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.
That was a terrible result, because we already had clear proof that the subject's own PR people use male pronouns for Lonsdale, and do not take that "tree" stuff seriously; that no one in the press (independent reliable sources) do either; and several pieces have been published criticizing Lonsdale for exploiting transgender/nonbinary and sexual-preference issues to get attention, as well as engaging in other nonsense along "look at me, I'm so special" lines. We even had a WT:MOS discussion about this. That block should be retroactively vacated as erroneous, not just for exoneration, and not just because it brings the entire project into disrepute, but because it has a palpable chilling effect on editors and their ability to openly assess claims about biographical subjects. This was seriously the worst block I have seen in an entire decade, and if I'd known about it at the time, I would have strenuously opposed it with a mountain of evidence. I'm rather ashamed of the project that too few stepped up to do so sufficiently while I was away; it's not like I was the only editor who knew the background of this. WP should not totally shit its pants in public when one editor takes a break. The only explanation I can come up with is that the chilling effect of all this extremist cancel-culture and language-change activism was already so palpable by that point that hardly any editors dared to stand up and call "bullshit". So, now it's an order of magnitude worse. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 13:47, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
I'll try to remember to point out this tree stupidity in any and all Code of Conduct discussions, and in case I forget to do so I invite everyone else to mention it. The Foundation has countless Movement Strategy items it's pushing, including rebranding the Foundation itself as "Wikipedia" and attempting to trash our Notability and Reliable Sourcing policies in the name of cultural-equity. (They want us to include non-notable topics and non-published information collected from tribes, based on claimed "oral histories" recorded and uploaded by any random-idiot-on-the-internet.) The Foundation's Strategy team had no clue what they were doing, and they explicitly rejected getting consensus for ANY of this crap. I am considering rallying the global community to get the entire strategy process declared invalid and illegitimate. I've already submitted "legitimacy of the Strategy process" as a question for the next Board election. Alsee (talk) 05:21, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
I'm not actually sure that Treegate's all the relevant to UCoC since, as it turned out, the whole thing actually had nothing to do with anyone's gender, sexuality, or anything else for that matter -- just some mixed-up people who didn't know how to read and interpret sources. It's really more a lesson in WP:RS or something. Plus I'd appreciate not having a target painted on my back. EEng19:38, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
MOS concerning the former names of deceased Trans people
The list of protected classes at WP:Harassment#TYPES does not match that at WP:No personal attacks#WHATIS. This should be fixed, presumably by copy-pasting from the latter to the former, i.e. keeping not eliminating classes. If there are any other WP:P&G pages with such lists in them, they also need to be synchronized. We should not tolerate a WP:POLICYFORK any time one has been identified, or it just engenders wikilawyering, system-gaming, and other problems. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 06:40, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, this appears to me to be the first case of inconsistencies between the Universal Code of Conduct and our conduct policies. The UCoC lists age, mental or physical disabilities, physical appearance, national, religious, ethnic and cultural background, caste, social class, language fluency, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex or career field. Per https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct. I think that because the UCoC has not been ratified by the community it cannot not be enforced, but that's obviously not the view of the WMF, who say that "It may not be circumvented, eroded, or ignored by Wikimedia Foundation officers or staff nor local policies of any Wikimedia project". So, as best as I can tell, we MUST expand both lists to match the one from the UCoC. Vexations (talk) 11:53, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
I can't agree with that. WP having its own internal list of protected classes for its particular set of policies in no way "circumvent[s], erode[s], or ignore[s]" the UCoC, because our policies are not addressing the same line-items as UCoC. The very fact that UCoC says what it does means that, legally, it is irrelevant for WMF and UCoC purposes what our policies say and whether they even exist. That is, the wording in our policy really has nothing to do with UCoC, and is specific to additional problems we're trying to address at this project among the individuals who choose to use it. Keep in mind also that UCoC was explicitly developed deal with projects that do not create their own sufficient (or any) policies; it was clear from day one that it was not an end-run around projects creating their own well-developed policies. What we have here is a situation that, were it to implicate both a WP policy and UCoC, a person would have recourse with WMF under UCoC if they are in a class specified by UCoC, even if they did not have recourse under en.WP policy because our policy lacked that class. I.e., we'd be punting to WMF to deal with it. And UCoC exists so that WMF can deal with it.
All that said, I don't doubt that some people will want to "marry" our wording with that of the UCoC. But that is not the proposal here, which is to just fix an internal policy-fork. I suspect that adopting UCoC terminology into en.WP policy is going to be a knock-down-drag-out squabble, and if you want get that unpleasant mess underway, the place to do it would be WP:Village pump/Proposals. I can firmly predict that the first sticking point will be "language fluency" and whether WP:CIR expecting sufficient English competence to edit the site content in a doing-more-good-than-damage manner constitutes "discrimination" based on fluency. It's likely that parts of UCoC will not survive long in their present state because they are not workable when applied to editing responsibilities. I'm hardly the first to say so; it's been under constant fire during its entire drafting, and as usual WMF has taken very little of the criticism to heart, preferring to listen to paid consultants rather than the community. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 13:25, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, I'd rather not "get that unpleasant mess underway". Practically, your proposal meas that we'd add ethnicity, nationality and political beliefs from WP:NPA#WHATIS to WP:Harassment#TYPES but not physical appearance, cultural background, caste, social class and language fluency from the UCoC. Is that right? Vexations (talk) 14:46, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Yes. There's no en.WP consensus to use those UCoC categorizations internally (I think several of them would meet with consensus, but the last of them probably would not, and there might be opposition to adding the first because it doesn't generally come up here, and "caste" maybe because it has limited applicability outside India and might be taken as redundant with other categories). However, I wonder whether "political beliefs" actually has consensus; we are necessarily in a position to restrict the pushing of far-right viewpoints and sourcing more that far-left ones, because their idea of "sourcing" isn't compatible with what WP means by "reliable", and several viewpoints typical of that sector are directly inimical to WP's (and WMF's purpose); cf. WP:NONAZIS. But, again, that's not a worm can I would open right now. Just make the on-site lists consistent, then argue later about what should be in that list. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 15:59, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, I have no objections to synchronizing, consolidating, or transcluding from a single source, a list of protected groups that includes all the classes currently listed at WP:NPA#WHATIS. I have no objections to adding appearance, cultural background, caste (we have lots of editors from India) and social class. I do have strong objections to including language fluency. Vexations (talk) 17:35, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
To clarify, I don't mean we should entertain adding in any of them from UCoC now. That's a VPPRO discussion. I just want to fix this policy fork. I think I'm just going to do it. People can yell at me later if they disagree. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 19:47, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
I support having the same list in WP:Harassment and WP:No personal attacks, but I would oppose copying anything from the Code of Conduct. As Vex said, the UCoC has not been ratified by the community it cannot not be enforced. The FRAMBAN situation was resolved with a consultation and global consensus that Trust&Safety return to their traditional scope of operations, which the Foundation explicitly agreed to.[2] If they violate that commitment then they are not only reinstating the FRAMBAN conflict, they are piling bad-faith abuse by the Foundation on top. Sadly, I anticipate that is exactly what they intend to do. Alsee (talk) 06:07, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
Support merging Wikipedia policies per proposal and oppose adding anything from UCoC as previously discussed by others. Huggums537 (talk) 04:02, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
I often re-read the section of our policy related to hounding, because sometimes I worry that I may inadvertently fall afoul of it. I have never "followed" an editor in order to disruptively edit or to negatively affect their enjoyment of editing. However, I have often stumbled upon a particularly egregious contribution and then looked at the creator's edit history to see if there were any additional serious violations of PAGs or tendentious editing. Example: this revert led me to this one, as I saw it in the user's history. I wanted to ask for some clarification from someone who knows more about the history of the policy and consensus surrounding it, or perhaps from someone who knows how it has been practically applied in the past. Based on my reading, the policy seems to hinge highly on intent. But intent is subjective, and it's unclear how we would establish that someone is not lying about why they did what they did. I'm sure there's some element of this along the lines of you know hounding when you see it, but how do you feel secure in knowing that you will never accidentally fall afoul of WP:HOUNDING merely by reverting the same user's unambiguously problematic edits on multiple articles or similar? Thanks in advance for your advice. AlexEng(TALK)21:28, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
The Harassment#Hounding section helpfully includes 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. In fact, such practices are recommended both for Recent changes patrol and WikiProject Spam. Section Harassment#What harassment is not is also helpful.
Contribution histories exists to aid with normal editing, and including clean up of patterns of bad edits by a user. If you stumble across a random stranger engaging in vandalism, with competence problems, spamming, not knowing or misunderstanding policy, or whatever, it is appropriate to clean up the problems. If it involves a significant number of pages it is probably be a good idea to contact the user seeking resolution to avoid a large scale back-and-forth. "Resolution" can mean either agreement, no response in a reasonable time frame, or, if necessary, outside affirmation that cleaning up all affected pages is appropriate.
On the other hand, if you are in the middle of a fight with someone, it's a generally bad idea to go fishing though though their history. If you do have reason to look at their history, any edits you make therefrom should be minimal and you want to be confident that the community would consider those edits clearly constructive. If you are in the middle of a fight about X, and X is on multiple pages, wait for some sort of resolution before fixing the other pages. See m:The_Wrong_Version and m:Eventualism. (Exceptions: Content disputed under WP:BLP explicitly comes off the page until consensus to restore it, and things like blatant vandalism should be cleaned up immediately.)
On the third hand the Wikimedia Foundation Trust&Safety team either lack understanding or competence in this area, and they have effectively asserted an an intent to resume abusive actions. You are extremely unlikely to encounter Trust&Safety, and it's maybe overkill for me to even mention it. However... if anyone ever does get a harassment/stalking warning from Trust&Saftey, and they are confident that they were doing proper policy-enforcement or policy-compliant cleanup, my advice would be to alert the community at Village Pump. Let the community evaluate the work and assert whether the edits were appropriate.
I agree that it's annoying to need to be concerned with this at all, when cleaning stuff up. Just remember that editors know stuff needs to be cleaned up, we want stuff to be cleaned up, and any reasonable editor is going to be looking for clear evidence of an ongoing war, retaliatory editing, or some sort of malevolent intent, for something to be considered harassment. Alsee (talk) 17:14, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
The one area that we have good reason to believe is risky is deletion tagging for lack of notability. If you find someone creating multiple articles containing copyvios then you are probably safe, but someone who has created a plethora of articles that don't qualify for A7 but you think are not really notable? Best to make the point in an AFD "there seem to be a lot more bios in this category of players who were in that team's squad but never played a full game" without saying that they were all created by the same editor. You don't want to be the one person going through that editor's contributions tagging a shedload of articles for deletion. The Trust and Safety team has an inclusionist tendency. ϢereSpielChequers09:36, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers I don't think it is actually an inclusionist issue. I believe the problem was that Trust&Safety liked the content and liked the author of the content. In particular they want to support and protect woman/minority and/or LGBT editors, they want to support and protect woman/minority and/or LGBT articles. Unfortunately that descend into pathological prejudice - assuming (garbage) content was by definition good because it was woman/minority and/or LGBT content, and assuming an abusive editor was by definition the victim because they were woman/minority and/or LGBT.
On a related note I happened to notice that in Trust&Safety's research on harassment, they interviewed astonishing number of "victims" who have have themselves been globally-locked or banned from one-or-more major wikis for abusive behavior. I'm sure the interviewees had abundant stories about how they were never ever wrong, and how they faced a unanimous conspiracy to persecute them. Alsee (talk) 08:13, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
To my mind, thinking that some content belongs here despite more deletionist editors thinking it doesn't is the very essence of inclusionism. Yes, you can be inclusionist about a specific area - Amateur sport, regional government in countries whose regions are far larger than many countries, obscure military battles that other military historians would count as skirmishes; whilst still going with consensus or even being deletionist in other areas (I can remember one spectacular desysop where the editor concerned was generally deletionist but overly inclusionist in one specific BLP area). To my mind the dispute you are referring to was in part an inclusionist/deletionist spat, one where I as a moderate inclusionist thought that a group of inclusionists were using the wrong tactics and tools to protect content that I wouldn't go out of my way to defend being in an encyclopaedia. As for whether T&S liked a particular editor, or conversely disliked another editor, I'm aware that they acted in a way that left that perception in the community. To this day I'm not actually sure whether T&S were playing favourites with people, or going about inclusionism in a way I wouldn't recommend, or a mix of the two. But I can understand those who came away from that assuming either or both. My own take from that incident, and from some of the worst aspects of the RFA process, is that trying to change policy by criticising those who follow a policy you dislike is, or should be considered as, a form of harassment. Policy should be changed by holding RFCs to discuss policy changes, with no rancour to those who defend the old policy but acquiesce to the new one. The key mistakes T&S made in that incident were firstly to sanction someone for following policy they disagreed with, and secondly for not explaining which policy or policies they would sanction people for following. That they were being inclusionist doesn't bother me, I would have no little or no problem if policy were changed to include everything that could be reliably referenced, and there is a ton of stuff that I know could have articles if that was the policy. My only involvement in such a broadening of Wikipedia would be that the typos I patrol would become more numerous. Such little content that I create or want to create easily makes current notability criteria, and I don't spend time on AFDs about articles that don't quite meet notability criteria. ϢereSpielChequers10:26, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
"Inappropriate or unwanted public or private communication, following, or any form of stalking, when directed at another editor, violates the harassment policy. "
WP:OWH notes that "Inappropriate or unwanted public or private communication, following, or any form of stalking, when directed at another editor, violates the harassment policy. " Is there a better way to phrase this? I can imagine that most editors would find public communications directed at them on AN(I)/AE to be unwanted when they are accused of a conduct issue. While it's in the section on off-wiki harassment, the phrasing seems to be overly broad. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 14:30, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
Support It's understandable that people want to list their favorite bad thing but that is not needed and a list of forbidden items gives the impression that anything unlisted is ok. Johnuniq (talk) 00:21, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Support per previous discussion, to prevent anyone thinking that harassment for non-listed reasons might be somehow more ok. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:11, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Support as any list will always be incomplete. We could add a legalism such as "for illustration and not by way of limitation, harassment includes..." but I really don't see why we should have a list at all. Harassment is forbidden in any form for any reason, and the policy should state that plainly. firefly ( t · c ) 16:25, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose. Wow, are you guys thinking this thru? This is a huge, huge foundational change to the operation of the Wikipedia. Protected classes should be protected, and it already says "etc." which, since it directly follows a list of protected classes, clearly means "other characteristics of that type" and would presumably cover bald people, left handed people, and like that. But if we protect all behaviors... this would be a big problem. But that is what "for any reason" (emphasis in original) says. Yes I get the one could say "Well, is says that, but it really means this". Nope nope. Write what you mean or else you are opening up a huge can of worms. Also: please give difs about when this has been an actual problem. Much more below. Herostratus (talk) 17:16, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Support - the proposal is an improvement over the current language. We don't need to specify protected classes because harassment of people who are not in protected classes is also prohibited. Really, we can just say "Harassment is prohibited." We don't need the qualification "for any reason" (harassment is always unreasonable; there is no reason that can justify harassment; if it were justified, it wouldn't be harassment, by definition), or even "of editors" (harassment on wikipedia of non-editors is also prohibited). Once it gets down to "Harassment is prohibited," then we can remove entirely because the sentence is superfluous; the whole page says harassment is prohibited. Levivich18:01, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
"Do not stop [trolls, vandals, WP:NOTHERE peeps, undeclared PR flacks, serial block evaders, and other toxic editors] from "enjoying Wikipedia" by "repeated annoying". Please proceed, governor. Herostratus (talk) 18:27, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose but support Sasha's counter-proposal to include both sentences. For practical reasons, it's important to explicitly list some of the more common reasons harassment occurs. The proposer is also correct that there should be an explicit prohibition against all harassment first. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 19:29, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Weak support, as in I'm not really sure. I think a case can be made that the existing language is reassuring to users who are in those potentially disadvantaged groups that might need reassurance, but I also see the value of all-encompassing language. On the other hand, as noted below, this may be made moot by upcoming decisions from WMF. And more immediately, I do have concerns that "for any reason" opens up the door to needless wikilawyering by disruptive editors who don't want their disruption to be, um, disrupted. Instead of saying "for any reason", it might be better to eliminate language about "reasons", and just say "Harassment is not allowed." Although we all know that the difference between harassing a female editor because she is female and reporting a vandal because they are vandalizing falls in the category of "we know it when we see it", we should nonetheless avoid language that the vandal can claim is "self-evident" justification. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:33, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
The lack of certain other classes and the arguments seen below that those other classes should be given lower priority is decidedly non-reassuring. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:07, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Statements about harassment serve [at least] two purposes: setting up rules for people to follow, yes, but also reassuring people who may worry about being harassed in this space.
It is very unlikely, to use an example given above, that someone will approach a space worried that it will take socks-based harassment seriously. But there are people who may come to a space concerned about whether who would be comforted to see e.g. race/gender/age/religion named in particular.
I'm curious what led to this proposal? Are there groups that felt insufficiently protected? Or is it more in the spirit of "all lives matter"? Naming certain groups doesn't mean we can't say that harassment of any kind is not permitted. If there is a real worry that the current guideline is insufficiently inclusive, I'd prefer to see the list expanded, or at least retained in some way while changing other language. We can say that harassment for any reason is not allowed (and we do more or less say this, but it could be said more explicitly with the line in question) and also add e.g. "...regardless of age, ability...". — User:Rhododendrites16:35, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
I would also be supportive of language of the kind suggested by Rhododendrites.
Oppose. This strikes me as a non-problem. Has anyone ever actually interpreted the current wording to mean that harassment is allowed for reasons not specifically listed? Is there a specific dispute that I missed that catalyzed this discussion? The current wording describes groups that are particularly vulnerable to harassment. It is clearly not an exhaustive list of reasons that people might harass someone, and to think that it is would of course be ridiculous. Mz7 (talk) 05:40, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose, albeit weakly, per Rhododendrites. I'm not convinced the new wording will avoid all problems. Imagine a bad faith sockpuppeteer claiming an admin harassed them because the admin was constantly following them and blocking them and telling them to stop in stern or mean ways. We know it's frivolous and not within the spirit of the policy, but having to explain that "for any reason" doesn't actually mean any reason makes us look like we are not serious about harassment or that our harassment policy is not really as stern as we word it. While a minor detail, the policy includes etc meaning that the list is not exhaustive, and the text of the policy makes clear that the examples listed in the lead are not the only ways to violate the policy. As Rhododendrites states, there's a benefit in explicitly listing examples, and without a clear and concrete benefit I don't think we should be (over)simplifying the policy lead. — Wug·a·po·des06:26, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
I'll note that I support CaptainSasha's proposal. It addresses most of my concerns and I think better than the current text. — Wug·a·po·des02:17, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
Neutral I disagree that only harassment that is discriminatory or based on protected characteristics is prohibited. Harassment on the basis of non-protected characteristics you dislike, or because you have a personal grudge against a user, is also prohibited. At the same time, I agree with Mz7 that it seems to be a non-problem. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:58, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
At this ANI a user brought up their UN-given human rights to excuse their misbehaviour, as well as misinterpreting ArbCom's private conversations, and kept using those as a rationale to avoid sanctions. The fact is that disruptive editors will grasp at straws to continue their disruption, irrelevant of what a policy does or doesn't say. So I also disagree that this opens the door for wikilawyering. As usual, any claim is assessed for validity at ANI, and invalid claims are thrown out. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:02, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
CapitalSasha's proposal below is a much better solution. It is true that we do not tolerate harassment for any reason. But having a list of some common examples is helpful. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓21:12, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
Strongest possible support Quite frankly, I am alarmed by some of the comments above that seem to be suggesting that using simplified all-inclusive language here would be inappropriate because disruptive editors don't deserve to be protected. I just can't wrap my head around that. Vandals, spammers, etc are (usually) human beings too (save for the occasional completely automated vandalbot or spambot) and do not deserve harassment any more than any constructive editor does. "Do not feed the trolls" is not and must not be synonymous with "it is okay to harass the trolls". After all, the ultimate and ideal goal is to have vandals and trolls turn around and become constructive contributors, but harassing them (or even failing to explicitly protect them from harassment) is only going to have the opposite effect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:187:4581:7F50:49A5:6C5E:30C9:B6CC (talk) 21:36, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
Weak oppose (I've been a victim of one of the worst possible forms of harassment on Wikipedia, in that someone found out my home address and work phone number and engaged in a years-long campaign against me, so I don't want anyone saying this has to do with "sympathy for harassers". Moreover, I trust the judgement of many of the editors who have already !voted "support", and so am confident that this is a difference of opinion/interpretation, hence "weak" oppose.) In my experience, 90% of "harassment" accusations on Wikipedia are of the type "I want to engage in disruptive editing but User X knows how to check my contribs and has been preventing me from damaging Wikipedia". ArbCom and the community have recognized, time after time, that this is not harassment, but the proposed change seems likely to make the problem worse rather than better. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:33, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Vandals, spammers, etc are (usually) human beings too is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about. Obviously, finding out the real world identity of a vandal or spammer and engaging in bona fide harassment of them would be inappropriate, but it seems like a near-certainty that what is being described here is not "harassment" but rather good-faith consultation of the contribs page to prevent disruption. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:37, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
True enough, this policy says (subsection threats) and I paraphrase only.... that appropriate use of normal Wikipedia enforcement procedures is OK. When the dust settles on the UofC (being discussed elsewhere in this thread) it would make sense to bubble up that concept in some language into the first paragraph or two... to make clear that using our P&G appropriately is not disruptive editing, or making a threat, or harrasment, or being uncivil or (whatever that page happens to be about). NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:40, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Look at the IP !vote immediately above mine (relevant text quoted above): best case scenario, this is a "not broke" situation where things already work and this benign change would not fix anything, but more likely it would have unintended consequences. If even a single person posts on ANI about how I'm being harassed because of the content of my edits, and WP:HARASS makes it clear that harassment for any reason is unacceptable, that is detrimental to the credibility of this policy in the eyes of the community, and would make instances of genuine harassment harder to deal with. Worse, it might even make it easier for a CurtisNaito (or any number of more recent examples I'd rather not name) to actually get someone sanctioned for "harassment". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:52, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Agree with those getting behind CapitalSasha's proposal. Maintains reference to the current classes, which is valuable per Rhododendrites' comments below - while also expanding the definition, which is valuable per nom. Retswerb (talk) 04:21, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose, but support CaptainSasha's proposal. I recognise the intent behind the change - and personally think it's important to cover all bases. What if a crazed Wikipedian decides to start harassing, say, rail fans for some reason. Weirder things have happened, and we shouldn't wait to cover stuff post facto. However, as Rhododendrites has stated, it's important to keep certain qualities in there to point out that harassment based on them is unacceptable. - NovovTC09:01, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose: no explanation has been given of where this change would affect the outcome of practical situations in some desirable manner. Wikilawyering will always follow any possible wording when it comes to a major conduct rule, but I don't actually see any evidence that people are wikilawyering with regularity/success to say "I'm not engaging in harassment because X is not listed in this particular list". I think I've seen that happen once, maybe, but such people would likely be undeterred from wikilawyering by this change in wording (they'll just find a new angle—that's kind of the point of wikilawyering, that it doesn't relate to the meaning of the policy, but picks apart individual words, no matter what words you choose). On the flip side, Rhododendrites points out that there is a purpose in this wording beyond literal meaning that would be eroded by this change. I'm indifferent to CapitalSasha's proposal. — Bilorv (talk) 22:48, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Neutral. The irony of this whole discussion is that a few days ago when I proposed to include "spirituality" (or creed) in addition to "religion" because religion doesn't adequately cover all forms of belief (WT:No personal attacks#Adding spirituality as a group of people that shouldn't be targeted by personal attacks) it got shot down due to scope creep concerns. Specifically I did so because "religion" as a term isn't inclusive of those that don't follow organized religious practices, as many of those people (such as Native Canadians [3] or Taoists or """""Chinese folk religion""""" or atheists) might not describe their spiritual practices as a "religion". It is funny to me that this proposal is probably going to fail because of the "importance" of mentioning specific qualities that harassment cannot be based upon; given that this logic implicitly declares some forms of spiritual belief or non-belief to be more important than others. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 01:57, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
I think that this discussion has gotten very muddied and there are a lot of different threads going different directions - when I made the counterproposal the intent was just to keep some form of a list of protected classes and I have absolutely no objection to expanding it, my response to EEng wanting to add veganism or atheism was interpreting his suggestion as being made somewhat sarcastically (with the logic being that we shouldn't have any list because it would get too long, as was the argument on your proposal, which I supported), but I would be fine with adding any other categories that people legitimately feel need to be mentioned. CapitalSasha ~ talk02:40, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
Re keeping a list in some manner ... I agree; Re... expanding (or contracting) that list.... I favor mirroring whatever comes out of the UofC when Phase 2 of that process is completed. Re.... how we present this list, in the interest of updating and standardizing our cathartic P&G so its easy to maintain and conveys a uniform and standard message about discrimination on the enWP, I favor standardizing a paragraph to be prominently displayed in the lead, or in a template bubble in the lead, which will appear on each behavioral guideline while we remove the existing text we've patched together helter skelter here and there. Plus if we just use what the board approves in the UofC we don't have to have repeated discussions on this page or that... (PS @Chess: this thread isn't ironic, exactly... I started this thread as an offshoot of your effort at the other page.) NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:46, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
I'll say that the result of this proposal was the opposite of what I expected. I agree that switching over to the UCoC is probably the best solution to this issue that might gain consensus. We can blame the WMF for any issues in phrasing. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 17:36, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose. And supported the proposal byCapitalSasha. First of all, by the inclusion of the bases such as "political beliefs" or "religion" editors would feel safer if they are the minority. While the proposal also covers "political beliefs", it being explicitly stated, in my opinion, creates more sense of security for people that have minority political beliefs in the project. I also do not see why this have to be fixed, as the "etc." in the original version already covers things that are not covered by the main bases. SunDawntalk06:44, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose, say both We should say "We do not allow harassment on the basis of xyz" and also add that "We do not allow harassment for any reason". There is a concept of the protected group getting special consideration when there is a claim of harassment or discrimination. By naming these groups, they get better protection. As an example, some years ago for Wiki Loves Pride I was with a group organizing the development of content about same-sex relationships. A user intervened and suggested that we should support the development of content about all kinds of relationships. Suggestions like this may not appear as harassment to anyone broadly looking for negative behavior, but when we name protected classes, this kind of behavior becomes identifiable as misconduct. Comments about including straight pride in the LGBT+ movement or related arguments like converting the Black Lives Matter movement to All Lives Matter are easier to recognize as harassment when we name protected classes. I support the adoption of an Wikipedia:English Wikipedia non-discrimination policy which names protected classes. I am not asking for special treatment of certain groups, but to get equity, the way we judge complaints by vulnerable groups has to be different than the way we judge complaints against privileged groups. The reality is simply that some powerful demographics are able to harm vulnerable demographics in ways where the reverse is not possible. Blue Rasberry (talk)20:57, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
The issue is that many classes that are similarly targeted for harassment (and sometimes even worse), like Atheists, fat people, ugly people, etc, are not considered protected classes and aren't on that list because many societies either see their abuse as a non-issue, or even sanction it. Using exclusive lists like these is bound to miss many such cases and sends a message to those users that their abuse wouldn't be taken as seriously. People deserve to be treated fairly because they are people, human beings, not because they make some arbitrary list your society draws up. Av = λv (talk) 08:31, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
The issue is that no one has provided any evidence that this has been a real problem on Wikipedia. I feel that many participants in this discussion are tunnel-visioning on one sentence at the end of a paragraph in this 3000-word policy to contrive a problem that doesn't exist. The lead section of the policy doesn't have any kind of list like this, and the next sentence after the sentence in question states: The prohibition against harassment applies equally to all Wikipedians. It is as unacceptable to harass a user with a history of inept or disruptive behavior as it is to harass any other user. In our two-decade history, has anyone ever actually interpreted our policy to mean that harassment is a "non-issue" if it is against people not specifically mentioned in this one sentence of the policy? That interpretation is clearly absurd, and no change to the policy is necessary to clarify that absurdity. Mz7 (talk) 22:12, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
Support. Otherwise people may argue that harassment not in the specified groups is of lesser import. Current version is instruction creep. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:39, 13 July 2021 (UTC).
Support: While this isn't particularly important in a practical sense, the list ends up being very exclusive. As people pointed out, Atheism is a good example of something that doesn't make the list but is not only a common target of harassment, but can also be violently prosecuted in many places. Maybe the most common reason for harassment in real life is appearance, and this doesn't make the list either. As some mentioned above, the list is supposed to reassure people harassment won't be tolerated, but for people who don't make the list, the result is the opposite - they may feel the website won't take their complaints as seriously. It's a telling sign that in the discussion below, one user didn't think Atheists were a common target for harassment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ido66667 (talk • contribs) 08:23, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
Support as more inclusive and clearer and more reassuring. I've looked at and considered #CapitalSasha-counter-proposal, and my mind was already inserting groups into that proposal not represented who may feel discriminated against because they are not identified: new users, users who got into an argument once, any user who does not fall within society "norms" because of their height, weight, intelligence, communication ability or language skills, emotional or mental stability (which may not fall within "disability"), diet choice, political choice, etc. I like the proposal because it is awake to the groups who are not already named in the list, and so may wish to add to it. "Harassment of an editor for any reason is not allowed" is powerful, clear, inclusive, and reassuring for everyone as there is no list. The essence of discrimination is the making of lists. You're either on the list, or you are an other - an "etc", who may be concerned that they will not get the same protection (and this is even more concerning in the CapitalSasha-counter-proposal where those not listed are granted secondary status because those in the list are given "particular" protection over and above those designated as "etc"). With the original proposal we are all people who aim to support each other, not because we are on a list, but because it is the right thing to do. NewsAndEventsGuy's wording also takes into account harassment and discrimination we are not yet aware of. It is simple, clear, inclusive, and powerful. I fully support it. SilkTork (talk) 16:23, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
I appreciate the perspective, SilkTork, but want to push on this some. Defining and naming groups ("making lists" as you said) can certainly be othering, but the un-naming of groups can be similarly discriminatory because it ignores power disparities that exist thereby allowing them to proliferate. A specific tie-in would be criticism of colorblind racial policies, but to stay general, while we prohibit harassment of anyone for any reason, we should not pretend that we do not know the particular axes of oppression at work on our site and society. Harassment on the basis of gender is prohibited, but people of particular genders are overwhelmingly more likely to be harassed. In this RfA talk thread, many prominent women in our community describe the harassment they faced while others point out that they actively hid their gender to prevent harassment. In my outreach work I've worked with many people who left wikipedia due to harassment and they are uniformly women. My colleagues (usually women) make note of the particular dangers facing women who use their real name on Wikipedia; of course using a real name has consequences for everyone, but why is it that nearly every first-last username I see on this site is masculine? By explicitly naming gender harassment as one of many prohibited forms of harassment, we affirm that we recognize our systemic bias and make a specific, concrete commitment to combat it. Should we (again) fail to protect a woman experiencing harassment, the specific prohibition is a powerful rebuke of a community trying to sweep an issue under the rug; far more powerful than a vague "any harassment" would be, especially when that "any" has the non-standard meaning of "whatever gets consensus that day at ANI". This is not merely speculation: a 2010 double-blind study found that children who read storybooks with color-blind ideology ("We want to show everyone that race is not important and that we’re all the same") were less likely to report overt acts of racism and less likely to describe them in ways that would elicit intervention from teachers than students who read storybooks with diversity-valuing ideology ("We want to show everyone that race is important because our racial differences make each of us special"). Similarly, color-blind school assignment policies are associated with an increase in school segregation. Those authors conclude (similar to my main point) that "race-neutral" policies promote ignoring systemic inequalities leading to those inequalities being reproduced. If the goal of this policy proposal is to make the encyclopedia more inclusive, promote reporting of incidents, and retain editors from under-represented groups, abstract liberalism disconnected from our concrete inequalities is the least effective method based on our own editors' annecdotes and empirical research. — Wug·a·po·des21:02, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
I applaud your desire to change the culture... I concur! On the other hand, notice the current verbiage did not prevent all that from happening. It simply isn't doing anything but looking good, like fresh paint on a termite infested wall. If you want to change the culture - an admirable goal! - this text seems a trifling priority to me. But I'm not pushing on any of this until we have a chance to digest UofC Phase 2 results. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:31, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
You clearly don't believe it is a trifle because you authored the proposal and are still replying to comments critical of it; if anything is "fresh paint on a termite infested wall" it is thinking changing a sentence will suddenly make harassment disappear. Im not a fool, I know the lead wording won't have a sudden and intense impact. What will make harassment disappear is challenging the philosophical beliefs and assumptions that paint over and hide systemic inequalities, allowing them to continue under the guise of natural consequences of "neutral" policies. I don't particularly care about the wording, but I do care about SilkTork as I deeply respect their opinions. As I said in their 2020 RfB, I appreciate their perspective on how to create an equitable community as shown by their 2018 ArbCom candidate statement. That is why I specifically addressed him and asked him to reconsider whether his position will effectively bring about the community dynamics I know he wants to promote generally, not only in this single sentence. Some people have studied how the text of institutional policies affects institutional culture and what interventions are effective. If you want to wait for UCoC phase 2, fine, but this isn't my first time considering the causes and solutions for harassment (see June 2020, March 2021, March 2021) so I feel fine opining on the topic based on the evidence and research I have on hand. — Wug·a·po·des01:59, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
The first sentence is emotional and the part after the semi colon identifies a red herring as the reason. Since you have attributed intent that I do not have, and a goal that I do not have, I didn't read past that point, and since I'm not going to do nothing really at least until we hear from UofC phase 2, there's probably no point in having any more WP:FORUM dialogue at this time. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:00, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
Oppose: Some examples, "This is the fifth time you've been warned about creating copyvios. Seriously, knock it off now or else!", "You've reverted this fifteen times in the last seven days? Do you know what a talk page is or are you being deliberately obnoxious?", "AGF is not a suicide pact; giving equal weight to Tommy Robinson and Jayda Fransen is appeasing racists. No fucking thanks, just fuck off". Any of these could be cited as "harassment" for "any reason", since "violating core policies", "not collaborating with others" and "pushing a POV" are part of the subset of "any reason". Ritchie333(talk)
none of those are patterns of behavior targeting an editor to gain advantage of some kind, so they don't match the definition of 'harassment' with or without the proposed change. Examples 2 and 3 strike me as examples of WP:Civility problems, though. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:36, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
Well that proves my point, read it yourself and look for words "hovering" and "stalking". This policy defines harassment as a patterns of behavior focused on a specific editor. The example you provide are standalone examples of someone being uncivil. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 09:57, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
Insults alone, by definition, are not harassment. Harassment is either persistent or widespread and persistent. These are examples of WP:CIVIL violations. Buffs (talk) 03:16, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Support We don't need to spell out every little protected group across every protected society. Harassment is harassment; the reason is irrelevant. If someone referred to someone as "fatty" repeatedly, it would be clear harassment based on the person's weight. We don't need to spell out every single possibility/promote virtue signaling. Stick to the discussion at hand and criticize the arguments, not the person. Buffs (talk) 03:16, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Support - Common sense simplification of wording that reflects practice. Harassment is never okay, and to Ritchie's point, that includes harassing editors who violate policy. We warn, block, WP:RBI and WP:DENY depending on the situation, but we don't insult, threaten, or bully, and we certainly don't harass. ~Swarm~{sting}18:23, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Strong oppose as primary writer and researcher for enwiki's nondiscrimination policy proposal. Will expand in the next day or so. ɱ(talk)19:03, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
@M, when you expand on your thoughts, its great that you drafted a proposed policy to invent yet another mousetrap. Speaking as proposer here, it might not be clear to you where I'm coming from. I favor bold and strong nondiscrimination. I oppose helter skelter custom text here and there and hither and yon. So as you expand, please be sure you don't misconstrue the broad goal that has been elaborated throughtout the lengthy discussion. You can read a pithy summary of where I am coming from at the talk page for your draft policy proposal in this thread. I'd like us to create a new template or banner built on that work and add that to the relevant pages, like this one, so it is uniform and future discussions of this sort will thereafter will tend to be more centralized with the results equally applicable across the spectrum of related pages. At the same time the helter skelter text that appears in various forms hither and yon should be excised and replaced with the standard template or banner. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:32, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
Despite the length of this discussion, no one has provided any compelling evidence that the text you allege to be "helter-skelter" has actually been problematic on Wikipedia. If we are amending policy, I would prefer to do it because it has caused real problems, not just hypothetical ones. Originally, you claimed that the current wording gives the false impression its ok to harass others due to their choice of socks and any other thing left out of this list. Has anyone ever actually had this false impression in an actual user conduct dispute? If so, I would like to see diffs. This interpretation just seems so clearly false to me that no adjustment to the policy is needed for clarification. Yes, harassment for any reason is never allowed—nothing in the current wording of the policy contradicts that. Mz7 (talk) 02:39, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
This discussion is a spinoff from another policy talk page.... the recurring nature, and length, and varied locations for these discussions is a housekeeping/efficiency problem, and creates a maintenence headache.... if the language at the different places diverges that creates the possibility of one kind of problem, and keeping it marching together requires ongoing housekeeping. If the problem with that approach is not intuitively obvious its a bit like trying to drive a car with two different engines, drive shafts, and steerage... one set for the left front wheel and the other for the right. That invites problems, no? I mean, sure the car can hypothetically go down the road but its a lot more difficult than just pulling over and building a sensible unified system now that we're smarter and have some experience. Since UCofC Phase 2 has not yet splashed down, I'm not pushing now. If I decide to do so later, I believe a catalog of all the threads from all the archives with all the ideas for tweaking will serve to support my belief we would be best prepared for FUTURE discussions doing two things. This is hypothesis, I admit, because I'm not pushing now so I'm not offering such a catalog now. If my belief is borne out, the two things we need to do are.... First, removing the past cobbled-together language at different locations so new threads are not popping up at those different locations and we don't have a headache keeping the text synchronized. Second, so a uniform way to do this via banner/template/other ensures that FUTURE discussions are centralized at one place and the same exact thing appears everywhere, any time there is consensus to tweak it. That would give our nondiscrimination car a SINGLE engine, a SINGLE drive train and a SINGLE steerage... and therefore just ONE thing to maintain at ONE garage. Much easier than taking multiple sets to multiple mechanics all over town NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:18, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Support CapitalSasha's counter-proposal which makes it clear that any harassment is not acceptable. No harm in listing certain groups even if they don't cover everything (e.g. social class, IQ). Alaexis¿question?19:02, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
Support CapitalSasha's counter-proposal because it seems like a compromise that is good enough workable solution to both options. Huggums537 (talk) 03:48, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
Support the counter-proposal, with caveats: We should be wary of the paradox of intolerance, and we don't want a Forstater-esque issue where the protection of holding intolerant views is misconstrued by bad-faith actors as protection of manifesting said views. The point of the civility policy, inter alia, is to promote collegiate editing, after all. Sceptre (talk) 14:28, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
Support original proposal Counter-proposal wording leaves open the possibility that it'll need to be expanded ad infinitum in order to address every new case; other editors already pointed out athiests face considerable oppression in 14 muslim states, which presumably means that we would have to add "atheism" to the list. It's much easier and more reasonable to short circuit the endless-list problem by leaving out the list entirely. 69.172.145.94 (talk) 22:59, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
Support. As an all-embracing statement, it seems to me to be a no brainer provided people are able to understand the difference between harassment and incivility . Otherwise the wrong people will continue to be sanctioned on trumped up charges by users who deliberately go around looking for issues in which they try to claim to have been stalked or offended. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:08, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
People cannot be sanctioned unless some third party (a party other than the accuser and the accused) has objectively determined that there is grounds for sanction. Thus, "trumped up charges" [sic] will not result in sanctions since an objective arbiter will reject any trumped-up charges. catsmoke (talk) 22:20, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
Would that things here actually worked according to that ideal. In a real legal system (which Wikipedia is not, and does not claim to be), innocent people get convicted of crimes. And in the imperfect system that is Wikipedia, there are considerably fewer protections than in good legal systems. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:51, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
Discussion
Inclusion of this list gives false impression its ok to harass others due to their choice of socks and any other thing left out of this list. That's nuts of course. The sentiment here is OK.... but Wiki must have a nondiscrimination statement somewhere. In this policy we should roll back the CREEP represented by this superfluous list, absent a showing that the nondiscrimination policy isn't enough. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:11, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
to emphasize that there is particular potential damage done by harassment on the basis of these characteristics due to the prevalence of real-world harassment based on these characteristics. CapitalSasha ~ talk01:27, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
How would that help the policy? It's a very fine sentiment but it looks more like a political/social declaration. Why did you not include spirituality or creed? Johnuniq (talk) 01:33, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
I just copied what is currently there before, I am fine with adding those of course. I am mainly responding to people who say that the list makes it sound like harassment for other reasons; this makes it clear that that is not the intent while also recognizing that special attention must be paid to harassment based on membership in "protected classes." An anti-harassment policy pretty much is a "social declaration", no? — Preceding unsigned comment added by CapitalSasha (talk • contribs) 02:25, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Harassment based on those characteristics is a much less serious problem in the real world and so the argument that they need to be singled out for special attention is weaker. CapitalSasha ~ talk03:38, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
CapitalSasha's proposal to treat harassment of atheists more leniently than harassment of religionists convinces me more strongly that the current list of protected classes is problematic and should be removed. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:54, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Nowhere did I say to treat anything more or less leniently! Just that one should be particularly alert for harassment that is likely to have reverberations on a larger group because it ties into larger social phenomena of harassment. (But of course there are good reasons for real world harsher sanctions on hate crimes.) @EEng it's a fair point and probably it ultimately comes down to an evaluation of degree, which I don't think it's really worth getting into now, as I don't think it's a violation of AGF to say that that's not really your point.... CapitalSasha ~ talk09:41, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
So as I understand your position, Capitalsasha, you agree that harassment for any reason is prohibited but you want to include a list of specific types of discrimination to support off-wiki efforts to fight injustice out in the off-wiki world. While you may use other words to characterize your view, did I restate the essential gist to your satisfaction? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:54, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Not even to fight injustice things in the off wiki world, just recognizing that harassment on Wikipedia is able to cause particular damage on Wikipedia if it is picking on a group that already faces a pattern of harassment elsewhere. To put it bluntly, if you harass me for being me, you hurt me. If you harass me for my group membership, you have the potential to not only hurt me but also make other members of my group feel unwelcome on Wikipedia, and this damage is particularly likely to occur if there is already a pattern in the world of people harassing members of my group. In any case yes I think I've been clear enough and I won't waste everyone's time by dragging this argument out further over an issue of wording. CapitalSasha ~ talk12:41, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
NOT a waste of time!! Thank you very much for clarifying. I didn't get it before. In fact, I'm a little surprised no one has pointed to anything in the WP:P&G that is on point. Below I tried to point to WP:DISCRIMINATION, but as a third party pointed out that only applies to Foundation staff and contractors. If we do not have a statement along these lines in the WP:P&G perhaps we should? I do value your contribution here, please keep it up. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:16, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Nice proposal; I agree that including qualities often used to discriminate against marginalised groups is too important to ditch. Although I'm very much fine with your wording, I also feel that some people could disingenuously use this to suggest that Wikipedia is putting those groups before others. I think that:
CapitalSasha, it seems to me that the simplest way to improve your proposal and obviate much of the discussion it sparked is to replace the words "in particular" with "for example" or "such as". I agree with Mir Novov.Ganesha811 (talk) 11:21, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Statements about harassment serve [at least] two purposes: setting up rules for people to follow, yes, but also reassuring people who may worry about being harassed in this space. It is very unlikely, to use an example given above, that someone will approach a space worried that it will take socks-based harassment seriously. But there are people who may come to a space concerned about whether who would be comforted to see e.g. race/gender/age/religion named in particular. I'm curious what led to this proposal? Are there groups that felt insufficiently protected? Or is it more in the spirit of "all lives matter"? Naming certain groups doesn't mean we can't say that harassment of any kind is not permitted. If there is a real worry that the current guideline is insufficiently inclusive, I'd prefer to see the list expanded, or at least retained in some way while changing other language. We can say that harassment for any reason is not allowed (and we do more or less say this, but it could be said more explicitly with the line in question) and also add e.g. "...regardless of age, ability...". — Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:35, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Speaking as proposer, (1) what led to this... is it..."all lives matter"?.... For the record, I married a much smarter woman who succeeds in a male dominated field but is not paid equally to the average man in the job which sucks and I've been with BLM when they've been faced with AR15 toting civilians... so hell no this is not "all lives matter". It's all about inclusive community building, avoiding WP:CREEP, and advocating for a uniform enforcement of P&G to increase collaboration. As far as the trigger, this arose when someone wanted to expand the mirrored list at WP:NPA. I had that page watchlisted, read the discussion, and was stumped how these boilerplate lists improve on just simply having these rules and applying them regardless of sock color or for any other reason; (2) Does anyone deny that for any reason is universally inclusive? So please explain how going from a limited list to a less limited list is MORE inclusive than a simple 3 word phrase that captures everything and anything? In school I went as far as I could in math until they started talking about one infinity being greater or smaller than the other. My poor brain couldn't take it. Joking aside, the concern is ambiguity rather than inclusivity. Either its for any reason and enforcement happens equally for any reason or it isn't. (3) It seems the desired outcome of including such language is to assuage fear on the part of potential new editors from the various groups listed. Well, OK, I have no problem writing something welcoming and designed specifically for that purpose. Embedding these boilerplates in text designed to lay down the law for misbehaving editors is not the place to do that. The audience here is misbehaving editors. If our goal is showing welcoming and reassurance to members of these groups that are often victims of discrimination, then we should write text specifically for that audience and purpose. Then this will be clear for misbhehaving editors, and separate (wikilinked?) welcome text for potential recruits won't just be shoehorned in these random policies. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:24, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the context. going from a limited list to a less limited list is MORE inclusive than a simple 3 word phrase - I'm saying there's a difference between being literally/logically inclusive and inclusion in the sense of wanting people to feel included. Similarly, regarding The audience here is misbehaving editors. - This goes back to the two audiences I mentioned. Part of it is laying down the law for misbehaving editors, but I don't agree they are the only audience. Part of it is speaking (indirectly) to people who want to know we understand that [sock]-based harassment and [race]-based harassment are different social, cultural, historical, etc. phenomena. Many people who are concerned about such harassment will look to see what the policies actually say, and I see no reason we can't say both "harassment of any kind is not allowed" and include some of the groups who are frequently subject to harassment. It's not "shoehorning in these random policies" - it's exactly where it should be. Hence why this is part of basically every [anti-]harassment (or similar) policy used by other organizations (sometimes also called code of conduct, friendly space policy, etc. -- but always some formal policy). — Rhododendritestalk \\ 18:37, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Well, as I commented below the outdent, a universal code of conduct appears to be forthcoming so we're probably duplicating that effort by trying to (re)hash this all at this venue at this time; had I known that before starting this thread I probably would have remained silent. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:05, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Wow. Oppose oppose oppose, the is really dangerous. I just harassed someone the other day, because he engaged in toxic editing (I couldn't report him thru normal channels, because reasons). I surely pressed him and made him "stop... enjoying Wikipedia" at least for a bit, did make "repeated annoying and unwanted contacts" including by email, and after he asked me to stop being condescending (ie, polite and nice) spoke as a Dutch uncle and engaged in intimidation ("Yes you will do as I say, and you know why? Because I have these difs and it you pull this again it's going to be a big hassle".)
The net result is that maybe he's not going to pull that again. I think that's good. Under the proposed rubric, he could report me for harassment, and I'd presumably be punished -- severely, because harassment is taken pretty seriously. I don't see that as a better outcome. Do you?
I also don't necessarily want to prevented from making contacts that the person would prefer not to have, being annoying, and making them not enjoy their experience here. For assholes, toxic editors, likely sockpuppets, and likely undeclared PR flacks.
I just don't think "toxic asshole" should be in a protected class the same as a Muslim. I don't think "you're a troll and on that basis I intend to ruin your career here" should be considered the same as "you're a Jew [girl, homo, teenager] and on that basis I intend to ruin your career here". But that is what "for any reason" (emphasis in original) says. Sure I get that an editor might be of the mind "well we didn't mean that", but words matter. This is why laws and contracts are written very carefully. And trust me, words can be used as a hammer for trolls to make trouble. There are a lot of editors who are of the mind "well, right or wrong, the rule says this, and we have to follow it". It's the encyclopedia anyone can edit, not the encyclopedia anyone who doesn't have an rigidly rulebound personality can edit. Herostratus (talk) 17:13, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
I think the rest of the page is pretty clear that harassment of anyone is already prohibited. For example in the lead: "Wikipedia must never be misused to harass anyone, whether or not the subject of the harassment is an editor here. Edits constituting harassment will be reverted, deleted, or suppressed, as appropriate, and editors who engage in harassment are subject to blocking and banning." So while as I explained above protected classes of course have a special place in an anti-harassment policy, to my mind the proposed change is about removing the protected classes, not about expanding the scope of the harassment policy, which already prohibits any harassment even if it is not based on membership in a protected class. CapitalSasha ~ talk17:32, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I am (in the common public sense of the word, altho (I hope and believe) not as defined in Wikipedia law since he isn't in a protected class AFAIK. For the present.
Should I not have? Why do we have all those warning templates -- do you think that they are not "unwanted" or "threats", or (when stepped thru the levels) "repeated[ly] annoying"? If "You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you attempt to make unconstructive edits to Wikipedia" isn't a threat, what is?" This new language would prohibit these templates from being deployed. Sure people still will, but if push comes to shove at ANI and ArbCom, the bad editor has a handle, a handle that some people will take hold of, for reasons good or bad.
Right now, I would be prevented from following up a vandal warning with some kinds of specific elucidation, such as "We don't want Jews here, just go away" but I would not be prevented from saying "We don't want trolls here, just go away". Different things! In my opinion. Under the new rubric, I could be banned for either.
Sure I get that for many or most (not all) editors, "that's not what we mean". All I'm saying is: Say what you mean, not what you don't mean. It matters, because down the road it will matter to other people if not you. Huge can of worms, and it's fine now -- I think, but if the current language is not working, show me some diffs where this has been a problem and I'll maybe come around. If you don't have them, why are we having this conversation? Herostratus (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
As I said before, just read the whole policy. In this case, we got you covered, because the subsection WP:Harassment#Threats explains "Statements of intent to properly use normal Wikipedia processes.... , are not threats." So you can make appropriate use of warning templates without fear. On the other hand, you still have to be civil even when talking to the troll so if you label them and tell them to get lost, instead of using "normal Wikipedia processes", including WP:CIVIL then in my view you are already inviting a WP:BOOMERANG whether this policy is tweaked or not. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 02:01, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
Sure it is (in the common sense of the word). It's just not bad harassment. "The American 3rd Army harassed the 2nd SS Panzer Division as it tried to withdraw across the Rhine". Is that describing a bad thing. Herostratus (talk) 18:55, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
More context is needed for a full examination, but while there may be "reasons" for "'repeated annoying and unwanted contacts' including by email", it's a slippery slope for a single editor to decide on their own that those reasons are sufficient. isaacl (talk) 18:30, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Yes, you are correct. However, we have the wit and sense to know where the lines are, I hope and believe. Single editors (including admins) slap scary warning templates on people all the time, and sometimes get down in the weeds about their behavior, and a good thing too; and its seldom misused I think. To say "no you can't do this anymore because it might lead to bad harassment that's uncalled for... Bad harassment that's uncalled for does happen, and WP:ANI and so forth are the cures for that I guess. People can go there and get relief on other rules or general principles (or plain common sense) without having to say they are suffering under WP:HARASSMENT (being "harassed" in plain English is different). This is why you seldom see WP:HARASSMENT complaints at ANI (I think). If that's not working well enough, pretty sure this proposal, and bringing WP:HARASSMENT into much more general use isn't the best solution ... it's doing heart surgery with a chainsaw. Herostratus (talk) 21:44, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
The key question is who is "we"? Inaccurate warning messages are left and inappropriate discussions at the incidents noticeboard are started regularly by editors who cannot distinguish between editorial disagreement and personal animus. At least with communications on-wiki, the tenor and frequency of these messages can be monitored. It's trickier with email. I think it works better for the community to deal collectively with problem editors, rather than relying on individual editors to stick out their necks by trying to pester and annoy others. (This is all apart from the original proposed edit to this guidance page.) isaacl (talk) 22:22, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
I haven’t bothered to read the discussion thoroughly so probably what I’m about to say has already been discussed. Now, @NewsAndEventsGuy I’m against harassment and would never condone it but your proposal which states and I quote “Harassment of any kind shouldn’t be allowed whilst this is a beautiful idea, your proposal appears vague, when you say “Harassment of any kind” just what exactly do you consider harassment(s) I feel you need to spell out expressly what type of harassments you make reference to. Except what is covered in WP:HARASS my philosophical understanding of what constitutes harassment could defer from yours and that of the next editor so like I said whilst your proposal is Golden it is very much nebulous. Celestina007 (talk) 18:33, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
@NewsAndEventsGuy, excuse you, I know what constitutes harassment like I said I know what WP:HARASS is, what I said is “Harassment of any kind shouldn’t be allowed is vague” and my question to you was what you yourself consider harassment that isn’t already covered in WP:HARASS? That would warrant a change? Celestina007 (talk) 19:30, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
We are on the talk page of WP:HARASS and at the moment no one seems to be proposing to change anything about the definition of harassment, it's just about the wording of that one sentence. The rest of the page, including the definition of harassment, would remain unchanged. CapitalSasha ~ talk19:34, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Speaking as proposer, I just learned this might be premature. It seems a universal code of conduct that would apply to us here at the Eng Wiki (and everywhere else in Wiki land) is on the drawing board and is already in Drafting Phase 2. Presumably, when the process is completed all these types of boilerplate paragraphs scattered in our P&G will need revisiting anyway. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:52, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
OK. Looks like it is here, it is now the Universal code of conduct, and it looks like it is all written and finished and is perhaps in some kind of test phase. It does look quite well done (I'm gratified and actually kind of surprised). It is somewhat more broad and strict than we're used to... the law is a blunt instrument, and people are people, so there's little question that some number of good editors will be driven off based on this document. Whether more than the (low number) now, I don't know; maybe. But if the upside is big enough -- that is, people behave better generally -- then fine. I doubt that tho. Anyway, it looks like actual enforcement is still up to each Wiki... I would consider voting to adopt that page whole cloth for here. Herostratus (talk) 22:27, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I know. Maybe it's not such a great thing, I don't know. Good editors get hounded out now (I'm not complaining, you're going to have that in an organization that is twice the size of ExxonMobile), but not that often I don't think). I'm not certain that we have a choice? Herostratus (talk) 23:03, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
I’d like to add that I am also pleasantly surprised by the current state of the UCoC. I’d like to give props to the Wikimedia community members who helped to improve some of the language initially used in the draft so that it serves the needs of both the Foundation and the community. From the page you linked, it seems that it will be adopted as a binding global policy soon, pending community discussion on how it should be enforced. EDIT: I also hope that people will read thru the full text before making knee-jerk decisions on leaving the project, as it by and large seems quite reasonable. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 02:16, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
The current placement of the indicative-but-not-exhaustive list is a little awkward. The title of the section containing the sentence in question is "Types of harassment and disruption". Would it be better to make a new subsection, called something like "Disparagement of personal characteristics", that begins something like "Harassment may include verbally attacking an editor on the basis of their race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religious or political beliefs, disability, ethnicity, or nationality"? It seems to me that a paragraph explaining the point, listing some categories and explaining how the list is illustrative rather than exhaustive, might work better with the general flow of the section, and be a better parallel with the existing subsections. XOR'easter (talk) 15:53, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
I agree the real solution is a reorganization of this material, but until the Universal Code of Conduct dust (now in Phase 2, as explained in prior comments) finally settles, I also think we should just let things be for now. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:53, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
I considered that but there has been a lot of varied and constructive discussion, and more has come in since I decided to let it run its course. Who knows what new thoughts will be added by the next ed to comment? There's no hurry to make a change and there's no harm letting the community continue to discuss for a bit NewsAndEventsGuy (talk)
It's way past the time the proposer can withdraw I think, and I wouldn't recommend closing it, until we have the answers to these questions:
1) Does (or will) the Universal Code of Conduct automatically apply to English Wikipedia, or must it be accepted and adopted by that community?
2) If the answer to #1 is yes it shall automatically apply, our Admin Corps and other editors will have to follow it, will they or nil they, correct?
3) What if they don't?
If anybody knows, enlighten us. If nobody knows, that indicates a scary inchoate situation.
I believe and hope that the answer to #3 is "nothing" -- I think that the Boo Hoos (oops, sorry, ban me) who wrote this said that enforcement is up to the Wikis. If so, we ought to keep our (actually enforced) own code, and just pay lip service to theirs, I guess. (If not, yikes.) Herostratus (talk) 19:50, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
The UCoC began to ensure that Wikimedia projects would all have some minimum rules for conduct which would be the starting point for each community to develop. The expectation was that it probably wouldn't affect enwp policy much because we have pretty well developed (which isn't to say perfect/ideal) policies. Granted, if there are mismatches where our policies didn't cover what the UCoC does, then I think we'd be expected to meet that minimum level, but I don't think that would happen on the level of mandating specific wording of the policy. A huge caveat, though: I followed UCoC conversations closely for a while, but haven't very recently. I think it's pretty safe to assume, however, that the result won't involve scrapping our policy and pointing to the UCoC, so discussions over the wording of our policy are still very much fair game. At the same time, I get that people here may prefer to wait and see what happens before attempting and non-trivial changes. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 20:00, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
When the dust settles, if the world made sense, we'd scrap our redundant verbiage and replace it with key sections of text quoted from the UofC using the excerpt templates. The only reason we'd need to keep any EngWP-custom language is if our P&G goes above and beyond what is found in the UofC. Otherwise having our own different-but-the-same technical mouse trap means having two binding bits of technical language each trying to do the same thing and requiring updating (and the differences in language may provide the gaming type of wikilawyers with things to make hair splitting drama over). Much better to excerpt the UofC text that is trying to do the same thing. Though the ability to excerpt from the UofC might require some code tweaking. (Updated after originally posting but no one has replied yet) NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:29, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
I'm opposed to CaptainSasha's alternative, which I think currently suggests
Harassment of an editor for any reason is not allowed. In particular, harassment on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religious or political beliefs, disability, ethnicity, nationality, etc. will not be tolerated.
This construction implies what it really means is like this
Harassment on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religious or political beliefs, disability, ethnicity, nationality, etc. will not be tolerated and even though we say you may not harass for any reason, in reality you're welcome to harass jerks, disruptive editors, and trolls and the like so long as they are not members of these groups
Some editors in this discussion are confused about what constitutes "harassment" so to be clear.... the appropriate use of Wikipedia WP:P&G to try to prevent future problems is never wrong and in this case it is not harassment. As we all know one can use appropriate P&G with jerks or one can harass jerks by doing our own uncivil behaviors. If you can't engage problematic editors with succinct civil appropriate P&G....let someone else do it. That would end a lot of preventable drama. On other hand, I do see value on communicating to members of groups having suffered from discrimination in the past. I'm just opposed to trying to do that like this, because it further entrenches the unwritten rule that we sometimes tolerate abusive behaviors like "harass jerks" (wink wink). To emphasize... that unwritten and inconsistently applied double standard contributes to why many people have come and gone saying the culture is dysfunctional or toxic. The best solution is to let the dust settle on the UofC and then use that actual language to serve the needs of welcoming members of discriminated classes and at the same time purging our P&G of duplicative different language and the cultural attitude (and text) that can be read to imply its ok to be a jerk to a jerk so long as they are not a member of these groups. In closing, I admit that some of what I just said applies to the current version NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:47, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
If it were up to me, I'd rewrite the lead to this (and similar policies) something like this
Harassment is a pattern of repeated offensive behavior that appears to a reasonable observer to intentionally target a specific person or persons. Harassment can include direct communication or actions calculated to be noticed by the target or clearly suggestive of targeting them. Usually, the purpose is to make the target feel threatened or intimidated, and the outcome may be to make editing Wikipedia unpleasant for the target, to undermine, frighten, or discourage them from editing. The civil and appropriate use of Wikipedia policies, guidelines, and templates is not harassment.
Wikipedia must never be misused to harass anyone, whether they edit Wikipedia or not. Even when dealing with problematic editors, harassment will not be tolerated. In addition to prohibiting harassment against ‘’anyone’’, Wikipedia seeks to welcome editors from every walk of life and has zero tolerance for any form of discrimination against (insert groups listed in the UofC).
Such a change should accomplish all the goals of all the comments above, I think, most especially putting all the most important parts of this policy in the lead. If it makes sense here, we could import the UofC text in paragraph 2 to similar behavioral policies elsewhere.
It seems to me it takes a similar amount of effort to turn the last sentence here into "so there is some (non-zero) tolerance for discrimination against other groups" as it does to turn CaptainSasha's proposal into "you're welcome to harass jerks". That's not to say I think either is actually very problematic, though. For the sake of options, here's the format we wound up with in the Wikimedia New York City policy: "Wikimedia NYC is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of...". It combines a commitment regarding "everyone" with a list of specific groups. I prefer that to a second "In particular...." sentence, but appreciate that "providing a harassment-free experience" may be a bit fuzzy compared to the way enwp policies are usually written. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 13:42, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
That's a useful wordsmithing, thanks. In the end, when the UofC dust has settled, if I still care, I'll propose a (A) revising the nondiscrimination template in light of the UofC, and (B) via community consensus to required that in the lead of our various behavioral P&G. That way it will be uniform, and any changes made by the board later will be piped through without us periodically redebating these sorts of things. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:02, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
I think the simple and obvious solution here is to keep the current list and instead of "etc" just add "or for any other reason". That's already the actual situation and policy should reflect that. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:38, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
No it's not and you personally don't get to make up "actual policy", citizen. Show me cases where "for any reason" has been applied as effective harassment policy.
Think of it like this. Title VII of the American Civil Rights Act says "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" and not "...for any reason"
Because that would be a huuuuuuuugely different thing and would turn society upside down. Please don't tell me that the United States Congress is smarter the Wikipedia editor corps. Herostratus (talk) 03:40, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
The way civil rights legislation works is that they outlaw legal activities if you do it based on "protected characteristics". Firing someone based on poor performance is OK. Firing someone based on their ethnicity is not OK. On Wikipedia, harassment is never OK. If you harass someone because of their ethnicity that isn't OK. Supposedly so is harassing someone because they vandalized this website. You're probably going to respond to this saying that "harassment is OK in some cases" and I will say that your definition of "harassment" is out of sync with reality. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 21:52, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, that makes no sense. It is manifestly true that harassment is always wrong, whatever the motivation of the person doing it. I can't imagine any cogent counterargument, I certainly don't see one in Herostratus' comments. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:10, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia:English Wikipedia non-discrimination policy I wanted to share this draft policy which I favor adopting. I think English Wikipedia should have this kind of policy because different demographics have different experiences, and I advocate for making our guidelines flexible enough to support all kinds of communities. In the case of this proposal, I do not see one objective standard for identifying harassment, but rather, we need to name some protected demographics so that we can learn to recognize the particular kinds of harassment those demographics experience. Without naming the demographic, the context of the harassment they experience is lost. Blue Rasberry (talk)21:03, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
Thanks we probably think similarly. Before I click and load that in my brain, could you please help by elaboring slightly on the context? How did that draft originate and how does it relate to the Uniform Code of Conduct, which as I understand it has been at leaste partially approved and is in some sort of process called Phase 2 (I have no knowledge of any of the details, just want to know if this draft is independent of that or a part of it) NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:45, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
@NewsAndEventsGuy: If you want to talk about WMF then email me and we can voice or video chat, or even record and publish a conversation if you want to be public about it. Briefly, the differences that I perceive about WMF versus community conduct initiatives are that (1) WMF has money, for example spending US$ millions for their code of conduct initiative (2) the WMF code is not what the wiki community would have wanted or organized, especially if the community had funds to recruit diverse participation in the conversation and (3) whenever there is a conflict between WMF's interests as a corporation and the Wikimedia ethics values and mission, the WMF chooses corporate empowerment. I see value in supporting community development of ethical principles and policies like this non-discrimination policy, because otherwise, the WMF is going to pay its hired representatives to dictate what community ethics support the corporation. While I know that details in a non-discrimination policy can be controversial, I feel like the community proposing and discussing a non-discrimination policy should be non-controversial. I support the wiki community drafting, proposing, and discussing anything related to ethics and values for the Wikimedia Movement. Blue Rasberry (talk)13:59, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, that's helpful. Whatever any of us think about corporatism is rather moot I think. The reality is we are guests of the corp here, so there's not a lot of wiggle room... whatever rules they hand down we might think stink, but it's their house after all. I'm happy for us to discuss whether the final UofC is enough and if not how would we add to it, but arguing about using it as a starting point seems like a debate whether we start our work accepting that gravity is a thing. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:54, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a community project, the Wikimedia Foundation solicits donations in the name of the community of volunteers, the money is for the volunteer community and all that volunteers created before corporations started claiming credit for it, and Wikimedia projects with their communities no more belong to the Wikimedia Foundation than countries and citizens do to government administrations. I am not starting any discussion with assumptions that the children of the wealthy who sit in positions of power have a right to capture shared public resources and infrastructure.
Most of the text of the Universal Code of Conduct came from volunteers. The Wikimedia Foundation's paid agents may have striken out the parts which were disobedient to authority, and their journalists may be paid to tell the story that the Code of Conduct was a gift from the foundation to the community rather than the opposite, but the conversation about power structures and which demographics of people have a right to safety and free thought is not finished. Blue Rasberry (talk)15:02, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
In fairness the UCoC wouldn't have happened without the board. How much of the board is the "community" and how much is the "foundation" is its own complex debate. That said I do share BR's general point that it was volunteer work that was at the heart of the writing of the UCoC a point that was lost in the press generated (at least that I saw/recall). Regardless of that, the UCoC should not stop us from adopting a nondiscrimination policy/guideline if that's the will of the community. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:22, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
Well since UofC Phase 2 (whatever that means) is unfinished, this seems like an early staking out of philosophies but without the actual in hand details over which to debate. So let's put a pin in it for now NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:30, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
Comment: Discriminatory harassment is different in effect than other harassment targeting an individual. General hostility sends a message to the individual it targets, but harassment naming a group sends that message to many others who might read it. It can systematically deter groups of editors (and potential future editors) from participating in the project. So the community has a reason to take it seriously. (Obviously, there are other factors: intensity, persistence, disruption that could be greater or lesser in different episodes of harassment of either type.--Carwil (talk) 20:09, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
But of course. So we agree we need to say (a ) zero harassment for anyone and (b ) zero discrimination for members of protected groups. The debate is how to best achieve both goals? Until Phase 2 of UofC is complete, we're unlikely to gain consensus for changes to the status quo. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:49, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
This discussion is a crucial misunderstanding of what "protected class" means and the purpose it serves. (I don't say this disparagingly, because I know everybody is acting on their best intentions, and I'm glad to clarify it if I can.) Harassment can generally be divided into (a) attacks that are particular to the individual (personal choices, actions, affiliations), or (b) attacks on a person's characteristics that they cannot control (race, sex, nation of origin, etc). The latter is what makes a "protected class" - an axis across all human beings that cannot be controlled by the individual. "Protected class" does NOT mean particular individuals. Having protected classes of "race, sex, and orientation", for example, does equally protect a straight white male. (Whether or not that may "feel" true in practice will depend on how it is enforced and how it is understood by its enforcers, but that's what the words "protected class" actually mean, and that's why particular things "make the list" - not because they are favored qualities of the list-makers.) If there is legitimate concern that the language does not properly convey this information, then the language can and should be fixed. There are some concerns about whether "religion" includes atheism and non-organization, and the answer is that YES, belief is an axis across all human beings that is not controlled (assuming belief is not a matter of will). "Religion" as a protected class is generally interpreted to mean "or lack thereof", but it's true it's not clear. Maybe it could be changed or amended to say "belief system" or "religious beliefs" or something of the like. (Note that *belief* is not a matter of individual will, but *affiliation* is, so membership of a *particular* religious organization falls under harassment type (a)). For the case of "veganism", I think it would be considered an individual's affiliation - however, for the case of "ethical or moral beliefs", such as whether or not it is ethical to consume animal products - that's an axis across all people that is not chosen. And just to reiterate: the two "categories" of harassment are not meant to be in competition with each other for legitimacy - they're both types of harassment and shouldn't be tolerated, but simply that they are different by nature of what they target. Saltpike (talk) 20:08, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
I appreciate proposals to make (what are in fact very normal, in any polite society) standards of behaviour clearer, but I can't help feeling that this is just an unnecessary wall of text and waste of words that will not in any way practically affect how we enforce this: if anybody ever harasses someone, and then they claim that it's ok because it wasn't for one of the listed reasons, they'll got blocked anyways (and now not just for harassment...). Also, "etc." already succinctly, if not explicitly, covers "any other reason" (if this wasn't subject to this discussion, I'd go ahead and non-controversially replace it, as it doesn't change the meaning in any way). Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:24, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
It simplifies to "Harassment is not allowed". I put it to you that anyone editing Wikipedia who needs to be told this should be blocked immediately, with the absolute minimum of process and fuss.—S MarshallT/C11:46, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
I have changed the article to say that harassment of an editor for any reason, including but not limited to race, age, [...] is not allowed. WPEditor42 (talk) 14:13, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Real name vs legal name
Legal name refers to the name that is used to identify a person for legal and administrative purposes. Usually, this is also the name a person is commonly known ("real name" or "personal name"), however some people are commonly known by a name that is different from their legal name (see the Personal name article).
Personal information is anything that can be used to identify a specific person. This can include a person's name, date of birth, e-mail address, phone number, physical address (however it could be shared by multiple people), identification numbers, credit card numbers and more. In some cases it even includes usernames or user account identification numbers (e.g. user_id in a database).
The Wikipedia:Harassment article contains the term "legal name" which could be replaced with "real name", "personal name" or just "name". I've replaced "legal name" with "real name" in the article mentioned above, then someone reverted my edit telling me that a consensus in the talk page is needed. WPEditor42 (talk) 13:58, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
I'll start by saying that significant changes to sensitive policy pages like this one really should be discussed in talk before being put onto the policy page, and should be given enough time to get responses to a proposal before implementing it. I had been thinking about this, and I agree that "real name" works better than "legal name". I would support the version you made that simply changed "legal" to "real". I oppose just "name" as being too vague, "personal name" as being too undefined, and "full name" because just a part of a real name can still be outing. I'm also unenthusiastic about the subsequent edits you made. They make it too roundabout, and if it isn't broken, don't fix it. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:41, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
"Real name" includes both preferred names (not nicknames or pseudonyms) and legal names. Both are considered personal information if you can accurately identify a person using it. WPEditor42 (talk) 16:19, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
In the intervening time, it's been revised to "real-life name", which I think is the best way to put it. That distinguishes it from the WP username, but if someone is known by a nickname or pseudonym in real life, then that's covered. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:54, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
Regarding this edit: the shortcut redirect WP:STALKING was removed earlier from the list of available shortcuts as the term has certain real-life connotations, as described at Wikipedia:Harassment § What harassment is not, and discussed at Wikipedia talk:Harassment/Archive 1 § Wikihounding. I feel the shortcut shouldn't be listed. Four listed shortcuts is more than enough (general guidance is to list no more than two), and I agree with not promoting usage of this redirect. (Both WP:STALK and WP:STALKING used to be soft redirects with a note discouraging their use, but the note was removed by one editor in 2022 and WP:STALKING was made into a hard redirect.) isaacl (talk) 17:54, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
As always, let me start by saying that if there is any material fact in what follows that I have overlooked, kindly point it out. With that said:
Most editors here are probably aware of the ongoing World War II ArbCom case. The essay that sparked this case mentions a Wikipedian's name and workplace, with a footnote citing a 2009 diff where the editor – apparently in some frustration at having been doxed off-site – signed with their real name and then added that anyone wanting more personal information could find it on Encylopedia Dramatica. Note that this was in plain text. The post contained no link to Dramatica. (I also understand that the editor at some point later on tried to have the diff oversighted but was refused.)
I mention the absence of a link because the wording of WP:OUTING specifically requires one:
Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person has voluntarily posted their own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia.
This aspect of the policy has been stable since at least 2008.
ArbCom appears to have taken the view that despite the absence of such a link to his workplace information, the contributor's 2009 statement still entitles everyone today and for the indefinite future to freely share the contributor's name and current workplace information (which is different from what it was then, nearly fifteen years ago) on- and off-wiki.
Now, it seems to me that posting a link to personal information is qualitatively different from exclaiming in frustration "I have been doxed on [name of site]." Posting a link signifies a different kind of intent than merely mentioning a doxing site.
In my view ArbCom should reconsider, but I'd be interested in other editors' views. But if consensus is against me, and it is the community's wish that the mere mention of a doxing site should suffice to make all information held on that site today and at any point in the future "fair game" and exempt from the WP:OUTING policy, then there is an easy test. It's to ask ourselves whether there is consensus to edit the sentence quoted above as follows:
Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person has voluntarily posted their own information, or indicated where such information can be found, on Wikipedia.
Jayen466, I am a bit concerned here. The principle related to doxxing and harassment was a lot more nuanced, and most definitely did not include situations where a user mentioned having been doxxed on a certain site. In fact, in 2007 and 2008 (the time when this principle first took hold), editors would commonly complain about being doxxed on various sites, including but certainly not limited to Encyclopedia Dramatica. On the other hand, there was a very concerted effort to prevent anyone from linking to such doxxing, which amongst other things resulted in the failed WP:BADSITES proposal (which went too far) and ultimately resulted in significant changes to the harassment policy (which was a more appropriate location). And let's be honest, the entire point is that linking to an editor's doxxing is a form of harassment of the editor.
Many editors, especially newer or younger editors, aren't really aware of the potential impact of publishing their personal information on their user page or elsewhere on the project. It's one of the reasons that oversighters like myself will suppress information such as schools, names of minor children or siblings, telephone numbers, addresses, or similarly identifying personal information, without thinking twice. We'll usually follow up with a message to the user explaining why that information has been removed. If an apparently adult user puts their own personal information back on their userpage, we'll probably consider that they have been made aware of the risks of such and are consciously deciding to publish it. As any experienced Wikipedian knows, there are many reusers of Wikipedia content, some of which includes user pages; and of course, there are regularly produced "dumps" of the entire project that are available to anyone. Once that information has been on a page for a certain length of time, it has to be considered "available on the internet somewhere" even if it subsequently gets deleted or suppressed.
I'm having a hard time believing that a snarky comment from 2009 is being used to justify doxxing an editor, back in the ancient times when such editor complaints ("ED has doxxed me!") were commonplace, and there were no mechanisms for editors without the right connections to get such information removed. I understand why you have written what you have written, but I think you are probably wrong that the community thinks that's enough to allow doxxing and harassment of editors. Risker (talk) 22:04, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I've been very concerned about the way that the ArbCom case has been treating this particular fact. For me, I don't see it the way that Andreas does here, in terms of whatever was or was not in that long-ago diff. Instead, I'm concerned about how publishing such personal information externally should be regarded, because the present case raises some complicated issues that the community has not had to deal with yet. It's starting to look to me like, maybe, ArbCom is going to interpret the policy here as not applying to peer-reviewed academic papers, which sounds reasonable on the surface, but raises some difficult problems when one looks beneath the surface. I think it may be a good idea to discuss this, and determine where community norms are now, and I'm starting to plan on initiating that discussion, but the time to do that will be after the case has closed, not now. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Just to add about what I'm thinking about, more specifically, I think the community has long agreed that posting a dox of an editor on an external website, such as a WP criticism site, is unacceptable. Not that WP will regulate what other websites contain, but that WP will regard that doxing as incompatible with being permitted to continue to participate here on WP. But what is new is finding personal information of editors posted in content about WP that is not a doxing website. Could be journalism, or here, an academic paper criticizing WP. Again, I doubt that anyone would think that we would regulate what journalists or academics could publish. But, if those journalists or academics also want to be editors here, this policy page may need to be updated to reflect when that is, and when that is not, going to be permitted. There are ways in which such publication by journalists or academics is ethically appropriate, and probably not something that we would want to make a policy violation. But the current case has shown that even a peer-reviewed academic paper can reside in what I think is a gray area, between good investigation, and doxing that might look more like a badsite. I'm not sure that the community will really want to give academics and journalists a free pass. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:26, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
@Risker: Thanks. Let me assure you that, like you, I think that the community would not consider a snarky comment from 2009 to be enough to allow an editor to be doxed with impunity for the rest of his life.
However, from the ArbCom responses posted here this appears to be the view ArbCom is taking: A review of the personal information in G&K by a few oversighters and then by the Committee as a whole determined the information had been disclosed on-wiki by those editors.
ArbCom appears to maintain that nothing untoward happened here, and it just doesn't make sense to me. Does it make sense to you?
Even quite apart from this specific case, where there wasn't even a link posted, as the project ages we should probably look at instituting some sort of time limit for these prior disclosures. If something is on someone's user page today, that is one thing. But it is ridiculous that disclosures made decades ago – in some cases when people were teenagers – should follow them around for the rest of their lives in this manner and still be dug up ten or twenty years later and used as justification for broadcasting all subsequent places of employment they might ever take up in the course of their lives. Regards, AndreasJN46623:48, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm going to assume that you are directing that comment at the OP, Andreas, and not at me. To the extent that the discussion is about looking at how the policy page might need to be updated, it most certainly is not forum shopping. To the extent that there are comments finding fault with ArbCom, maybe, and maybe it's a matter of WP:STICK, but it's pretty ineffective as forum shopping, because nothing decided here can overrule ArbCom. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:10, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
My biggest concern is the prominent attention Andres is bringing to sensitive information (information he thinks is so sensitive it qualifies for oversight) by raising this on the 4th high profile place across 3 venues. Barkeep49 (talk) 04:28, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
I think you misconstrue my motives. At this point, I am really not concerned with preventing anyone from learning the information.
Don't you think everyone who is interested in it has learned it already? Nor do I believe the Wikipedian in question is concerned about this conversation. Just look at where we are:
The essay has been viewed tens of thousands of times.
It's had exhaustive and at times highly controversial coverage in the Signpost.
Most importantly, you have made the essay the subject of a public arbitration case, in the course of which the outing has been discussed in detail for weeks, including by the Wikipedian most concerned who has repeatedly told you that he did not disclose the information on-wiki that you assert he disclosed on-wiki and that he's been suffering harassment for years already.
What I am concerned with is the practical meaning of this policy (and the UCoC). You and your colleagues have indicated that you take the following views (do correct me if I am wrong):
Wikimedians who write academic papers are exempt from the Universal Code of Conduct and WP:OUTING.
If you mentioned in 2009 that you were doxed on Dramatica that makes your workplace information fair game for the rest of your life.
Is this a correct summary? Note that this is not academic. For example, the essay's co-author is not the only party to the arbitration case authoring peer-reviewed papers. In addition, we have multiple Wikipedians who are active journalists. And so forth. AndreasJN46612:36, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
The paper is quite long and you've chosen to shine a spotlight on one sentence. I did not speculate or state a motive for why you've done this. I described your actions (raising this issue at multiple forums) and an outcome (more people will become aware of that specific issue). The signpost did not cover the outing issue which concerns you so much. The committee did address it at the case request, in response to others raising it. But sure I will grant you that is one prominent place the committee discussed it. Since then the focus has been on the rest of the paper except when you bring it up. Many people don't read Arbitration cases. And by bringing it up in your letter to the board I am quite confident that people who weren't aware of that element of the paper became aware. And bringing it up here I suspect the same. So yes your actions do concern me. Barkeep49 (talk) 13:36, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
I have already laid out my thoughts at the case. Interested readers may find my comments on the matter at [5] (slight scrolling required, I have five comments on point). The TLDR version is I disagree with Andreas's characterization of the issue; the Committee found, in this specific case, given these specific facts, the use of a specific paper was fine. The implication here that we have somehow rewritten policy is absurd. Beyond that, I find Andreas's framing of the issue to be disingenuous: he admitted that his goal here was to get Chapmansh sanctioned [6]. Beyond that, I would be extremely resistant to rewriting the OUTING policy based on this one unusual incident, because bad cases make bad law. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓19:38, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
This discussion has become something that does not really belong on this policy page talk page. It might be best, if the two Arbs want to pursue it further, to take it to Andreas' user talk. For me, the issue of whether it might be useful to revise the policy page is something that should be addressed only after ArbCom concludes the case. But the community, not ArbCom, writes policy. This unusual incident might very well alert the community that we are starting to face some new challenges, and that policy should keep up with currently evolving practice. (When the good Captain repeats that bad cases make bad law, I hope that they remember that ArbCom unilaterally decided to start this bad case.) But I agree that we shouldn't write policy based on a single incident. I would want to approach the future discussion with a broader view than that. There's no need for anyone to stake out a position of opposing any rewrite, before anyone even knows what, if anything, will be proposed for rewriting. In the mean time, I'd prefer to see more quiet on this talk page, and wait for the ArbCom case to work its way towards a conclusion. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:31, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
(This is not a criticism of the committee, clarifying that because I know I have been quite critical in the past) CaptainEek, I've intentionally stayed as far away as possible from the case that started this thread, but I do think your last sentence is worth replying to, particularly the I would be extremely resistant to rewriting the OUTING policy based bit.My understanding of Tryptofish's and Jayen466's arguments on this page is that they think ArbCom misinterpreted the existing policy and/or applied it in a manner that is outside the historical norm (something I haven't looked closely enough at to have an opinion on.) If that's actually what they are arguing, and I'm not misreading this, any update to the policy wouldn't be a substantive change but probably a minor clarification consisting of less than a sentence. You might disagree with that characterization, and it seems you do, but it isn't outside the realm of reasonable discussion to have a this discussion if there's significant disagreement with the committee's point of view. You'd need an RfC for it, but it wouldn't be nearly anything as drastic as a complete re-write and this page would be the appropriate page start that RfC. The community can absolutely overrule ArbCom's interpretation of any policy by clarifying the policy.To use a legal analogy since I know you sometimes like thinking that way — its fairly common in the English-speaking world for legislatures to overrule courts by changing the specific wording of statutory law when they disagree with an interpretation a court has taken. Those usually aren't radical departures from how the law as originally written was enforced, and are more or less rebuffs of judicial interpretation — the court that ruled that way might disagree with that characterization, but the legislature obviously doesn't when it does this. Wikipedia obviously isn't a court and the community isn't a legislature, but the principle applies here as well.All that being said, if people actually want to do it, they should absolutely wait until after the case is done, and drop the discussion for now. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:46, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, Tony. I confirm that you explained my view quite accurately. It might not be less than a sentence, more like adding a little bit to bring the policy up to date, but that's a discussion for a later time. And CaptainEek, I'm glad if that was helpful in us understanding one another better. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:12, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
WP:OUTING is an important policy, but also a dangerous one - it places severe restrictions, with potentially severe penalties, on posting certain things anywhere in any context. It's important to protect editors, but it's also important to avoid situations where it has a chilling effect on legitimate or important discussions (hence why it has narrow but specific exceptions.) Ultimately, the important point of OUTING is that it exists to protect editors from harm and harassment - that means that it's important and has a lot of teeth, but it also means that where there's no credible argument that something could harm them, and no credible argument that it constitutes harassment, it wouldn't be appropriate to apply a policy with OUTING's force. This has specific implications here. First, the publication of a peer-reviewed academic paper stating something makes it more difficult to argue that simply linking to that paper constitutes significant harm or harassment (although the context under which it's done might matter) - the paper itself is usually much higher-profile than a link to it on a Wikipedia talk page. The previous post also contributes to lowering this harm. Second, there are more situations where we might reasonably want to discuss an academic paper, especially in an arbitration case; unlike eg. linking to a forum post, it is more likely to have a legitimate use, which we have to weigh against the (here, minimal to nonexistent) harm. --Aquillion (talk) 17:58, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
There is another aspect here, which is that we can and should educate academics to avoid doxing contributors – especially when there is no discernible need to dox them.
I am quite certain there are many academics who are blissfully unaware of both this policy and the Universal Code of Conduct. If an academic who is also a contributor here violates either, then we should use the opportunity to draw their attention to these norms. (Ultimately I am quite sure that most academics would, once aware of community norms, respect them.)
This does not mean that we stop people from discussing this paper, or from linking to it.
(edit conflict) As I said before, I don't want to get too deeply into this until after the case is over, and I also don't want to make it narrowly about this single case. But your last sentence leads me to something I'm thinking about very actively. You describe some situations as having "a legitimate use", and others not having one. It's easy to think think of examples at the polar opposites of that difference, but it gets very gray near the borderline. Doxers at forum sites sometimes self-style as "investigative journalists". They are going to start getting ideas about moving off of forum sites, and making themselves seem more "professional". I linked to this source during a discussion on the ArbCom case pages: [7]. It's interesting reading. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:17, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
A little ways back, Joe Roe pointed out how in abstract it was possible for a genuine contradiction between OUTING and NPOV to arise when an RS publishes the personal information of a contributor. I agree with the wisdom of delaying further discussion until passions have cooled and a more detached discussion is possible. But eventually that will need to be resolved. 74.73.224.126 (talk) 23:17, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm unsure whether the contradiction is actually in WP:OUTING as written, or in the (in my opinion extreme) reading of it typically applied by ArbCom and functionaries. Either way, I agree it needs to be resolved. – Joe (talk) 07:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
I want to make a note that ArbCom seems likely to ask WMF to create a white paper on how academics and others should treat the issues we are discussing here. Personally, I'm OK with waiting to see what (if anything) comes of that, before attempting any revisions here. Obviously, we would want this policy page to (at a minimum) be consistent with what WMF says. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:53, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
I was recently accused at WP:ANI of outing. But AFAIK there is no basis in WP:PAGs for considering that reading the information from voluntary past edits performed by a certain account at English Wikipedia would amount to outing of that account. Well, unless those were already oversighted, which wasn't the case for me. Could you elaborate thereupon?
My point was very adeptly explained at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2023 May 12#Username. They were advised to request oversighting, but no such oversighting happened yet. They accused me of harassing them, but fake accusations of outing are themselves harassment. This is an important policy issue, that's why I discuss it here, I don't wish to relitigate the ANI thread. tgeorgescu (talk) 10:03, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
Given the indenting, I'm not sure if you were asking me in particular, but I'm not sure I have a clear answer to your question. I don't know all the relevant facts, but I think that ArbCom's decision reinforces the idea that, if someone's information was, at one time, posted voluntarily onsite, and has not subsequently been oversighted, so that it's still there, then it is not an outing violation to refer to it. On the other hand, it may be against good judgment to refer to it, even if it isn't against policy – depending on how necessary or unnecessary the information is, and how likely the user is to not want it discussed. On the other hand, if someone is making a clean start, and not doing anything disruptive in so doing, it would probably violate outing if one were to reveal the connection between the new and old accounts. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:23, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
Tryptofish, coming back around to your last point as it sometimes gets raised and having commentary in the talk archives eventually might be useful. The relevant section of the CLEANSTART policy is If you attempt a clean start but are recognized, you will be held accountable for your actions under both the old and new accounts. The fact that you notified someone of the change will not excuse you from the consequences of your actions or protect you from recognition.My reading of that has always been that any editor is free to make the connection between the two accounts. I have a vague memory of us suppressing such links in cases of extreme harassment (don't remember specifics), but generally speaking such a link would not be oversighted. Ancient history at this point but claiming that linking clean starts was outing was basically the MO of User:Zawl before he ended up community banned. I think we'd probably discuss any such situation on the list before suppressing, and I for one would argue fairly strongly against such a suppression outside of cases of off-site harassment.To tgeorgescu's question which relates more closely to account renames: referring to someone by a past username might be rude, but is not against the outing policy and the Oversight team has documented our stance on it on the OSPOL page since it was at one point a very frequent request. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:48, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Tony for filling in those details. I can agree with all of it, so I can accept that, in the last sentence of what I had written, it probably would not violate outing to reveal that connection. I did, of course, specify that this was only if the clean start account was "not doing anything disruptive", and that was consistent with the fact that connecting back to the earlier account name is acceptable in cases of disruption. And I think we can all agree that it still is "against good judgment" to point out such a connection if the clean start is being done without causing problems. I agree that it's useful to have addressed these issues in the talk archives. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:25, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, we're in agreement on that. The reason I clarified is because, unfortunately, this is something people tend to get super technical about and that has caused headaches in the past because of people taking advantage of the community's good faith. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:11, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Should we resume the discussion that was prompted by the recent ArbCom proceedings now the case is over? My feeling was ArbCom basically made a political rather than policy-based decision not to consider the scholarly paper outing. Committee members gave different reasons at different times to justify this view – first it was the editor's on-wiki mention (but not linking) of Dramatica over a decade ago, then a contention that the UCoC would not apply to academic papers, and then a contention that the UCoC examples of unacceptable harassment behaviour should not be taken literally, but subjected to a further test. The white paper requested may help to clarify the WMF view at least, though I would not expect results to be forthcoming any time soon. Thoughts? AndreasJN46606:16, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
This incident goes back less than two decades, the longer the digital age continues the further back such incidents will go and the larger the proportion of the community whose teenage years were in the digital era. The Universal Code of Conduct is new and is a bit of a curate's egg, unfortunately the WMF has steamrollered it in without fixing all the flaws that were pointed out by the community, and as a result it will have a more painful teething period than was needed. We can't expect our own rules to apply to outside bodies, especially if our internal rules clash with external norms. We are too big, and too important, for outsiders to ignore or judge against a lower standard than they'd expect to be judged by. AI is upon us and we can expect the unexpected, not just digital doxxers that can go through millions more diffs than a human doxxer, but editors being outed by AI on the basis of Word Frequency and similar digital signatures that we are not used to doxxers using. We live in interesting times, I'm off to make popcorn. Those of you with teleport devices or digital printers that work on edible ingredients are welcome to download some. ϢereSpielChequers08:06, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Agreed about the lack of community input beforehand. As if to compensate for that, we now have an extra helping of bureaucracy – we have a "Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Building Committee" (no kidding ... a committee to build a committee), or "U4CBC" (see current Signpost issue). This way of establishing policy, involving multiple committees and bureaucratic processes stretching over literally years has little to do with the wiki way any more (remember "wiki wiki"? We were told it meant really quick ... this feels more like 5-year-plan central planning). Meanwhile, the disenfranchisement of the community proceeds apace. AndreasJN46611:37, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Here's what I think. I'm very interested in having the community examine and discuss these issues, and I would like for the community to take ownership of how we want to treat any policy ramifications. For now, what I want to do is to wait and see what (if anything) comes out of the White Paper that ArbCom has asked (is going to ask?) WMF to prepare on the subject. At first glance, that might sound like I'm enabling further disenfranchisement of the community, but I don't see it that way. Instead, I think that if WMF says anything about WMF recognizing that academics and other writers publishing personal information of editors goes against the values of the movement (or something along those lines), that gives the community an opening to say that we want to have policies that reflect that. I'm thinking about how difficult it always is to get consensus to change anything (especially now that ArbCom seems to have gone on record as saying that academics can be trusted to do whatever they want, and that Arbs are smart enough to tell the difference between legitimate and illegitimate academic writings), so I'm hoping it will be easier if an argument can be made that we need to bring our policies up to date with the new White Paper from WMF. I'm also thinking that this isn't an urgent problem, so much as an important one, so I'm not in a hurry, so much as I'm focused on getting it right (even if the White Paper ends up not helping, or never happens). And, as already said repeatedly, I don't think this is about WMF or the community telling outside entities what they can or cannot write, but rather us telling them that if they out someone they won't be welcome to edit here. (By the way, I was at a college reunion last week, and several people who have nothing to do with Wikipedia were nonetheless aware of, and asked me about, the controversy over the G&K paper.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:51, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
The White Paper will be happening. There's a phab ticket (T337883). At the June ArbCom/WMF call, it was indicated this would likely be finished Jan - March 2024. The long timeline reflects both other foundation work and the foundation's need to do a fair amount of consultation in order to ensure that this is fully looked at and the resulting paper is high quality and robust across a wide variety of contexts and situations. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:47, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
smart enough to tell the difference between legitimate and illegitimate academic writings That's the most problematic part, because it quite plainly jeopardises the principle of equality before the law.
Incidentally, according to the latest Wikihistories newsletter, Grabowski and Klein felt they needed to name editors because they were authors of content that was untrue and potentially harmful and they don’t have the confidence of Wikipedia’s ability to obtain redress when its highest body (ArbCom) only enforces conduct rather than truth. Isn't that "naming and shaming" exactly the same justification other editors gave when they outed people (and got banned for it)? AndreasJN46608:19, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
If the desire is to empower the community to participate in the development of policy, I don't think the wiki way of individuals modifying living documents that take effect immediately would be good approach. The community needs to be given the opportunity to weigh in and then respond to each other. The resulting N-squared potential interactions means the process will take more and more time as the community grows larger. It's common and practical to have a subset of the community work on drafting policy in order to more effectively narrow down the options to a smaller number, so the time spent by the overall community can be used more efficiently. I appreciate the time required can be exasperating, but it's a direct consequence of the community's size. isaacl (talk) 21:45, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I'd invite you to spend some time on stats.wikimedia.org. You'll find that the Wikimedia community is smaller than it was fifteen years ago, and that editor numbers across languages and projects have plateaued over the past five or ten years. AndreasJN46607:03, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
The practical limits based on the N-squared communication problem kick in really, really quickly—well below the number of editors on the Wikimedia sites. isaacl (talk) 08:58, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
But those limits would have kicked in in 2004 ... This reminds me of a saying people were fond of then: "Wikipedia can never work in theory, it can only work in practice." Joking aside, most of the policies and guidelines the community developed over the first ten years of the projects' existence, when the English Wikipedia community in particular was significantly larger than today, are perfectly serviceable ... and actually fairly unique online. At the same time, the limits of the committee approach are all too apparent. The above description of the UCoC as a "curate's egg" is truly appropriate. AndreasJN46614:01, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Andreas, I find it a bit rich that you agree the UCOC is a curate's egg when you spent a great deal of energy at the case to try to get us to enforce the UCOC (or at least your interpretation of it). CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓15:21, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
I find it an intolerable situation that on the one hand we have this Universal Code of Conduct, which everyone is warned may not be circumvented, eroded, or ignored by Wikimedia Foundation officers or staff nor local policies of any Wikimedia project, but on the other hand we think it is too crappy to enforce it. (I did suggest committee members unwilling to enforce the Code would have the honorable option to resign.)
Now, it's in the nature of a curate's egg (I'll try and resist the temptation to call it a cuckoo's egg) that they are a mixture of good and bad. Let me explain what I mean.
The code says that harassment is considered unacceptable within the Wikimedia movement. It goes on to say (my emphases) that harassment includes but is not limited to: Insults [...] Sexual harassment [...] Threats [...] Encouraging harm to others [...] Disclosure of personal data (Doxing): sharing other contributors' private information, such as name, place of employment, physical or email address without their explicit consent either on the Wikimedia projects or elsewhere, or sharing information concerning their Wikimedia activity outside the projects. [...]
Now, I and others like Vanamondehave said for well over a year that the bolded section is at best unclear. Because as written, it says that whenever I am sharing information about other people's Wikimedia activity outside the projects I am engaging in harassment.
To that degree I fully agree with Wugapodes, who said at one point during the case that if we took the UCoC literally, we'd have to class his private conversations about Wikipedia with his life partner as "harassment". The problem is that this is indeed what the UCoC says, and will continue to say for the foreseeable future. This is madness. A document of such central importance should be written clearly, so everyone knows what is meant and not meant. Community editing would achieve that in days; months of committee editing and board approval clearly did not.
And there ought to be reasonable exceptions. For according to UCoC standards, everyone who contributed to Wikipedia:Congressional_staffer_edits e.g. engaged in unacceptable behaviour and harassment (workplace disclosure without explicit consent). Is this what we want?
So much for the bad. Now for the good. I think it's correct that Wikipedians shouldn't go round publicising that User:MineEnemy is called Joe Bloggs and is a teacher of physics at the St Bartholomew School in Little Wilmington, especially when Joe's edits have nothing whatsoever to do with physics.
People have outed editors in the past because they didn't agree with the politics of their editing and hoped outing them would make them stop, and got banned for it. Now according to the above quote attributed to G&K in the Wikihistories piece, explaining their reasons for giving people's names and employers in their essay, G&K's motivation was no different. It had nothing to do with academic standards, as committee members charitably assumed. They didn't trust ArbCom to remove the editors they didn't like, and thought outing them would help remove them from the playing field.
As the UCoC puts it, in a passage I find unobjectionable, harassment includes any behaviour intended primarily to intimidate, outrage or upset a person [and] may include contacting workplaces or friends and family members in an effort to intimidate or embarrass. ArbCom took the view that this is not what happened here. I think reasonable people can disagree. AndreasJN46619:14, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Please do not ping me. I have found your persistent wikilawyering at best annoying and at worst disruptive, so please do not involve me in the latest iteration. — Wug·a·po·des23:09, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
There was a greater alignment in purpose during the initial years (though as I understand it by no means across all issues), and it's been a long time since policy could be significantly changed by a single individual to take effect immediately, which is the wiki way (allow anyone to change a living document). The limits were hit early on, and considerable discussion is required for meaningful changes. Wikipedia's policies and processes have grown more entrenched as a small number of objectors can stalemate progress. And most changes that do gain approval are still met with subsequent outcries of editors who felt they weren't sufficiently consulted. isaacl (talk) 16:43, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
As the person who first made the curate's egg analogy in this section, I'd like to respond to the criticism of those of us who think that the good parts of the UCOC should be taken seriously by the community. When a flawed document has some good features it is not hypocritical to call for the good parts to be enforced whilst still pointing out that other bits are flawed. What would be off would be to call for the whole of it to be treated as literally, whilst still pointing out that the first admin to get dementia but insist on the UCOC protecting them, or the reforms of the Scots Wiki should be undone because they gave preference to Scots Wiki contributors who actually understood Scots. In the case of Arbcom, I'm not aware of anyone, not even the WMF, who argues that the UCOC should be taken so literally that Arbcom should stop requiring its members to be at least 18 years old..... So we know that Arbcom and the WMF both have a defacto position of only enforcing the bits of the UCOC that they think are worth enforcing.
As for whether the size of the community is growing or stable, we need to remember that the currently active part of the community is only a subset of the community of everyone who has ever contributed to this project. By at least one measure the currently active part of the community is still larger than it was in the late 2014 minima. By every measure the community of people who have ever contributed to this project is still growing as it has continually since 2001. The longer this project continues for the more people will be out there relying on the currently active community to protect what they voluntarily did on this project. Even if there is no one currently active who they have interacted with, and the rules, norms and technology of doxxing have radically changed since they made their contributions to this project. ϢereSpielChequers07:57, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
About "the rules, norms and technology of doxxing have radically changed", I agree, and I think that's important for the WMF to address in the White Paper, and for the community to examine after that. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:27, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Just spitballing another thought that I had, another issue that came up in the ArbCom case was that an editor had some self-outing material that he later wanted to have oversighted/suppressed, but was turned down because the information had been posted for a long time, and the oversighters concluded that too much time had passed in order for it to be oversighted now. That personal information ended up being significant in the recent dispute. I can't fault the oversighters for following the existing policy. But the community might want to start taking a look at updating our policies for that, as a guide to oversighters in the future. We might want to do something roughly along the lines of saying that protecting the privacy of personal information should be prioritized above how much time has passed since the original edit, so that the personal information would not continue to remain readily visible where it could be used in a harassing manner. At the same time, we might also spell out that someone aware of the personal information from the more lengthy time interval between posting and oversight might not necessarily be sanctioned for outing simply because the well-known material was eventually oversighted. Or something like that. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:06, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Question on social media and outing
If somebody brags on social media in unsavory terms about having made a certain edit on Wikipedia, can I call them out on it on-Wiki? Is that outing?
As a generalization, it would be better to deal with it privately (such as by email to an administrator or to ArbCom), than to post about it onsite. It might be OK to post if the social media post uses the exact same account name as the username here, and the social media post contains nothing to link the username to any aspect of real life identity. But it would have to satisfy both of those requirements, not just one or the other, and there would have to be no ambiguities about that. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:48, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Ok, this instance doesn't satisfy both, social media username is different. Can imagine a social media troll falsely claiming to be wiki editor for whatever reason. Hyperbolick (talk) 20:29, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
Meatpuppetry campaigns off-wiki
If a post off-wiki (say on social media or a forum) encourages readers to engage in an unambiguous vandalism campaign, in what contexts would it be outing to mention that post or link it? Air on White (talk) 06:26, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
"administrators have exactly the same right"
Sorry for the silly question. Why is this sentence centered and in bold? Doesn't it look too emphatic?
In case of problems administrators have exactly the same right as any other user to decline or withdraw from a situation that is escalating or uncomfortable, without giving a reason, or to contact the Arbitration Committee if needed.
I'd say that if we want to emphasize this sentence, putting same right as any other user in bold would be enough. The sentence doesn't need to be centred, which makes it look as if it were attached to the template {{User difficultblocks}} rather than part of the policy. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 17:18, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
(This is in the "Assistance for administrators being harassed" section.) I agree that it should be reformatted. It definitely should not be centered, and I also agree with limiting the bold font in that way. It should just be in regular text, below where that template is shown. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
I wonder if it's actually necessary; the fact that it has never been discussed in 16 years makes me suspect not. It's obviously uncontroversial but it mostly just seems to reiterate the second paragraph of the section. --Aquillion (talk) 23:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
It's probably not really necessary to include that part, but there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that admins have the same rights as everyone else. In any case, there seem to be no objections to changing the formatting, so I made that change ([9]). --Tryptofish (talk) 22:43, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Editing under one's real name
This has probably been discussed here before but I can't find it in the archives: if a user edits under their real name, and a Google search of that real name reveals an undisclosed COI, is it OUTING to reveal the knowledge of that connection? WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!!22:30, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
How do you know the name they're editing under is their real name if they haven't already outed themselves (as I have)?
But it's pretty common on AfDs to see article editors have usernames that appear to be related to the subject of the AfD, and often for that appearance of relation to be discussed by AfD participants or the cause for questioning whether that editor has a COI; for a recent example see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shirley Ho. I tend to think that instances of this sort should not count as outing because we have no more actual information about identities after the discussion than we had before, and because we do not even have a suggestion for connection that was not already obvious before. If we're going to discuss patterns of COI editing as problematic in AfDs (and we should), that discussion needs to not be hobbled by COI editors who never admit a COI and by rules that prevent us from discussing potential undisclosed COIs. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:31, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
There may be some cases where a wikilawyer could claim otherwise, but standard procedure is that any attempt to draw attention to personally identifying information is WP:OUTING. I think I saw a recent discussion on some new thing to privately report concerns, but the old fallback was to email succinct evidence to the Arbitration Committee (see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee#Contacting the Committee). They are overwhelmed so a response may be slow. Asking what to do at WP:COIN may get a better answer. Johnuniq (talk) 00:34, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
It's permissible to connect a Wikipedia username to on-wiki activities: often a clear indicator of a COI is similarity between a username and the title of a biography said user has created. Extrapolating that to information not available on-wiki - or even on-wiki information that has clearly been removed at a user's request, even if it's still technically visible - is outing, and not permitted. If there is off-wiki evidence of on-wiki abuse, it should be sent to COIVRT, or ARBCOM, as appropriate. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:36, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
I will probably return to this thread when I'm not headed out the door, but when you're at a Google search of that real name you're already in "private info" territory, unless they disclose on their user/talk page. Primefac (talk) 20:09, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
In cases where it's the same name as the subject of a Wikipedia bio, Google search of that real name is entirely appropriate for editors of that bio or contributors to an AfD of it, even if it happens to also be similar to the name of an editor who contributed to the bio. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:20, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
We have a bizarre understanding of privacy on this project, if anything that comes up on a Google search can be considered 'private info'. – Joe (talk) 04:42, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
We do. I've run across the same thing with biographies, where people insist that information contained in reliable sources which are actually cited in the article is "private information" and inappropriate to include in the article. It is...bizarre, to say the least, but people do think that way. SeraphimbladeTalk to me10:28, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
That seems more like a BLP-related "what do we include" situation, but I do agree that we sometimes have some interesting discussions on how much of that "private" information to include. Primefac (talk) 15:24, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
We have a project where people think that (in some cases) posting about something a person did with the same account is over the line and can be OUTING. Wikipedians definitely value privacy rights. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:26, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
I think there were good reasons presented at the RFC for why this should be the case and obviously it found consensus. And beyond not going overboard with sanctions, this particular line isn't a bright one - it's a fuzzy one where the context of information posted on other WMF projects needs consideration. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:29, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedians value... something. Anonymity? The illusion that this is a secret sandbox? Whatever it is, it's not privacy, and I do think that the habit of referring to things as "private" or "personal information" when they're patently not (e.g. stuff that comes up when you google my username, things I've posted on other websites publicly under the same name) is a problem because it devalues concerns about things that are genuinely private in the normal, offline sense of the word (my wife's name, my bank details, where I am right now). – Joe (talk) 15:15, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
The arbs have heard a number of related issues at the ARB notice boards in the last year. With the creation of the COI VRT queue, and the fact that arbcom continues to exist, I struggle to see why you would need to publicly disclose that sort of connection. I remain of the opinion that if you are having to search outside of Wikipedia to connect the dots, that's still outing. Obviously we can't stop people from googling things, but we can stop them from posting about it. Further, even if someone is using what appears to be their real name, that doesn't mean that it is their name. Nor is there a guarantee that you've googled the right person. Remember, on the internet, no one knows you're a dog. Bottom line: if you think someone editing under their real name has a conflict of interest that they haven't disclosed, don't risk harassment in the first place: email the COI VRT queue. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓20:09, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
In cases where a potential COI is relevant for determining the outcome of an AfD, is there any reason to expect this mechanism to produce a result within the timeline of the AfD? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:19, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
I can't speak for arbcom, only myself as an oversighter. In the example you gave above, it was framed as a possible autobiography at AFD, which is something anyone could guess at given the username of the creator and the name of the article. I see no semblance of OUTING there. Compare that to "The name of the creator is the same screen name that the head of communciations for this company used on WikiFoo" which would, for me, clearly fall into OUTING and I'd use the tools accordingly. Now what @CaptainEek's rosy COIVRT message elides is that the queue is backup enough such that by the time it figures out the COI elements, any AfD (even one relisted a couple of times) is likely to be over. But, crucially, there being a COI shouldn't, on its own, dictate an AFD: notability should. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:41, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
How is that relevant to whether someone has a COI? If there is encyclopaedic content it should not be deleted, if there isn't (and there is no scope for any) it should be. Neither requires any knowledge about whether COIs exist. Thryduulf (talk) 23:11, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Another approach that seems acceptable under this policy and that has been used a long time in COI cases is to politely ask the editor on their talk page whether they have a COI with respect to [name of article], but without saying why you asked the question. It doesn't mean you'll get a truthful reply, but it isn't harassment, and when the editor is acting in good faith, they may well understand the issue and quickly realize that they should fix the problem, which avoids the need for escalation. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:51, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
I know I'm starting a new thread, but there were a few different replies to my initial comment but also a few good comments below mine that I thought I would opine on:There is a difference between a user writing what appears to be an autobiography (e.g. same username as the page name) and "User:Jimbo is writing about ACME CORP, and I googled their company and the CFO is named Jimbo so they must be the same person" type COIs. In my mind the former is acceptable grounds for an on-wiki posting of "you are the same person please don't do this", while the latter requires more discretion.I will also note that I dealt with a case just a week or two ago where someone posted on a user's talk page "are you <insert person name>? If you are not this person you should change your username". The user did not edit anything related to the real person being asked about, so it is both an inappropriate question and largely irrelevant; they did state that it was their real name, but they were not that person, but the question really shouldn't have been asked in the first place (especially since their userpage gave a general location and occupation that was not the one being asked about). Primefac (talk) 15:22, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Private correspondence copyright situation
As emails ar
not released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 (unless the author noted it), wouldn't (with that obvious exception) posting them on-wiki be a copyright violation?
This has been discussed extensively. The counterargument is that Wikipedia is full of unlicensed copyrighted text in the form of quotations, because all copyright regimes acknowledge this as a legitimate exception. The wider point is that we are not lawyers and the purpose of this page is to give guidance to Wikipedia editors on preventing and dealing with harassment, not to interpret or enforce copyright law. – Joe (talk) 13:08, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
