)23:21, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
@Smallbones: I did not make this as clear as I should have, but there is a recently-added footnote, that would be at the end of this sentence, that addresses exactly what you express concern about here. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:20, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
In the first paragraph of the "Posting of personal information" section, change:
Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person has voluntarily posted his or her own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia.
to:
Posting somebody else's personal information is harassment, unless that person has voluntarily posted his or her own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia.
and change
Posting such information about another editor is an unjustifiable and uninvited invasion of privacy and may place that editor at risk of harm outside their activities on Wikipedia. This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors.
to:
Posting such information, except in the context of an encyclopaedic biography that is in accordance with the Wikipedia:Biographies of living people (BLP) policy, is an unjustifiable and uninvited invasion of privacy and may place that person at risk of real-world harm.
Support second alternative
Support as proposer, but really I'm increasingly of the opinion that the whole policy needs a coherent rewrite, but as an interim I think this is better than what we have at present. Thryduulf (talk) 23:18, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose second alternative
Oppose because enumerating a single exception implies no other exceptions are possible. This contradicts WP:BLOG, where it is understood that the expertise (or lack of it) of non-editors can be discussed. "Personal information", as currently defined in this policy, includes occupation, and occupation is a major factor in determining an author's subject matter expertise as well as other source issues. That this contradiction occurs is evidence of scope creep of the Harassment policy, which is now being expanded into territory that it is not intended to cover (non-editors are covered under WP:BLP). I appreciate that everyone is keen to avoid real-world harm by WP:OUTing and maintain a reasonably collegial environment here, that's important, however, the first and most important concern here is the quality of content. No policy that undermines the quality of content should be allowed to stand; this proposal does that, it needs to be nipped in the bud. Geogene (talk) 00:07, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
BLP covers only the subjects of biographies. There are people who are neither subjects of biographies or editors, these people are not protected by BLP but it is not OK to out them. The priority here is to ensure that nobody suffers real-world harm from being outed. Thryduulf (talk) 00:18, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
There are people who are neither subjects of biographies or editors yes, and that includes the authors of self-published sources, some of whom are legitimate experts in their field, and many of whom are not. It is understood that we must be able to distinguish between the two. It's evident that this will occasionally factor in content disputes, and therefore some (public) personal information will a matter of discussion. Geogene (talk) 00:26, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
User:Thryduulf that is incorrect by a long way. BLP applies to "information about living persons" on "any Wikipedia page". Not just "subjects of biographies" as you said. All I can say to this dramatic misreading of BLP and how it is used routinely in the community, is "yikes". I don't know what has happened to your judgement here. Jytdog (talk) 08:49, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
oppose, because personal information includes " job title and work organisation" and includes "photographs", and this would mean that almost any mention of any person's employer or job title in any article, even if well-sourced, and any photo of any person in any article, is a violation of this policy. (unless by some bizarre chance that person has come to WP and posted his or her own employer or job title or photo in WP). Jytdog (talk) 08:13, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose. This appears to support the oversighting of all BLPs and the banning of nearly everyone who has worked on them. Would basically allow this policy to be used to intimidate those who work on content in good faith.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:36, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
@Doc James and Jytdog: This proposal explicitly allows material in biographies that is compliant with WP:BLP to be included, so your rationales for opposing appear to be factually incorrect. Thryduulf (talk) 09:59, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
The mention in the 2nd sentence contradicts what the first one says, and the limitation in the 2nd to only article-space makes even discussing article content about living people on Talk pages or WP space indefinitely blockable. You have gone down a very weird rabbit hole here. I hope you can back out of it. BLPPRIVACY and BLPCOI meets almost all your concerns already in any case; this is overkill. Jytdog (talk) 10:06, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Changing the wording to "Posting somebody else's personal information is harassment" is incredibly broad when personal information includes legal name, date of birth, job title, picture, etc. Let's look at the article on Beyoncé, we include her legal name, we include her date of birth, we include what she does for a living and all within the first sentence. We also have a bunch of pictures. What you propose appears to disallow all of this. Beyoncé hasn't voluntarily posted this information on Wikipedia herself. This change introduces / maintains contradictions within this policy and thus is not positive. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:08, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Thryduulf, thank you for making a suggestion and not just finding fault. And I very much agree with you about the need for a total rewrite, but we obviously cannot get consensus for that unless there is a consensus for each individual change. And I'm increasingly pessimistic that there will be any consensus here, for what I think is an easy change.
I'm not going to support or oppose this yet, because I have some reservations, but it's probably something I could go along with if it's the only way to get consensus. My concerns: The first change is so subtle that it will not be understood. I can easily see a good-faith and intelligent editor saying "Wait, you mean "somebody else" means anyone, and not just another user?" Most editors naturally assume that policies about user conduct pertain only to other users unless explicitly stated otherwise. The second change makes it sound like it's OK to post stuff in a bio page that goes beyond what BLP allows, even though that clearly is not your intent. I think that the recently-added footnote to the sentence under discussion, which perhaps you have not seen yet, does a somewhat better job of addressing the BLP issue (although it too could use some copyediting). The second change also ends up under-playing the concept that outing an editor can harm an editor not just on-wiki but in real life. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:39, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
I get the that first change is subtle, but I don't see how "somebody else" could be taken in good faith to mean only editors? As for your comments regarding the second change - I struggle to see how "except in the context of an encyclopaedic biography that is in accordance with the Wikipedia:Biographies of living people (BLP) policy" suggests that something not permitted by BLP is allowable? I also think that "under-playing" the concept of harm in real-life criticism is odd given it says "may place that person at risk of real-world harm". How do you propose that these are strengthened? Thryduulf (talk) 07:49, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
This is certainly proving to be a more complex discussion than I had anticipated. Actually, your question to me reminds me that I do not really understand why you, in turn, find the first alternative more confusing than the existing language. Let me illustrate the dilemma this way: if you and I continue to find one another's critiques baffling, a logical approach would be to wait for more editors to respond, and see what "someone else" thinks. I put scare quotes there, but I think we would all assume that "someone else" means another editor, not any person in the world. It's a tacit assumption editors make all the time. Take a look at the WP:HUSH section, last sentence. It says "someone else", but obviously in the context of users and not the general public. The lead section here defines harassment as "Usually (but not always)" having the effect "to make editing Wikipedia unpleasant for the target." So for the most part, this policy page is about harassment directed at editors. When it is about harassment directed at anyone, that needs to be made clear, which I assume is the reasoning for the original wording of "non-editors". It's not that your proposed language is logically wrong, but rather a matter of how I think imperfect persons will (mis)interpret it. That's what I meant about the BLP part, a gut feeling. As for "under-playing", "risk of harm outside their activities on Wikipedia" is more specific than "risk of real-world harm": the existing language emphasizes more strongly that there are "off-wiki" as well as onsite consequences. My best suggestion for strengthening is to focus on changing only one sentence here, not more. And having said all that, I'll repeat that I'd be willing to support the second alternative if it's the only option that has a chance at getting consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:37, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
It seems to me a large part of the reason this RFC is likely to go nowhere is that the wording in question is trying to outline an issue already better dealt with by BLP and Outing. At most this policy should simply point to those policies where relevant with, at most, a brief summary. What it definitely shouldn't do is contradict them in any way. The starting point for amending the wording should be the question, "what specific scenario is this policy trying to address that isn't already addressed in other policies?" If the answer is there is none then the wording shouldn't be here to begin with. At most it should point to those other policies and if the wording of those policies need amendment then they should be handled at their specific pages. Capeo (talk) 14:08, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
I tend to agree, I don't see this going anywhere. Perhaps an entirely new RFC that comprehensively reviews this policy would produce better results, but if nobody is up for doing that than the above seems like the best solution. (shameless plug: my essay on how to do big policy RFCs) Beeblebrox (talk) 19:15, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Beeblebrox is right. The "Posting of personal information" subsection is currently quite a bit longer than any of the other subsections under "Harassment and disruption", and has been continually tweaked and modified in ways that have produced some pretty muddy, hard-to-read text. IMO this section needs a comprehensive rewrite. (And probably really should be its own page, with a summary both here and at WP:BLP, but if wishes were horses, etc...) The primary purpose of this text is not to provide a list of reasons you might get blocked, or to serve as a battleground for people fighting about paid editing; it's to provide guidance for someone who finds inappropriate personal information posted on Wikipedia and wants to know what to do about it. Serving that purpose well is a much higher priority than making continual small changes of wording to address vague hypothetical scenarios. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:04, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
That's a good essay. In my view there's little point in an RFC until the scope of the policy is decided. Though around here I guess that in of itself may require an RFC. I'm of the opinion that this policy should only deal with the harassment of editors by other editors. My reasoning being that I can't see an instance of harassment of a non-editor that isn't already covered by BLP and/or Outing. For a policy to be necessary one would have to be able to envision a scenario that isn't covered by an already existing policy. In other words while and editor harassing another editor (particulary a notable one with a disclosed identity) could conceivably run afoul of Harassment, BLP and Outing there should be instances where only Harassment applies. That's my opinion anyway. I'm not a fan of rule creep for the sake of it. Capeo (talk) 20:13, 10 April 2017 (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.
The outing section of this policy page refers in two passages to privately emailing material that cannot be posted onsite, and includes administrators as permissible recipients. The two passages are:
If redacted or oversighted personally identifying material is important to the COI discussion, then it should be emailed privately to an administrator or arbitrator—but not repeated on Wikipedia: it will be sufficient to say that the editor in question has a COI and the information has been emailed to the appropriate administrative authority. Issues involving private personal information (of anyone) could also be referred by email to a member of the functionaries team.
and
Nothing in this policy prohibits the emailing of personal information about editors to individual administrators, functionaries, or arbitrators, or to the Wikimedia Foundation, when doing so is necessary to report violations of confidentiality-sensitive policies (such as conflict-of-interest or paid editing, harassment, or violations of the child-protection policy).
This seems to me to be a problem. It actually says that material that could be oversighted, or even has been oversighted, may be sent to administrators, even though we do not otherwise allow access to oversighted material to persons other than those having the oversight permission, or the WMF. Administrators are not vetted for this privilege, and although most are responsible in their conduct, we all know that this is not universally the case.
I propose that the two instances of the word "administrator", highlighted above in green, should be changed: to "a functionary" in the first case, and deleted in the second. (There could also be subsequent wording tweaks, but they can be delayed until a future discussion.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:02, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Support Sadly, I think there are administrators out there who don't even know what oversight is (or even RevDel). One possible objection I see is that administrators can revision delete if oversighters don't respond in a timely manner, but this is pretty rare and is more common on other Wikimedia sites. I would suggest changing it to "oversighter" because a CheckUser might not be that helpful in such a case though. --Rschen775423:28, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
About checkusers, this would not simply be about making sure that something gets oversighted, but it could also be something where, for example, there is suspicion about socking based upon some kind of evidence that would violate outing if it were posted at SPI. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:09, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Support and suggest also removing the words "or arbitrators" as redundant; all sitting arbitrators are also functionaries. -- Euryalus (talk) 00:02, 7 April 2017 (UTC) Was halfway through an explanation on change of !vote, but edit conflicted with OR and they say it better than my version. Also agree with the caution in OR's econd paragraph. -- Euryalus (talk) 20:59, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
That's certainly logical, but it's probably better to err on the side of assuming that some users looking to this policy might not realize it. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:09, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose changing the material in the 2nd box. There is "nothing in this policy prohibits the emailing of personal information about editors to individual administrators, functionaries, or arbitrators, or to the Wikimedia Foundation," simply because this part of the policy is about posting material on Wikipedia, not about email. (If there is any such material in the policy, please just quote it to me). It's also not about oversighted material. It's about any information that an editor has that " is necessary to report violations of confidentiality-sensitive policies." If we have confidentially-sensitive policies, we need to report violations, and if we can't report them on-Wiki we need an alternative. Emailing an admin seems to be the best alternative. It wouldn't overload arbs and other functionaries. I also have to say that some arbs are the last people I'd want to report violations of the Terms of Use by paid-editors to. Many of them seem to have declared the ToU unenforceable and thus null and void, e.g. in the Wifione decision. I would prefer to privately report violations of the ToU to somebody who is not against enforcement of the ToU. Smallbones(smalltalk)02:55, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
The language is specifically about "personal information", as that term is defined in the outing section of this policy page. So yes, it is about material that would be oversighted if posted onsite. If someone wants to email an administrator about something that does not involve "personal information", no problem, and this language does not change that. The reason it discusses email (which is the existing language, and you'd need another discussion to change it) is because email is an alternative to posting onsite. Your personal opinion of some arbs is your personal opinion, and if we allow sending oversightable material to "trusted" admins, trust is in the eye of the beholder. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:09, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Support, although it might be better to talk about emailing the functionaries list or OTRS as that stands a greater chance of swift action than an individual. I agree that explicitly mentioning arbitrators is a good thing, as they are more known about than functionaries. Thryduulf (talk) 07:53, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
That occurred to me too, but the existing language that immediately follows the second box says that only "the minimum number" of people should be contacted. The context here is not so much about urgent matters, such as getting an edit oversighted, but about less rushed processes in which evidence is being evaluated. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:43, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose There is no need to control private communication. If email is abused (spamming personal details or emailing them while showing battleground behavior), the editor can be blocked as normal. This is the first proposal that I aware of that attempts to control contributors beyond what happens on this website. Several cases of known off-wiki harassment have occurred where editor X has posted personal details of editor Y, along with attacks, on another website (hello Wikipediocracy and all the people who support it by contributing there), yet X is not blocked because what happens off-wiki does not count. In a couple of extreme cases, the perpetrator has been blocked, but that is an exception. Johnuniq (talk) 03:24, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
I understand the argument about a slippery slope. But the existing language already puts certain restraints on emails, such a contacting the minimum number of persons, so this is not a first. And the existing language also seems to indicate that emailing to a non-admin is not OK, so this would only be an extension of restrictions of off-wiki communication that already exist. Furthermore, you need to take a look at WP:OWH: there is already an entire section of this policy page that is all about forbidding certain kinds of off-wiki contributions! (By the way, please do not take my replies as badgering responding editors. I'm just trying to make this a discussion, moreso than a vote.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
I am not tending to support this. We are passing through what, 10-20 admins a year? That's a pretty select group, and if the admins can't be trusted with info like this, we're doing something wrong. The arbs and functionaries are that much more remote (and few, and busy, I assume), so this is a little bit of a step forward in making an absolute fetish about all this... I'm trying to figure out what problem or potential problem this is trying to solve... Herostratus (talk) 04:41, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
A lot of what I'm considering here is that we also have admins who were promoted a long time ago, under much lower standards. Obviously, it depends on which admin. I'm also commenting on this in my next response below. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
This is tricky. Best practice is to search for an oversighter or arbitrator first (via email, IRC, etc.) and find an admin to revision delete the material if an oversighter is not around. The worst possible outcome is that private information remain public while someone is waiting for an oversighter to respond to their email. Even a matter of minutes can cause immense damage. I would oppose forbidding someone to contact an admin just like I would oppose suggesting that contacting an admin be a first step. I do support changing the text to make clear that outing someone to an administrator is still outing. I would oppose forbidding passing oversightable material to an admin altogether, since that would prevent someone from requesting revdel of something that's oversightable. This is one area where judgement may be important. ~ Rob13Talk07:31, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
As I said above, perhaps the issue is one of which admin and how it gets handled. Perhaps an alternative would be to retain mention of administrators, but add some sort of language about discretion. Also, it's not clear to me that this change would actually forbid emailing an admin: it just does not mention them, but does not say "you must not do it." Finally, I agree very strongly with you about material that actually is oversightable: that should not normally be sent to an administrator, particularly after it has already been oversighted (and the existing language explicitly says that that is OK). I'm not sure that we want editors to make decisions about what is or is not oversightable before sending to an admin versus sending to a functionary. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose First of all what the WMF defines as "private information" is not what we are referring to here. What we are referring to here is typically "public information found outside of Wikipedia". Yes this should definately be available to any admin as it is now. And as it is shareable between admins upon request it is actionable on by admins. We are facing serious issues when it comes to undisclosed paid promotional editing. We are already trying to address the issues with one hand tied behind our back, we do not need to hobble ourselves more. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:20, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose Functionaries haven't demonstrated any particular willingness to get involved in COI/UPE issues, so emailing them is unlikely to result in any action being taken. Given that, it's up to admins to make responsible use of any information that's provided to them. If we had a set of functionaries who would deal with these issues then I would probably change my opinion. SmartSE (talk) 12:19, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose per Doc James and Smartse. I've personally had emails to arbcom for this sort of thing fall on deaf ears more than once in 2015. Without admins willing and able to get involved, the ToS issue would be even worse. - Bri (talk) 16:12, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Note regarding the functionaries team Just so we're clear, dealing with COI/paid editing issues has never been the responsibility of the functionaries team, except when it is part and parcel of dealing with oversightable material or running checkuser, which are our job. Since we (unlike literally everyone else on Wikipedia except arbcom and 'crats) have an assigned job that only we can do we do tend to focus on doing it. Some particular members may have an interest in this area but the implication that we "aren't doing our job" because aren't doing something that isn't actually our job is annoying. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:19, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Yeah sorry if I implied that. I know it isn't the functionaries' responsibility, but as it is, it is nobody's "job" which isn't satisfactory. There'd been talk before about setting up a separate list for this, but it was quickly shot down. Hence why I can't support removing that admins can be sent this information. SmartSE (talk) 19:50, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
I was on the fence at first, but I think I oppose as written, largely for the reasons Rob outlines. The primary goal here is to get inappropriate information removed from public view quickly, not to make sure the process of doing so is procedure-perfect. I would support putting a nice big box at the top of the "Posting of personal information" section that says something like "Please report inappropriate posting of personal information to the Oversight team". Not another hatnote, a big box (maybe resurrect the blink tag? ;) But no matter how prominently that method is advertised, people will take other paths - if you know an admin you trust is currently online, emailing them to request revdel is likely to address the problem faster. If you're inexperienced and not confident about your judgment, asking an admin is certainly better than thinking "oh, what if I send this in and the oversighters make fun of me?" and thus doing nothing. Some people are willing to use email with trusted editors but not to put their email address in OTRS or in mailing list archives. Etc etc etc. All that being said, if you know something meets the project's criteria for oversight and you're not sending it to the oversighters because you hope your cherry-picked favorite admin will impose a sanction based on information that shouldn't have been on-wiki in the first place... you are missing the point of the protections provided by this policy. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:51, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
I've just withdrawn the proposal. I want to explain a couple of things, and make it very clear. First, I have seen some extremely illogical reasons given here for opposing. No, this is not a proposal to regulate offsite communication in some kind of unprecedented way: see WP:OWH. And no, it is not about simple investigation of COI. It's about material that would need to be oversighted if posted onsite, because it would violate the outing policy, and not about anything else. Contrary to what some editors appear to have said, there is no such thing as a post that would violate the outing policy but would not need to be oversighted. And for goodness' sake, this is not about asking for oversight of a post, which requires prompt action. It's about discussing things like COI, which are not urgent, but which may require discussing information that cannot be posted onsite. This is not the same thing as seeing a post that needs oversight, and asking an admin for a revdel until an oversighter becomes available.
The reason I believed that this proposal needed to be considered is because access to oversighted or oversightable material is something not to be taken lightly, and because there are some (a minority) of admins who should not be trusted with it. The discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 134#Proposal for a confidential COI mailing list established what I think is a pretty clear consensus against tossing around personal information offsite, above and beyond what that proposal had been about. I just didn't feel right about leaving the admin language as is, without discussion.
But it seems clear to me that editors are at least somewhat OK with providing someone else's personal information, as "personal information" is defined by this policy, to an administrator of one's choice. And I get it that functionaries should not have a new task dumped on them alone, as well as that some things can be handled more efficiently by admins, many of whom are entirely trustworthy. So, OK, no need to make this particular change. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:40, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Page protection
There has been a couple of BOLD changes and reversions to this policy page in the past day or so. As this policy deals with matters with real-world impact and the discussions above are proving less than straightforward it is important that changes are only made with consensus. Accordingly I have applied indefinite full protection to the policy page. Thryduulf (talk) 10:00, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
Please let me suggest that, during the period of protection, editors consider whether some sort of footnote at the end of the discussed sentence might be a way to solve the disagreements in the RfC above. It doesn't have to be the same footnote. It could be a revision of that footnote, or something completely different. But an advantage would be that the disputed sentence would remian the same within the main text. (On the other hand, if the consensus goes against any note, then an admin needs to delete the empty Notes section now at the bottom of the page.) I suggest creating a new talk section to discuss draft versions of a footnote. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:03, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
The footnote only drew attention to a fundamental absurdity of the policy, that it contradicts other policies, as well as how things are actually done. That is why it is being suppressed. But it doesn't actually fix anything, and isn't really a solution to the underlying problem. What we need is really a broader, more clueful demographic here to propose genuine solutions. Geogene (talk) 18:05, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
I have listened carefully to folks here who have written fiercely and passionately on this page, about protecting people from harassment, and especially with regard to discussion of off-wiki matters, and have taken that on board.
I found the statement in the diff alarming with regard to this policy and WP:BLPTALK. It is a very strong negative claim about what a self-OUTED Wikipedian is doing off-Wiki. While the IP is a Berkeley IP address, we have no way of knowing if that is actually a student in the class nor if it is true.
I emailed oversight, and plenty of admins saw the comment. But it is still there - not removed much less oversighted.
It is obviously OK and there is something I don't understand. How does that comment not fall under this policy and why is it not subject to oversight? Jytdog (talk) 14:59, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I meant as justification in case you wanted to remove it. Private email correspondance should not be posted verbatim publically unless permission has been granted by both parties. This doesnt prevent a summary etc. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:36, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Given that the email was apparently distributed to a clas of 180 students in order to canvass support, it could be seen as more of a public statement, and pertinent to the matter at hand. As a matter of policy, the rationale for suppressing it is borderline at best, especially since you have now chosen to publicly post about it, leaving us with a Streisand effect situation should we try to suppress it now. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:26, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
(Delayed response as I try to avoid this abortion of a talkpage) number of recipients has zero bearing on if a document is considered public or private. An internal email to 1000 employees of a company would not be public, anymore than a teacher emailing all their students. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:32, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
In fact, I pointed out the same student comment at AN yesterday. I don't see it as violating either BLP or Outing, although it does violate Canvass. I suppose there is some issue with posting another person's email without prior permission, but this was a message that was already distributed very widely, so we can assume either that there is implied permission to distribute it further, or a disruptive intention to mislead the community about canvassing. But this is far from being in the realm of oversight. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:16, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
I am floored that more than one experienced editor has taken that posting at face value and believe it is something that EJustice actually did. I view it as unverifiable and toxic. As just a matter of basic mental hygiene I don't believe it; I don't disbelieve it, but I don't believe it.
Here is the thing. Where are the oversighters etc who have brought all the passion about the risk of fakery and joejobbig on this page whenever we discussed bringing off-wiki stuff onto en-WP? The very strong concern to prevent harassment through anything that even might be a lie? This is, in my view, an example of such an ambiguous post, making pretty ugly claims about what someone supposedly did in the RW, on a fairly high profile board. I fully expected that post to come down, right way. Because this has not been taken down, I don't understand where the people who raised those concerns about the risk of fakery/joejobbing have been coming from; neither the spirit nor the letter of where they have been coming from. Jytdog (talk) 15:16, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
I'm not going to defend the passionate functionaries. But I found it quite easy to regard the posting as genuine, partly because there was more than one such student post, and partly because there was no denial, and partly because the claim was mostly expressed in positive terms. It just does not seem to me to be such a big deal. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:20, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
The posting was fairly neutrally worded, but my sense was that the poster knew how negatively the community would view the described activity. If it was true and by a student, they were ratting him out. My concern is the risk that it is not true. But that is about that. The reason I posted here, is that I can no longer make sense of the discussion that has occurred on this page. The fierce stance that has been taken about guarding against harassment via postings about putative off-wiki stuff is a huge deal -- it has exploded almost every thread on this page. Jytdog (talk) 19:33, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
And how does it matter if it's true or not? If the post included "also, he cheated on his wife" and that was true, would that be OK then? ... I think part of the problem is the suspicion, that if this sort of post was made about about somebody in the same situation who was doing PR work for ExxonMobile here, it would be treated with more alarm. I don't know if that is true or not, but that even the suspicion can be raised is just incredibly toxic to this project. Cannot people see this. Herostratus (talk) 20:05, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
I haven't followed the specific issue you're discussing, but as a general matter: if you request that something be oversighted, and you later find that it's still visible, and you haven't received any communication from the functionaries about it, the best thing to do is to send a follow-up email. It may be that there's just been a gap and no one has gotten to it yet, or the post is ambiguous and the request is being discussed, or maybe the email gremlins got your first message. If you suspect gremlins, you can always follow up by another means - emailing an individual functionary, or finding someone on IRC if you use it; there's no way to directly email the oversight list and the functionaries list has non-OS users, but if you need a group you can also email arbcom.
Also, the decision to suppress something is necessarily a judgment call; not everything that meets official criteria is best handled by suppression. Sometimes something is too conspicuous or has already been seen by too many people or would require suppressing too many revisions; sometimes it's already been mirrored or archived off-wiki (and nothing says "memory hole!" like content off-wiki that's been disappeared here). Relevant to this case, sometimes the act of suppressing something will itself cause others who have seen the material to conclude that its contents are true. Certainly the best response to a request you made is not to post a link to the material you think needs suppression on a high-traffic page. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:28, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Kind of lost me when he started talking about "basic mental hygiene," which unless I'm mistaken was basically calling me a crazy person because I don't see it the same way he does. As the cat is quite clearly out of the bag regardless of what we do at this point, I have closed the OTRS ticket as inactionable. When this all started, it was possible that another oversighter may have seen it differently and would have supressed the material (we really aren't a hive mind and we do often discuss borderline stuff to look for consensus), but now, not so much, this thread has made it way too public. If anyone desires to, they could redact it I suppose but suppression would be pointless now. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:35, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
This discussion is over my head but "mental hygiene" was not anything to do with you. Jytdog means that he believes things that have strong evidence, or which have weak evidence but which are compatible with accepted knowledge (with varying degrees of belief). As part of Jytdog's mental hygiene he chooses to not believe other claims. Johnuniq (talk) 03:55, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
Support Is this a common thing? Policy pages being indefinitely fully protected? I took a look at a bunch of other policies and it seems like they were just semi protected, I thought full protection was reserved for edit disputes and was supposed to be temporary. Tutelary (talk) 21:31, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
Comment I'm the reason the policy page is protected. I have no intention of causing further disruption should it be lifted. Geogene (talk) 21:36, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
Per the instructions there the 1st step is to ask the admin who protected. I figured Thryduulf, who protected in this diff, was watching the page, as are other admins. But I will ask -- User:Thryduulf would you please unprotect? See note just above. Jytdog (talk) 00:40, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
I haven't got time right now to check things I'd want to check before unprotecting. I will look when I get time (most likely not until this evening UK time) but I've got not objection to another admin unprotecting before then if they feel it is no longer required. Thryduulf (talk) 09:50, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion 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.
Question 1: If an editor regularly introduces pages into the mainspace that have problems (e.g. categories need activated, containing empty sections which should be removed, not in compliance with basic parts of the manual of style, etc.), and the user is known not to clean up the pages themself, does it constitute harassment for another user to regurlarly fix those problems in said articles?
Question 2: If an editor moves pages from the userpsace of others to the mainspace that may not be suitable for the mainspace, and has shown a pattern of having pages they move in that manner end up being deleted, does it constitute harassment for another user to seek the restoration of those pages to the userspace per the result of WP:UP/RFC2016 (B4) (i.e. "If a draft is moved to the mainspace by a user other than its author, then found to be unsuitable for the mainspace for reasons which wouldn't apply in the userspace, it should be returned to the userspace.")?
No - "Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles." (part of the WP:WIKIHOUND section) makes it clear to me that this does not constitute harassment. It is akin to new page reviewing. — Godsy (TALKCONT)19:29, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Question 2
Yes 2 (it constitutes harassment) 2
No (it does not constitute harassment) 2
No - Community consensus resulting from a request for comment that was widely advertised should be adhered to. Editors known not to adhere to such things after they have been made aware should not be allowed to disregard them under the guise that those noticing are harassing them. — Godsy (TALKCONT)19:29, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Discussion 1 & 2
Comment This looks suspiciously like an out-of-venue behavioral dispute that should be handled by an admin board, or, ultimately presented to ArbCom. I recommend it be closed. Geogene (talk) 20:08, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't think there is a better place to consult the community regarding whether or not certain actions are considered to be harassment under the harassment policy. I considered being more general with the questions, but I'd rather the decision by the community be explicitly clear. — Godsy (TALKCONT)20:19, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Geogene. This RfC is obviously related to this ANI thread. This amounts to forum shopping, in light of that ANI thread. The question is also too general; how this is done and whether there is good judgement being applied matter a lot. Godsy this was poor judgement; please withdraw this RfC. Jytdog (talk) 20:25, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't think it amounts to forum shopping, but rather seeking a valid form of dispute resolution. Other forms of dispute resolution have been recommended by some in the thread. WP:AN/I interprets policy, this will clarify the policy itself; I do not consider this a behavioral issue, but rather a disagreement regarding this policy. "How this is done and whether there is good judgement being applied" is important, but if someone is doing strictly what is being described in this rfc in a reasonable manner, I don't believe it constitutes harassment. — Godsy (TALKCONT)20:58, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
If you want to do DR you need to do it on the specific issue. The general question does not help resolve the specific dispute, especially when you don't make reference to the specific dispute in this RfC. Two of us have told you that this smells bad - please withdraw it. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 21:39, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
I was blocked because an administrator determined the actions described in question one constitute harassment. I do not believe they do. When there is disagreement about a policy, it is reasonable to handle it on the talk page of that policy. I do not plan to withdraw this because I believe this is appropriate. Best Regards, — Godsy (TALKCONT)22:16, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
It would be better to address the underlying issue. Legacypac believes that Wikipedia should not be a web host that permanently records thousands of fake articles on garage bands, minor businesses, self-promotions, and a lot more. Legacypac would, presumably, be called a deletionist who tries to get these pages deleted. However, inclusionists undermine those efforts with completely unrealistic demands that Legacypac spend two hours on each page carefully polishing it and adding all possible sources to see if there is anything worth saving. Legacypac cannot get much support for cleaning up pages in user or draft spaces and so is recruiting the large and competent group of editors who patrol new articles. Godsy should focus on the underlying issue—what should happen with the thousands of promotional fake articles? Tweaking this policy to allow Godsy to hound Legacypac would not be productive. Johnuniq (talk) 22:32, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
I share the concern about forum shopping expressed by other editors, but I also see an aspect of this discussion as Godsy asking in good faith what the community really thinks about this, and it's not an unreasonable question. So I don't like the idea of treating this as a formal RfC (especially on a talk page where editors have recently commented about "RfC fatigue"), and would oppose a change to the policy. So I'm not going to comment in the !vote sections (where it is also a bias to put the "no" sections before the "yes" sections, by the way). But I'll just say here what I think. It depends a lot on context. I sometimes see new editors or IPs make very bad edits (copyright violations, for example) on my watchlist, and after fixing those edits I often check the account's editing history to find and fix similar problems on pages not on my watchlist. That is not harassment. But the more that a user has become established as someone who is neither a vandal nor a single-purpose account, the more it becomes a problem to treat them as someone who needs cleaning up after. I think the first step is to try to engage with them on their user talk page. If that fails, and particularly if they express the belief that you are harassing them, it's time to stop following them, and time to start working with the community instead of taking it on alone. Bring it up at an appropriate noticeboard. If other editors agree with you, they will help with the cleanup and establish a consensus that the user is, in fact, making unhelpful edits. But if the consensus is that the edits do not need cleanup, then the matter should be dropped right there. Continuing to follow after that is indeed harassment. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:44, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
@Tryptofish: It is best to avoid the perception of bias when possible, so I've moved the yes sections to above the no sections. I'm open to any other suggestions regarding neutrality. I attempted to be as neutral as possible with the wording. — Godsy (TALKCONT)00:51, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
I can see how some think this could be seen as forum shopping. Personally, I'm not sure it is, but I also feel that it wasn't really appropriate to start an RfC. Anyone who comments in either !vote section could be seen as taking sides for or against one editor or the other. While I'm not sure which other (I say other because WP:RFC says this actually is a form of dispute resolution.) forms of dispute resolution these two editors have tried, I don't think it's appropriate to get the community involved in this way. On the other hand, ArbCom probably would not take this case at this time since there hasn't been any real attempt to resolve this besides this RfC and a couple ANI threads (as far as I know). —Gestrid (talk) 00:28, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
Some comments above mention or allude to Legacypac's actions. Frankly this is not intended to be about them and I don't have anything to say regarding them at this time. I'm here because I believe this block by Nyttend to be inappropriate and I would like the community to deem the reasons behind it invalid. If you read the block and the further explanation and do a bit of research into my contribution history, you'll notice that the contributions I was blocked for are unambiguous improvements to articles. Editors should not have to fear a block for unambiguously improving articles. If I notice any editor regardless of their experience moving pages from the userspace of others to the mainspace that are in poor shape, I should have the right to unambiguously improve them. I do not understand why anyone, including the mover themself, would oppose that. In fact, such actions are explicitly protected by this policy, i.e. "Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles."; fixing unambiguous errors is an "overriding reason" (quote's from WP:HOUND). — Godsy (TALKCONT)01:27, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
You were blocked for WP:HOUNDING not making useful page improvements. Your hounding is part of a pattern going a long way back. Last I checked everything you've done since coming of that block is creating this RfC to justify your WP:HARASSMENT and disparage my editing and commenting on my ANi comments. Let me be VERY clear your continued WP:HOUNDING is nether appreciated nor unnoticed. I urge you to stop immediately. Legacypac (talk) 01:56, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
You're treading on thin ice here. This page is for discussing the content of the harassment policy, not attempting to get a block overturned after it expires or trying to legitimise your harassment of another user. Given the pointedness of this RFC toward the actions of another user, whom you've already been harassing and whom you've told to stay away from your talk page, much more of this and you'll be facing a block that's a good deal longer than 24 hours. Nyttend (talk) 02:54, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Nyttend 100%. This RfC is bollox, and a clear attempt to subvert/avert sanctions. I suggest you withdraw it immediately before further sanctions/blocks ensue. Softlavender (talk) 03:16, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't want the block itself reviewed, though I think it was inappropriate, what is done is done. I want the block rationale, i.e. WP:HOUND, reviewed or clarified. ... Please remember that doing more of this will result in blocks of increasing length. I do not think I have done anything inappropriate and would like to be able to carry on as before. I also don't want others to suffer a block due to what I believe to be an incorrect interpretation of policy. Hence I believe the best road is a discussion here at the root. — Godsy (TALKCONT)03:41, 2 June 2017 (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.
Regarding WP:V
@Mkdw: if you oppose this edit [2] on its own grounds, please state legitimate reasons for your opposing. I don't have a problem negotiating or RfCing over this seemingly non-controversial addition, but I'm not going to waste everyone's time doing that beforehand just in case *somebody* might have a problem with it. Does anyone have a problem with it? Beyond the fact that I know that I don't have to ask superusers for permission first? If you can't justify your deletion beyond questionable procedural issues, please just self-revert. Now that the page is protected, that doesn't really help either. Geogene (talk) 22:10, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
It was poorly written, lacked context, and seemingly created a caveat to the harassment policy where posting personal information (potentially exceeding WP:BLPPRIVACY) is appropriate in certain situations. The credentials of the author are totally irrelevant to prohibition on violating someone's privacy and posting their personal information. Some information is prohibited in articles and discussions. As you've previously stated, you heavily prioritize "quality content" over other issues like privacy and harassment. That is not an opinion shared by everyone as clearly evident by the comments of others at the RFC. Some issues are just as important like protecting people (editors and non-editors) from real harm. The community has a responsibility to ensure that we do not cross the line in that regard.
If you're going to engage over the issue of process, here are a few things you need to know. Firstly, the issue was already being discussed in a contentious RFC. You've already opposed several other proposals. Any unilateral change that wasn't based upon the RFC outcome consensus must have been reasonably assumed to be controversial. The expectation that it would not is unrealistic and dismissive of the other participants. The process would have continued with or without your willingness to undergo the process because you are only one of several editors discussing the issue. Any notions that your change was "seemingly non-controversial additional" was immediately put to rest when it was reverted, yet you clearly demonstrated an unwillingness to allow the RFC consensus to form or discussion the issue when you revert it back again. Mkdwtalk23:51, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
It was not poorly written, did not lack context, and cited a binding policy. Of course, it can be rewritten by others as needed, which is not what you were doing. Your reverts are in violation of WP:PGBOLD which reads: Although most editors find advance discussion, especially at well-developed pages, very helpful, directly editing these pages is permitted by Wikipedia's policies. Consequently, you should not remove any change solely on the grounds that there was no formal discussion indicating consensus for the change before it was made. Instead, you should give a substantive reason for challenging it and, if one hasn't already been started, open a discussion to identify the community's current views. Consequently, you should restore the content at once, and Thryduulf should remove page protection, as that too is in violation of WP:PGBOLD. Geogene (talk) 23:59, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
@Geogene: The fact that you are dismissing the ongoing discussion of this content and the opinions of editors who do not share your view indicates to me that the page protection is necessary. However I will flag this up at WP:AN and ask an uninvolved administrator to review my action and explanation, taking into account this section. It is likely going to be best for further discussion to occur here to avoid splitting the discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 00:11, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Per my edit summary, "and largely opposed at the moment" on the point of a substantive reason. You should maybe read the first part of the policy that indicates the importance discussion. The shortcut is literally also called WP:TALKFIRST. I'm not going to spend this time educating you how RFC's work but you should particularly adhere to WP:RFC:
Edits to content under RfC discussion may be particularly controversial. Avoid making edits that others may view as unhelpful. Editing after others have raised objections may be viewed as disruptive editing or edit warring. Be patient; make your improvements in accord with consensus after the RFC is resolved.
You clearly disregarded the comments from others in the RFC as well as the entire process as a whole. Wikilawying this down to ignorance or some other form that exits responsibility to participate and adhere to the consensus process is not going to work. You opposed other proposals and when your changes are being challenged and opposed, you're sidetracking the conversation into strawman arguments rather than staying on-topic about the changes to the harassment policy. Mkdwtalk01:18, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
The footnote is not under discussion, was in the policy for days before you took it upon yourself to revert it, and I would be very surprised if you can name a single editor other than yourself and Thryduulf that I allegedly disrespected by adding that footnote. Your behavioral conduct, personalizing the debate by researching and commenting on my !votes on separate issues on this page, is troubling. Your behavior is in direct violation of policy, and unbecoming of an admin. Quit digging. Geogene (talk) 01:23, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
This is not complicated. If you make an edit to a policy or guideline that is then reverted, you pretty much have to discuss it at that point. Discussing the actual edits in what we should be doing, not wiki-lawyering. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:01, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
I shouldn't have re-reverted. That was a mistake. It would be nice if Mkdw were willing to acknowledge that saying "get consensus first" is not grounds for their initial revert. And if Thryduulf would acknowledge the same for his page protection. I know that's not going to happen. I'm not going to retract any of my accusations of admin misconduct, but I realize that those would be dead on arrival if I were to try to take that up anywhere else. And it's painfully obvious why that would never get any traction. That's Wikipedia for you. Geogene (talk) 03:13, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
"And" is a conjunction used to jointly tie together two clauses. You needed a consensus and it was "opposed". The edit summary was clear and that is a valid reason for being reverted. Using only half the edit summary and attempting to wikilawyer on that point while intentionally excluding important facts will get you no closer to having your additions reintroduced. There's already a clear consensus that your changes are not supported and if you had spent more time assessing the tone and concerns of the RFC all of that was already made readily apparent. It's "painfully obvious" that your arguments are receiving no traction because there's nearly unanimous opposition to your arguments because you're not interpreting the policy or the situation correctly. I'm sorry if this has to be this blunt but WP:IDHT can only be explained so many times. Mkdwtalk17:37, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
We finished here? I thought this had about run its course. I can continue to argue with you on your Talk page or something, if you'd like. Geogene (talk) 17:53, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Oppose inclusion of the footnote. Per the policy Personal information includes legal name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation, telephone number, email address, other contact information, or photograph, whether such information is accurate or not.; none of which are relevant to a discussion of the reliability or noteworthiness of a source such as might be required to satisfy WP:V et al. The footnote confuses the policy by implying that it is acceptable to post such personal information on Wikipedia. - Ryk72'c.s.n.s.'07:05, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
"This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors." - no it doesnt apply to non-editors and whoever added that needs their head examined, it doesnt matter how many footnotes are added to it, it is entirely worthless and completely unenforceable as even a casual glance at WP:RSN would indicate. Legal names, workplaces, qualifications, (photographs! ha!) of both article subjects and sources are all regularly discussed on-wiki. Not only is it directly contradicted by WP:V, as written you could not include a photo on a biography of a living person without it being classed as harrassment by this policy unless the living person submitted the photo themselves. Its completely ridiculous and just another indication of people who have no fucking clue what harrassment actually is. Attaching a footnote to something that says 'dont do this' saying 'we do this already' is a clear indication the basic problem is not fixed. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:08, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
First off, that's a content matter that is well-covered under the applicable content policy. It does not belong in this behavioural policy. Secondly, in response to OIDDDE, this policy applies to inappropriate use of personal information of EVERYONE, whether or not they are Wikipedia editors. I have lost count of the number of times I have suppressed or revision-deleted personal information (whether or not true) of article subjects, students of a school on the school article, people the posting editor doesn't like, friends/classmates/relatives, and so on; and most of the time, either I or someone else will be blocking the account or at least giving a stern warning, in keeping with the intent to reduce harassment on the project. Everyone needs to keep their eye on the ball here. This policy is about harassment. It's not about article content, and it's sure not about paid editing (disclosed or otherwise). I'm getting pretty tired of all this forum shopping. I want this policy to recognize that it's not okay to use Wikipedia as a weapon. Risker (talk) 21:03, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
I had earlier expressed doubt that the policy would really need to clarify that the kind of information normally and properly included in BLP pages is not the same thing as outing. But when I saw the footnote, I thought that it was a pretty good way to explain that issue, and that doing it via footnote was a better idea than putting it in the main text. But I also thought that the footnote could have benefited from a copyedit to make it better-written, not really changing the meaning. I don't have a problem with restoring the footnote, but I also don't feel strongly that it's necessary.
But since we are discussing footnotes, I'm thinking that we might want to retain the existing sentence, "This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors", but give it another kind of footnote. Something like: Editors often regard "outing" as something that is done specifically to other users. However, there has also been a severe problem with postings that maliciously reveal personal information of non-notable persons who are not editors, which is a completely unacceptable use of Wikipedia. Therefore, this policy applies to non-editors as well as editors. Or something like that. And it could go on to discuss BLPs as well, or not. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:03, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Honestly, we could probably resolve almost everything here by changing the nutshell to read "You may not use Wikipedia to make threats, repeated annoying and unwanted contacts, repeated personal attacks; to intimidate; or to post personal information about other people, whether or not the information is true, unless it has already been posted by them on Wikipedia." Yeah, the other sentence can be improved, too. But the nutshell only talks about editors, while there is a great deal of use of Wikipedia to harass people who aren't editors. Risker (talk) 00:16, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I just looked at the current nutshell, and what you proposed here would be a big improvement. But there are still good reasons to also make the discussed sentence clearer. This isn't an either/or – and the sentence is just plain confusing. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:46, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, that sentence is squeezed in. I think we should revise the entire first paragraph and simply say You may not post personal information about other people, whether or not the information is true, unless it has already been posted on Wikipedia. This applies to members of the public, readers, and editors; and applies to article subjects under some circumstances such as repeated BLP violations or adding unsourced pejorative content, either inside or outside of article space. In fact, I'd probably cut back about 50% of the entire content of the page, but that's because I actually read and write policies all the time. Risker (talk) 01:09, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I think that you should propose that (more formally). As to where, I don't know, since this talk page now has as many proposals as there are editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:14, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
And that suggestion, as I've said above, is already covered by BLP and Outing. This whole policy should be cut down massively, that we agree on. It should only deal with editor to editor harassment that falls outside of BLP and Outing. Any member of the public, including an editor with a disclosed identity, is already covered by BLP. Posting personal, undisclosed, information about another editor is already covered by Outing. You can't harass a public figure without falling afoul of either of those policies. You can't harass another editor by posting undisclosed personal information with falling afoul of Outing. There's no point in redundant policies. This policy should only address the types of editor on editor harassment that fall outside of the scope of either BLP or Outing. Capeo (talk) 02:49, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Capeo, it's possible I'm being dense and not understanding what you're getting at, but both here and above you've made reference to things "already covered by BLP and Outing". WP:OUTING is a redirect to Wikipedia:Harassment#Posting of personal information, i.e. the exact section under discussion here. It can't be "already" covered by outing; outing has pretty much always been defined as a form of harassment. "Posting of personal information" was in the very first revision. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:08, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
What he is getting at, is the increasingly stupid suggestions that posting personal information of 'people' is harrassment regardless of the circumstances. As written the current wording prohibits almost all of our biographies. It would prohibit standard discussion at many noticeboards regarding sources. Risker's suggestions which she believes to be an improvement, if anything make it even worse. This policy is currently not fit for purpose and is heading in a direction that means it will be blanket ignored. Either of Risker's suggestions above are unenforceable. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:51, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Opabinia regalis, you're not being dense, I'm being less than clear. When I say Outing I mean, as I've always seen it traditionally enforced, the posting of previously undisclosed personal information about another editor. That's been agreed upon policy for ages but what we're talking about here is a scope creep that seems well beyond that. Similarly, the posting of derogatory, needlessly personal, or unsourced info about article subjects or any non-editor really is covered by BLP. So, as far as privacy issues, I'm not seeing a scenario that isn't already covered. If there is a specific scenario that I'm missing then the wording should be changed only enough to address that scenario. The wording that Risker proposed above, taken at face value, would not even allow us to discuss the suitability of someone as a source if they are not already an article subject. The second clause of the second sentence is especially confusing because BLP already applies to the first part of the sentence and "adding unsourced pejorative content, either inside or outside of article space" is a BLP violation. So saying "BLP violation or" (emphasis mine) is simply confusing and makes it sound like the latter isn't a BLP violation to begin with. My, admittedly long-winded, point is what specific type of harassment are we trying to address that wasn't already addressed by prior policy? I'm sure there are scenarios I may be missing that aren't already covered but I'm failing to see one. We should be trying to tighten policy to address specifics that aren't already addressed, not broaden it to the point that it becomes near meaningless or literally makes normal editing procedures impossible. Capeo (talk) 13:37, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
See, this is what I mean. It's pretty clear that many people posting on this topic don't actually believe that harassment is, in fact, harassment. Let me tell you the whole story of the "X is a faggot" post. See, it doesn't stop there; the edit on Wikipedia is just Phase 1 of the harassment. The diff is then emailed to a bunch of people, it's posted on facebook, it's used to brutalize the victim repeatedly as long as it is still in existence in the article. The whole thing falls apart once the edit is redacted or suppressed and the account blocked, since the diff isn't useful at all, and a link to the page won't show the harassing statement anymore. Now, really. Why would anyone not consider that harassment? That was the purpose of the post, to harass some guy going to that school. (You can now imagine the posts about teachers and principals, which generally includes allegations of sexual impropriety, drug-taking, drug selling, or (in the case of male teachers) being cuckolded by male students who find the teacher's wife "hot to trot".) These are harassing statements. They should result in not just the usual level-1 warning for a BLP violation, but indefinite block of the account that posts the information. In other words, the normal penalties associated with BLP violations are insufficient; THAT is why this kind of harassment is included in this policy, because the penalties justified under this policy are significantly stronger. And none of this, at all, is covered under OUTING in any formulation. And incidentally, this policy as written and with the intention of the proposed change that I wrote has been successfully enforced for many years. Just because some people don't like it doesn't mean it's unenforceable. Risker (talk) 22:37, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Risker, you're right as I wasn't taking into consideration that BLP is subject to DS rules requiring awareness of the DS first. I was thinking the harassing editor could be indeffed on the spot through BLP. Given that they can't there needs to be a policy outlined that gives admins the latitude to indef for that type of harassment as soon as it's detected. All that said I still can't support the formulation that includes non-editors in the first paragraph of the privacy section. It's unwieldy and reads as though editors wouldn't be able to properly vet sources. I think Jytdog's suggestion of a new section dealing with the harassment of people outside of the editing community is the best way to go. I apologize for not understanding what you were getting at sooner. Capeo (talk) 13:49, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
We have bunches of posted personal information of non-editors on every BLP article. While some types of personal information about non-editors is not allowed some is. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:23, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Editors are defining terms in different ways, and that inevitably gives rise to misunderstanding.
The term "outing", as it is understood by most members of the community, means something specific: outing of another editor. Not everybody sees it that way, but many do. That is why so many editors, in good faith, find it jarring to refer to outing of non-editors.
There is a problem on Wikipedia: malicious users post personal information of non-editors as a form of doxing. It usually gets oversighted promptly, so we don't actually see it frequently, but it happens, and it's completely at odds with what Wikipedia stands for.
So we have some editors here who object to applying the policy to non-editors, and others who want it to apply that way because of something we can all agree should be prohibited.
If everyone just keeps an open mind, I think that we can all agree about that. What needs to happen is to find a way to say clearly that posting of personal information of non-editors is prohibited, whether or not it is the same thing as posting personal information of editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:48, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
This "posting of personal information of non-editors is prohibited" is simply wrong. If it were correct we would have deleted every BLP we have.
That some keep stating this is concerning. If those who support such wording do not in fact wish every BLP to be deleted they need to figure out other wording to mean what they mean.
And to tell you the truth I am not sure what they mean or want to do? If they believe unreferenced content / attacks against people do not belong on WP, that I very strongly support. I support it per WP:V our second pillar. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:39, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
I believe that there's a disconnect in defining the problem; and I thank Doc James for highlighting it. As I conceive it, the question of what is (or what should be) allowed and what should be prohibited is multidimensional - including at least vectors for the category of person (article subject, source author, other) and the category of information (public, personal, private). Some personal information (legal name, DOB) is permitted, but only for some classes of persons (article subjects). Some other personal information (common name, work history) is permitted for a wider class of persons (article subjects, source authors), but may be limited to certain discussions (for source authors, discussions of reliability). Some personal information (SSN, bank account details, etc) is private and is never permitted . It should be possible to compose prose which reflects this. It should also be clear that even though some personal information about some people is permitted in certain circumstances it does not follow that personal information in general should be permitted. Hope I am clearer than usually found and that this helps clarify the discussion. - Ryk72'c.s.n.s.'03:52, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
To expand, when people say "posting of personal information of non-editors is prohibited" (I believe that) they mean "posting of personal information of non-editors is prohibited with certain exceptions". (I also believe that) when they read This "posting of personal information of non-editors is prohibited" is simply wrong. they interpret it as "posting of any personal information of any non-editors should not be prohibited". (I firmly believe that that is not the intended meaning, but that it is, at least in part, the perceived meaning.) - Ryk72'c.s.n.s.'04:20, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
I do not see anyone here arguing that posting all personal information of non editors should be allowed. In fact everyone agrees posting some information (especially when not verifiable by a reliable and notable source) should not be allowed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:37, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
Excellent! Should a (not necessarily this) policy prohibit posting of A. personal information of persons who are neither article subjects nor source authors? B. personal information about source authors which is not related to determination of source reliability? C. private personal information of any person? - Ryk72'c.s.n.s.'06:01, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
(A) It depends. If there is an ad of someone recruiting editors for Wikipedia that is currently allowed to be posted. (B) A lot of journal article contain "personal information" such as the authors email. We cannot expect Wikipedians to go through all the sources they link to to verify that their is no personal information not related to determining source reliability. (C) What is the definition of private personal information? The WMF defines private as details they collect (does not relate to details publically avaliable on the internet). Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:08, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
A1. Would it be possible to link to a representative example of such an advertisement? A2. What personal information would be posted in a Talk page notice stating "This article has been the subject of an advertisement soliciting paid editing. See: 1"? A3.1 What other actions is it proposed that editors should be able to take "on Wiki" to address COI editing? A3.2 What personal information would be posted if those actions were taken? B. I do not see anyone arguing that editors should not be able to post links to sources (or even potential sources) based on their contents; nor anyone arguing that editors should be required to vet the contents of sources to which they post links. What personal information would be posted in a link or reference to a (presumably reliably published) journal article? C. The WMF's definition of private flows from the Privacy Act of 1974, and is based on what they are legally required to care about. My meaning aligns with that at Personally identifiable information, which provides a list of examples. While, we have obvious exceptions for information of encyclopedic value (e.g. birth dates & birth places of article subjects); I would consider "national identification number, passport number, telephone number" to be exemplars of the type of information meant. Should a (not necessarily this) policy prohibit posting of national identification numbers, passport number, telephone numbers of individual persons? - Ryk72'c.s.n.s.'07:42, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
While this is good "I do not see anyone arguing that editors should not be able to post links to sources". But some are saying that links that contain this type of private information can "NEVER" be linked to. If that is the case than they are saying that editors should not be able to post links to many academic sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
@Doc James: I read & re-read the discussion on this page, but could not, in truth, find an editor saying that off-site information can never be linked to. I would, if possible, like your thoughts on A3.1; but (again having re-read everything) consider that the question posed twice (or more?) by Opabinia regalis is the most pertinent: Why is dealing with undisclosed paid content as content not sufficient? - Ryk72'c.s.n.s.'15:34, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
Yeah that makes sense Ryk72. So it seems there are four classes of person, and I wonder if would be best to treat each class specifically, for clarity.., the four classes being:
Editors here.
Not editors here, but BLP subjects
Not editors here, but sources
Not editors here, not BLP subjects, and not sources
Sure there's overlap (a person could be 1, 2, and 3), but let's elide that for now, and anyway, a person is generally treated in one of these roles depending on the context.
Could we come up with a simple rule? We have a lot of the building blocks already:
(Editors here): our harassment rules apply.
(Not editors here, but BLP subjects): our BLP rules apply.
(Not editors here, but sources): we don't have a rule, but could put one together maybe: "Free discussion of the qualifications of individuals as reliable sources is allowed, in discussions of the reliability of a source; no private information, no [monkey business -- however you want to write that]". (This would be the hard one, as it appears that some people think we should be constrained here, so some jaw-jaw would be required I guess.)
(Not editors here, not BLP subjects, and not sources): we maybe don't have a rule, but could make one pretty quick: "Never. Don't do it. The default is that you will say nothing about such people. Why would you? You'd better have a damn good reason if called on it. Exceptions made for benign and restrained references ('My wife is also an opthmologist') but the default is silence" Herostratus (talk) 04:43, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
My suggestion would be that: adding page content, discussing page content, and discussing sources does not violate the outing policy when carried out in full compliance with WP:BLP. I think that's what editors are really concerned about in this context. No one wants to be accused of outing when editing in good faith, and such editing is not what this policy is supposed to be about. The problem arose because saying that the policy applies fully to "non-editors" makes it sound to some editors like the normal content of BLP pages and the normal discussion of sources could be a violation. (Please see also #Basic principles and #Proposed section on non-editors, below.) --Tryptofish (talk) 01:03, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
Re "discussing sources in full compliance with BLP"... I mean, that's a very high bar. It means never saying anything negative without providing a good proximate ref, and not saying a lot of things at all. You can't really express the opinion "Smith is not trustworthy" at all, since you wouldn't write than in article. Do we really want that high a bar?
Sure, BLP isn't always enforced that strongly on talk pages, but it's supposed to be and is sometimes. And if BLP were to apply to discussing sources, its likely it would honored mostly in the breach, except exactly when you don't want it: when someone is trying to quash objections to a dubious source. Up to now I think BLP has been pretty much ignored in source discussions. Let's either make sure to keep it that way, or have a big discussion first. If we end up with "Oh yeah and treat sources like BLPs too" as a not-thought-thru aside, that'd not be good. Herostratus (talk) 02:44, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, you are right about that. It's surprisingly difficult to come up with good wording for this stuff. I do think that discussing in full compliance is something that is always safe, insofar as that goes, but the question then becomes how much noncompliance does it take to rise to the level of violating the harassment policy. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:23, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
Community discussion is completely broken
The dynamics of community discussion about this policy are completely broken. How do we even begin to fix that? Jytdog (talk) 03:30, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
