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Basic principles

To try and get some agreement and a basis for moving forward, I believe that the following principles are what the policy needs to accommodate. They are numbered for ease of reference only, they are not ranked. Many terms will need defining but that level of detail is not what this section is about, please leave that until later.

  1. Harassment, including outing, is unacceptable.
  2. Everybody, whether an editor or not, has a right not to be harassed on or because of Wikipedia.
  3. Posting of personal information without permission can be harassment.
  4. Some articles, especially biographies, need to contain some personal information.
  5. Writing/editing article that complies with the WP:BLP policy is not harassment.
  6. In some cases, discussion of what should (not) be in an article involves discussion of personal information, either of the article subject or of the author(s) of a source. Such discussion, when conducted appropriately, is not harassment.
  7. Users who harass other people, intentionally or otherwise, may (but not necessarily will) be subject to sanctions, including being blocked.
  8. Non-public information posted about someone else that does not have an encyclopaedic justification will be deleted and/or suppressed.
  9. Whether non-public information has an encyclopaedic justification is dependent on some factors including (but not limited to and in no particular order) the nature of the information, intent in posting, consensus, replaceability, prior publication, accuracy, the views of subject, and Wikipedia policies.

Thryduulf (talk) 10:05, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, of course, although "intent" in #9 may not be relevant. However, established principles include that WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA and WP:HARASS apply to editors—these policies restrict how editors interact. Another principle is that WP:BLP applies to all people on all pages (not just subjects of biographical articles, although I can see how the "B" in "BLP" leads to confusion). WP:HARASS is not the right policy to prohibit what editors can write about non-editors—use WP:BLPPRIVACY or another policy for that. Johnuniq (talk) 11:35, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Is it OK to harass people away from Wikipedia? Is it OK for identified groups of wikipedians, acting as a group with reference to their wikipedia activities, to harass another editor away from Wikipedia?
  • Is it OK to use admin-privileged information to harass people IRL? If that occurs, what is the response? Andy Dingley (talk) 11:53, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
The last one would be an abuse of tools and depending on the nature of the information and the level of authority required to see it (checkuser, normal admin etc) would potentially be a legal issue. Do you have anything in mind or is this a hypothetical? Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:02, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I've specific cases in mind for all of them, cases where WP (IMHO) fell down badly.
The second case was a well-known case at Commons, where an office action from on-high rightly removed admin rights from the two concerned (I'd have supported indef bans). However Commons then turned it into a political fight to "brexit its independence" from WMF and kept reinstating them. IMHO, it should be clear that such things are simply not accepted, by the rules of this project (lest any other project decides that its freedom is more important than basic behavioural standards). Andy Dingley (talk) 12:11, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
And the first bullet is answered squarely by Thry's 1 and 2. "Harass bad" and "don't do it on Wikipedia". --Izno (talk) 12:09, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
  • @Andy Dingley, Izno, Johnuniq, and Only in death: Off-wiki harassment is not OK by any means. It's something I overlooked when compiling the list above (I ran out of time and had to finish in a hurry), so I've added the italicised portion to bullet 2. Obviously nobody should be harassed because of anything, but dealing with harassment unconnected with Wikipedia is outside our remit (and ability to do anything about). Thryduulf (talk) 18:06, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I'd say those principles are sound. I'd also say everything except off-WP harassment is already covered by BLP and the privacy section of Harassment without the non-editor sentence at the end of the first paragraph. As I said above, is there a scenario where any type of harassment of a non-editor wouldn't be a BLP violation? If there is no such scenario then there's no reason to include non-editors in the privacy section of this policy other than to say harassment of non-editors is covered by BLP with a link. Off-WP harassment of editors is a whole other can of worms though that WP has historically struggled with due to needing to protect the privacy of editors. I have no easy answers for that one but I would say that's the scenario that current policy has the hardest time dealing with and deserves more focus. Capeo (talk) 22:17, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Risker a couple of sections above explains this better than me, but the reason you don't see harassment of non-editors that is more serious than BLP is because it's oversighted as soon as an oversighter becomes aware of it (and it's correctly almost always through off-wiki methods that such problems are brought to our attention, so you wont be aware of that either). The BLP policy covers only a subset of what this policy does, and it is very important that there is no ambiguity about who is covered by the policy. Thryduulf (talk) 23:00, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Yup, and Risker is correct, as I told them above. I was mistaken in thinking BLP could be used to instantly indef an editor that was harassing someone outside of the editing community. It appears the DS awareness clause applies and thus it can't deal quickly enough with the type of harassment we're talking about. I think a new section, as suggested below, is the best way to deal with it. Capeo (talk) 13:57, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
I'll put it another way, although it's pretty much the same thing as what Thryduulf is saying:
  1. Posting another editor's personal information on Wikipedia = BAD.
  2. Going around off-site and doxing or otherwise harassing another editor = BAD.
  3. Adding non-BLP compliant content = BAD.
  4. Adding BLP-compliant content = no problem!
  5. Using Wikipedia as a sort of web host to post doxing information about people who are not editors = BAD.
As much as editors argue about this stuff, I believe that everyone agrees with those 5 points (and anyone who disagrees is spectacularly wrong). So my "modest proposal" is that we stop arguing about which list items are or are not "outing", and focus on ways to say clearly that the BAD items are prohibited, whatever they may be called. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:03, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
So what happens when a group of editors meet off-wiki, in a context that's clearly identifiable as a "meta-wikipedia" group (not Meta), and then thoroughly out another editor? Obviously WP has no control over their behaviour there, but in the case of WP:NLT we take the line that you can behave like that off-wiki or edit on-wiki, but one will exclude the other. In the case of harassment and outing, the WP response so far has been "suck it down", if it happened off-wiki, it is seen as irrelevant. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:37, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Not at all. It's covered by WP:OWH (not to say that there haven't been inconsistencies in enforcement, of course). --Tryptofish (talk) 00:31, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
@Tryptofish: I think one more bullet needs to be added for clarity when it's put in that format: Discussing whether content is BLP-compliant or not = OK when done carefully. Thryduulf (talk) 14:31, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
I agree with you completely: both content and discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:31, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
  • The scope needs discussion. I spent a bunch of time today reading versions of this policy as written over time, and its focus has always been how editors treat other editors. Go through it section by section, even now. Each part discusses what editors shouldn't do with respect to other editors.
At the same time, it is clear that in practice oversighters and others remove harassing content about non-editors all the time, under the spirit of this policy. And this activity is invisible to most editors. And BLPPRIVACY and BLPCOI really are anti-harassment policies, but aren't mentioned here.
This policy should have a section explicitly and clearly addressing harassment of non-editors by editors. This written policy is well behind practice in this regard.
But that's it. Expanding the scope throughout this whole policy from just editors, to everybody, would require a complete rewrite and is CREEP.
And to head off the people who will immediately treat this with suspicion that I am somehow talking about excluding unpaid editors from this policy, I will note that unpaid editors are EDITORS and are within the scope, and always have been. I am not talking about unpaid editors or scheming to exclude them when i talk about the problems of expanding the scope.)
Expanding the scope in OUTING also dilutes OUTING, which is a bad thing. This section of the policy is something very specialized to WP and very deep in the guts of WP - namely that we fiercely protect editors who wish to be anonymous from doxing. That focus on protecting editors' anonymity goes lost and gets all muddled with article content creation and discussion if the scope gets expanded in this part in particular. Jytdog (talk) 01:57, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Agree different policies should have different scopes. We do not need one policy for everything. That just confuses matters. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:41, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposed section on non-editors

here is a proposal

Harassing people outside of the editing community

As described in WP:BLPCOI and WP:BLPPRIVACY, and in alignment with the protection of editors from harassment described elsewhere in this policy, it is an abuse of editing privileges to harass living or recently deceased people who are not members of the Wikipedia community on any page within Wikipedia. Per the Oversight Policy, harassing content will be deleted from Wikipedia. Editors who generate harassing content about living or recently deceased people that violates WP:BLPCOI or WP:BLPPRIVACY on any page within Wikipedia may be indefinitely blocked.

Something like that? This has been missing for a long time. Jytdog (talk) 02:11, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Good basic concept, but too many words; let's cut it in half to say what we really mean. References to the BLP policy aren't necessarily applicable here; for example, repeatedly referring to a male-to-female trans person as "he", which is only covered in the MOS, not in BLP. In alignment with the protection of editors from harassment described elsewhere in this policy, it is an abuse of editing privileges to harass living or recently deceased people who are not members of the Wikipedia community. Harassing content will be deleted or suppressed. Editors who generate harassing content about living or recently deceased people on any page within Wikipedia may be indefinitely blocked. Risker (talk) 05:03, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
IMO the version by Jytdog is clearer. This bit "repeatedly referring to a male-to-female trans person as "he"" should be added to the BLP policy. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:26, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
  • It needs to be clearer, even in the heading. Is that "Harassing {people outside of the editing community}" or "{Harassing people} {conducting such harassment outside of the editing community}"? I think "Harassing those who are outside of the editing community" would be enough - although we still need to cover the other case. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:10, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I'd be fine with changing the header to whatever, and with taking out the 2nd instances of BLPPRIVACY AND BLPCOI. We should leave them and the link to oversight in once each in order to make clear the underlying coherence in all this. Jytdog (talk) 14:10, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
  • revision addressing comments above:
Harassing those outside of the editing community

As described in WP:BLPCOI and WP:BLPPRIVACY, and in alignment with the protection of editors from harassment described elsewhere in this policy, it is an abuse of editing privileges to harass living or recently deceased people who are not members of the Wikipedia community on any page within Wikipedia. Per the Oversight Policy, harassing content will be deleted or suppressed. Editors who generate harassing content about living or recently deceased people on any page within Wikipedia may be indefinitely blocked. -- Jytdog (talk) 14:19, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

  • In pretty much a complete 180 from what I was arguing the last couple days I now see that BLP doesn't have the teeth to deal with the type of harassment this policy is trying to address. Consequently I don't think it should be linked to at all. Though I do think misgendering a trans person should be added to BLP. I think this policy should stand on its own. I'd suggest a combination of Risker and Jytdog's suggestions. Something like: In alignment with the protection of editors from harassment described elsewhere in this policy, it is an abuse of editing privileges to harass living or recently deceased people who are not members of the Wikipedia community. Per the Oversight Policy, harassing content will be deleted or suppressed. Editors who generate harassing content about living or recently deceased people on any page within Wikipedia may be indefinitely blocked. Capeo (talk) 14:27, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I think that this approach is an excellent idea, and I thank Jytdog for thinking of it. There are some more things that I would like to see fleshed out.
  1. I would think that this new section could be added directly after WP:OWH, and at the same header level: does that make sense?
  2. And I believe that implementation of the new section should be accompanied by removal of the "non-editors" sentence from the outing section.
  3. I also think that there needs to be something about what is and is not permitted in content and discussions about BLP pages, per what editors have been discussing above.
I can also think of some wording tweaks, but that can be put off until more substantive issues are agree upon. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:43, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
You've touched on something I was struggling, and still am, to articulate and draw attention to. I would hope that if there's consensus arrived at for this new section the "non-editors" sentence would be unnecessary and thus the conflict about it would go away. Strictly speaking it's an ongoing RFC though and I don't know how you move from that to "hey, if we all like this idea better let's just call the RFC off". Few editors who gave their opinions regarding the RFC have commented on this current proposal though I believe it meets the concerns of those editors who opposed the removal of the sentence far better than leaving the sentence in does. Capeo (talk) 02:23, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
I agree that this isn't a matter of calling off the existing RfC, and I didn't mean to imply that we should. I think it's pretty clear that the RfC will not result in a consensus to change anything (not that my predictive skills have been all that good!), so I think we might as well let it chug along until its expiration date. In the mean time, I hope we can get a local consensus about what a formal proposal for a new section should be. After that, I think we will need a new RfC before it would be acceptable to add a completely new section to the policy. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:32, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
I thought splitting the "non-editors" material into its own section was a good idea when I half-assedly suggested it a week ago, and even though I sometimes change my mind half a dozen times before noon, I still think it's a good idea ;) I prefer Risker's shorter wording, with in-text links to retain some of Jytdog's references to related policy material. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:22, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
One cannot harass the dead. Nor, under US or UK law, can you defame them.[1]. What problem is this supposed to solve? John Nagle (talk) 06:25, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
I guess you are referring to the wording about "recently deceased people". Personally, I don't feel strongly about retaining that phrase, but I understand it to be based on concerns about the feelings of the survivors. Not all aspects of "harassment" are involved here, but revealing the personal information of a non-public person could certainly be something that the survivors would be unhappy about. Also, there is nothing wrong with saying that something that is permitted by law is nonetheless something that we do not want to permit here. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:53, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
BLP applies to living and recently dead people. This goes all the way back to the earliest archives of BLP talk (see here for example) and seemed to really sharpen over issues about how to deal with articles about people who recently committed suicide (see here, here, and here) It makes sense to me that we would not tolerate grave dancing in WP. Jytdog (talk) 23:10, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
  • trying again - suggested location is as a main-level section, immediately following WP:OWH:
Harassing those outside of the editing community
In alignment with the protection of editors from harassment described elsewhere in this policy, it is an abuse of editing privileges to harass living or recently deceased people who are not members of the Wikipedia community. Per the Oversight Policy, harassing content will be deleted or suppressed. Editors who generate harassing content about living or recently deceased people on any page within Wikipedia may be indefinitely blocked. See also WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:BLPCOI, and the associated discretionary sanctions.
Since we have full page protection, this needs strong consensus before an admin will add it. -- Jytdog (talk) 22:54, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
I agree that there will need to be an RfC, and that's the case whether or not the page protection gets lifted. I suggest some tweaks to it:
Main-level section, immediately following WP:OWH:
Harassing those outside of the editing community

In alignment with the protection of editors from harassment described throughout the rest of this policy, edits that harass living or recently deceased people who are not members of the Wikipedia community are also prohibited. Per the oversight policy, harassing content will be deleted or suppressed. Editors who post such material in any namespace may be indefinitely blocked. See also WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:BLPCOI, and the associated discretionary sanctions.

But I also think that there will need to be something about how BLP-compliant edits are not what this section of the policy is about. I'm finding it difficult to figure out how to word it, but discussion elsewhere on this talk page indicates that we have to include that. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:39, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
I think this is much better because it acknowledges that WP:HARASS is about editors. However, the proposed text belongs at WP:BLP which should contain all policy regarding such matters. Further, a discussion which effectively extends WP:BLP should occur at its talk. WP:HARASS could link to the text at WP:BLP. Johnuniq (talk) 01:31, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
See, this is the core of the disagreement on this page. Yes, WP:HARASS is about editorial behaviour. It is a description of what behaviour is NOT acceptable; its entire purpose is to control the behaviour of the harassing editor. It is about the people doing the harassing, with an add-on at the end for the victims. But it is about controlling the behaviour of harassers, not people on the receiving end. And from that perspective, it doesn't matter who the victim is, it matters who the perpetrator is - and the perpetrator will ALWAYS be an editor.

There is absolutely no valid reason to treat the harassment of non-Wikipedians any differently than the harassment of Wikipedians. Separating them treats non-editors as less important than Wikipedians. It needs to be here, and BLP can reference to here. Harassment is harassment is harassment. Treating some victims differently simply gives off the message that they're not really being harassed. That is the wrong message. Risker (talk) 04:05, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

User:Risker do you have any objection to the proposed language (I mean deal killer ones - we are trying to get a good-enough proposal to float) Jytdog (talk) 06:41, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
Trypto I am fine with that version. I don't agree that this needs further clarification about BLP-compliant edits. We cannot legislate clue. Jytdog (talk) 06:43, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for the feedback. I think that Risker's reply to Johnuniq is correct, and I also think that the weight of the (admittedly tl;dr) discussion on this talk page establishes that something like this needs to be here regardless of what's at BLP. But I'm not yet fine with this version, because I still think that we need something about BLP here, because so many editors have been asking for it. There is no hurry, and I don't think we need to propose this until the current RfC has run its course. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

And having said what I just said, I'll run this up the flagpole. I suspect that what I am now adding will need to be fixed further:

Main-level section, immediately following WP:OWH:
Harassing those outside of the editing community

In alignment with the protection of editors from harassment described throughout the rest of this policy, edits that harass living or recently deceased people who are not members of the Wikipedia community are also prohibited. Per the oversight policy, harassing content will be deleted or suppressed. Editors who post such material in any namespace may be indefinitely blocked. Content and sourcing that comply with the biographies of living persons policy do not violate this policy; neither do discussions about sources and authors of sources, unless comments about persons are gratuitous to determining source quality. See also WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:BLPCOI, and the associated discretionary sanctions.

--Tryptofish (talk) 22:40, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

I would support this version. It doesn't attempt to undermine the primary mission of Wikipedia (writing an encyclopedia) in the process of accomplishing a secondary purpose (avoiding harassment). WP:V and WP:BLP will always have primacy over WP:H, this would help to resolve the existing contradiction. Geogene (talk) 16:58, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
Good, thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 19:58, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

It occurs to me that if we implement a new section, there ought to be a shortcut to it, so I've created WP:HNE (harassment of non-editors) for that purpose. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:58, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

All this is fine and good, but as I've said you have got to have an exception for discussing sources. If you apply BLP type rules to discussing sources, it's a big deal. Herostratus (talk) 20:51, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
Maybe I misunderstand what you are asking for, but it does say: neither do discussions about sources and authors of sources, unless comments about persons are gratuitous to determining source quality. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:04, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
Oh OK oops sorry, I missed that... there's a lot here, sorry. Carry on. Herostratus (talk) 14:47, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. Yeah, if you look up tl;dr in the dictionary, the definition is this talk page. (Actually, it's probably not in the dictionary, but... ) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:48, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
BLP contains an exception for discussing sources at WP:BLPTALK. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 01:52, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
OK. You mean "Contentious material... not related to making content choices should be removed..." OK. A little subtle but OK. Herostratus (talk) 14:47, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
I was thinking that discussing sources was firmly in the category of related to making content choices and therefore, under WP:BLPTALK, not subject to removal. Of course, the discussion needs to be firmly related to a content choice: "is the source author an expert?", "does the publisher have a reputation for reliability?", etc. It's not an exception which allows us to say, "well I heard X smells bad & mistreats kittens"; because that's not related to making a content choice. I'm not sure that rendering everythign to BLP is the best answer, but it does allow for discussing sources. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 21:13, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Alternative proposal regarding harassment of non-editors

Here is another proposal offered for consideration. This would go near the top of the page.

Harassment of both editors and non-editors is prohibited.

Wikipedia must never be misused to harass anyone, whether or not the subject of the harassment is an editor here. Examples of prohibited forms of harassment that can affect non-editors as well as editors include cyberbullying, threats, name-calling, offensive comments or disparagement, and the publication of individuals' personal identifying information (as described above/below). Edits constituting harassment will be reverted, deleted, or suppressed, as appropriate, and editors who engage in harassment are subject to blocking. Where content is added or comments are made about a living person for a direct, legitimate encyclopedic purpose, such as in an article about a notable person or event or in a relevant talkpage discussion, all aspects of the policy on biographies of living persons must be observed, and in the event of any disputes, the procedures described in that policy must be followed.

Additional links could be added, but this would be the gist. Thoughts? Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:36, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

  • I definitely think this is a step in the right direction. I think there will continue to be much discussion about what constitutes as "harassment" whether it comes in the form of posting personal information, doxing, and false flag attempts to harm individuals through seemingly legitimate means. The community as a collective can usually exercise fairly sound judgement but we must be careful to ensure the protections afforded to all are not undermined by other priorities -- especially those that should be resolved by other means such as increasing notability and reliable source standards. Mkdw talk 00:48, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

All we really need is:

Where content is added or comments are made about a living person for a direct, legitimate encyclopedic purpose, such as in an article about a notable person or event or in a relevant talkpage discussion, all aspects of the policy on biographies of living persons must be observed, and in the event of any disputes, the procedures described in that policy must be followed.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:54, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

  • Is that a point of clarification contained within the harassment policy or are you suggesting that is what makes up the harassment policy? I don't see the above proposal by NYB and the one you've proposed as saying the same thing at all. One talks about harassment and one talks about article writing. Are content creators being blocked or banned under our harassment policy and against the wishes of the community at large for writing and discussing legitimate BLP content? Mkdw talk 04:27, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
  • @Doc James: I disagree that the one sentence you've chosen from my draft represents the sum and substance of what we need. The point that Wikipedia must never be used for purposes of cyberbullying or similar misconduct, no matter against whom aimed, is essential and in my view must absolutely be included. For some of the background on why, see Risker's comments above. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
Per Doc James above In addition, how does one define disparagement? Is it disparagement to assert that x is not sufficiently notable to mention in an article? Suppose x is the department chair in meteorology at a land grant college somewhere, who is routinely quoted by his local media about anthropogenic climate change, which may or may not align with the scientific consensus. Or, in an article about a plane crash in which everyone aboard died, somebody thought it would be wise to start a "list of notable passengers". This is followed by a a torrent of IP edits adding unverifiable, but plausible, names of victims. Is it inherently disparaging to remove them? I think it's reasonable to say that it is. Geogene (talk) 21:36, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
It occurs to me that these are very good reasons not to make this a section of the policy page – but lack of precise definition is OK in an introductory summary in the lead, with details to follow below. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:40, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I think this proposal contains some very good ideas, and what I particularly want to see is actually the part that is not in the portion selected by Doc James. As I see it, this new proposal covers two kinds of things: an overall explanation of the harassment policy – in what I think is a better way than before – and the specific issue of editors and non-editors. I think that the material being drafted just above, in #Proposed section on non-editors does a better job of the latter. But I also think that the proposal in this section is superior to the current lead section of this policy page. So I suggest that we get 2 for the price of 1, or maybe it's really 1 for the price of 2. But anyway, let's take:
Wikipedia must never be misused to harass anyone, whether or not the subject of the harassment is an editor here. Examples of prohibited forms of harassment that can affect editors and non-editors alike include cyberbullying, threats, name-calling, offensive comments or disparagement, and the publication of individuals' personal identifying information. Edits constituting harassment will be reverted, deleted, or suppressed, as appropriate, and editors who engage in harassment are subject to blocking.
and use it to replace what is currently the second paragraph of the lead section, and use what comes out of the discussion above for what will appear lower on the policy page. What I did here is to remove the section header and the last sentence, and make some small tweaks to the remaining wording. If one looks at the current lead section, the first paragraph is a general description of what harassment is, and the second paragraph is rather cryptic. So what I'm proposing here would be to improve the lead section by following the general description of harassment with a more specific summary of what it means to Wikipedia, and then have a subsequent section about non-editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:50, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm happy to see the discussion on these points, but I'd like to respond to Doc James's comment that because concepts such as "cyberbullying" cannot be defined with exact precision, this means it is unhelpful to have a policy expressly prohibiting them. A word like "cyberbullying," or for that matter the term "harassment" itself, has a clear and well-understood meaning, and these concepts need to be contained within the anti-harassment policy, even though there can always be disputed or borderline cases. It is impossible, even in principle, to write a policy page that will anticipate all possible circumstances and eliminate all possible ambiguities. (I have made this point, in the context of ArbCom decision-writing and utilizing a famous hypothetical, here ... and if anyone still doubts it, read the best law-review piece on statutory interpretation ever.) We can and should, of course, provide definitional substance to the terms we use, but we certainly need to make it clear that, for example, cyberbullying is prohibited.

As for User:Geogene's point, the intent of my draft is to say that (1) disparagement, meaning making negative comments about someone on Wikipedia (which we always need to bear in mind is one of the largest and most prominent websites in the world), is prohibited unless the discussion is taking place for legitimate reasons relating to creating and maintaining an encyclopedia, and (2) in the latter case, the BLP policy governs. (As with anything else on-wiki, common sense will be used in applying and enforcing this rule: we do not react to a random instance of "[name of living past or present president of the United States] sucks" the same way we do to "[name of random seventh-grader being bullied by a classmate] sucks." But that doesn't undercut the general rule.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

  • @Newyorkbrad: Given some of the historical discussion on this topic, could you clarify where you see "COI discussions" as fitting in to this proposed text? Specifically, would the following be permitted or prohibited (each in the context of a COI discussion)?: a) Linking to an off-site advertisement soliciting paid editing (the buyer); b) Linking to an off-site advertisement offering paid editing (the seller); c) Linking to off-site Personally identifiable information (PII) without tying that information to a Wikipedia pseudonymous editor; d) as c. but tying that information to an editor. e) Posting PII on Wikipedia. If there are some types of PII which should be treated differently from others, some examples may be worthwhile. If there are any other scenarios which would be beneficial to the discussion to have clarified, please mention these also. Thanks in advance for any reply. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 15:09, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
    • As several other people (particularly Risker) have emphasized, focusing on the COI/paid editing problem, while important, should not displace improvement of the anti-harassment policy as a whole. That said, I shared my thoughts on this general subject in my individual statement here. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:38, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
Thank you. My questions focus on COI because it is "in the grey areas", with divergent views on what our approach should be; it's somewhat of a watershed. I had, at first reading, considered that the word "direct" in your proposed text might rule out posting information on Wikipedia; but on re-reading felt otherwise. Your statement is clear & comprehensive; and I encourage all editors interested in the discussion to read it. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 15:52, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
Newyorkbrad, I just about lol'd when I looked at that law review – thanks for that! Ryk72, the outing section of the policy already says, partly as a result of a recent RfC: Posting links to other accounts on other websites is allowable in specific situations (but see also Wikipedia:Linking to external harassment). There are job posting sites where employers publicly post advertisements to recruit paid Wikipedia editors. Linking to such an ad in a forum such as the Conflict of interest noticeboard is not a violation of this policy. Also, if individuals have identified themselves without redacting or having it oversighted, such information can be used for discussions of conflict of interest (COI) in appropriate forums. (I didn't bother to copy the blue links to here.) I think that it largely addresses the issues that you raised here. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:12, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
  • My initial reaction to this was revulsion. The original proposal was incremental and targeted and attempted only to put community practice regarding suppression of harassing content into writing, filling in something that has been lacking.
This proposal expands the scope of the whole policy and feels a lot like an effort to legislate from the top down, which is not how the community generates policy. And I see an tsunami of complaints akin to "uncivil!!" arising from this - please think about how hard it is for the community to actually enforce the civility policy (just to add the link: WP:CIVILITY) The broad language here just invites much more of the same.
Am still thinking. But right now I think this would probably be rejected by a large margin at an RfC. Jytdog (talk) 04:32, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
Still thinking. The first sentence alone would be a very good addition to the lead. Then in the body, the targeted thing as worked on in the section above. This is more incremental.. less startingly broadening. Jytdog (talk) 05:03, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
As you and other editors think about it, I'd like to point back to my suggestion of using part of what's here in the lead, and the material from the talk section above in the main text, described just above. I think that would be a good approach to something that might have consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, that is good. but in my view only the first sentence. i still find myself reacting negatively to the list of examples. In my work onFRINGEy topics POV pushers cry cyberbulling all the time, and i don't see it as helpful to feed that. Maybe too selfish? Jytdog (talk) 00:15, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
Some editors will use anything as a weapon if they think it might work. That should not stop us from using appropriate examples, explanations etc. If their cries of cyberbullying are off target, they should not be relevant. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 13:06, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps it would be a good idea to revise that list of examples so that the examples would parallel the sections on the policy page. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:08, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Conservative generalized harassment proposal

After extensive discussion above, am proposing we add the following two bits of content to this policy, to catch it up with community practice - the work that oversighters and others do every day in removing harassing content about RW people added to WP. This proposal attempts to address that gap in the written policy, and no more. There are larger issues afoot with the Wikipedia:Community health initiative which is looking to develop new policy around harassment. This is not that.

Wikipedia must never be misused to harass anyone, whether or not the subject of the harassment is an editor here.

And a new main-level section, immediately following WP:OWH:

Harassing those outside of the editing community

In alignment with the protection of editors from harassment described throughout the rest of this policy, edits that harass living or recently deceased people who are not members of the Wikipedia community are also prohibited. Per the oversight policy, harassing content will be deleted or suppressed. Editors who post such material in any namespace may be indefinitely blocked.

Where content is added or comments are made about a living person for a direct, legitimate encyclopedic purpose, such as in an article about a notable person or event or in a relevant talkpage discussion including discussions of sources, all aspects of the policy on biographies of living persons must be observed, and in the event of any disputes, the procedures described in that policy must be followed.

Thoughts? Jytdog (talk) 15:39, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

!votes

  • I support the general approach, but I also feel like the proposal is not quite ready yet for an RfC. First, you did not specify where the sentence in the first quote box is supposed to go. Based on prior discussion, I figure it is intended for the lead. I would suggest adding it at the end of the first paragraph in the lead, and also deleting the second paragraph of the lead. As for the second quote box, I strongly support the first paragraph, and I oppose the second paragraph. That latter part has nothing to do with "disputes" about content, and it should more directly reflect the concerns discussed previously, about not seeing BLP content as an outing violation. I'll put a better alternative in the discussion section, below. --Tryptofish (talk) 02:02, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

I don't like the second paragraph in the second quote box. I think that the first paragraph is good as is, but the second paragraph should be changed to something that was discussed earlier on this talk page:

Content and sourcing that comply with the biographies of living persons policy do not violate this policy; neither do discussions about sources and authors of sources, unless comments about persons are gratuitous to determining source quality. See also WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:BLPCOI, and the associated discretionary sanctions.

--Tryptofish (talk) 02:06, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I yanked it. Good luck to everybody! Jytdog (talk) 03:31, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, that's a good idea (but I hope that you didn't mean that you were walking away).
Let me make a revised version of the proposal, while trying to tie up some loose ends – because I really do think it's a good idea, and I want to see it move forward now that the earlier RfC has closed. I hope that editors who are watching here will give feedback on it before we go ahead with an RfC, because it would be useful to have a local consensus that a proposal is ready to be presented to the community. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Second version

Make three changes:

  1. Delete the sentence This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors. from the outing section, because it will be replaced as follows.
  2. Delete the second paragraph of the lead section, and replace it with the following paragraph:
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.
3. Add the following new main-level section, immediately following WP:OWH:
Harassing those outside of the editing community

In alignment with the protection of editors from harassment described throughout the rest of this policy, edits that harass living or recently deceased people who are not members of the Wikipedia community are also prohibited. Per the oversight policy, harassing content will be deleted or suppressed. Editors who post such material in any namespace may be indefinitely blocked.

Content and sourcing that comply with the biographies of living persons policy do not violate this policy; neither do discussions about sources and authors of sources, unless comments about persons are gratuitous to determining source quality. See also WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:BLPCOI, and the associated discretionary sanctions.

What do other editors think? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Bump: I'd really like to get feedback from other editors. (This is not yet a proposal to actually make these changes, just trying to finalize what can be proposed in an RfC.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:46, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

OK, I'll read it, but if this RfC happens, and it runs 30 days ish, that will take us to the beginning of June, and then we can all take a nice long well-deserved summer vacation from any further RfCs on this talk page or about the content of this policy. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:03, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, I appreciate that. I hope that you have a happy summer, but I'm not making any promises. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:42, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
Is it necessary to delete This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors.? Perhaps it could be kept and modified by adding a clause to it, like ", as described below"? Geogene (talk) 18:06, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
That's an interesting idea, thanks! Of course, the concern in the past has been that the sentence can be difficult to understand, but with an explanation readily at hand, that makes understanding a lot easier, and doing it this way would also placate editors who object to removing the sentence. I think an easy way to do it is simply to blue-link "both editors and non-editors" to the new section. I'd be fine with doing that. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:13, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I expect to start the new RfC (incorporating Geogene's idea) in the next day or so. If anybody has any suggestions or concerns, I'd still welcome hearing that before then. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:51, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Third parties commenting on (apparently accidental) self-outing

Hey, I was just reading (not commenting on) a couple of FTN discussions, and was reminded of an unrelated incident a few years back, where a Wikipedia SPA was pushing an extreme minority view, likely only held by one person and that person's close associates. In one case, the SPA cited an as-of-then unpublished writing by said person in a Wikipedia article, all but confirming their own real-world identity with that person (or at least their personal affilition with said person).

I have to wonder what the appropriateness of even pointing this kind of thing out would be, since if incorrect/random speculation as to someone's real-world identity is considered OUTING, then surely pointing out that someone has inadvertently outed themselves is also a violation, no? And if saying "Hey, I think you might be Joe Bloggs or someone associated with him, since you admitted to having seen his unpublished essay with this edit" is a violation, then what about "Hey, if you want to keep your identity secret, you might want to self-revert this edit and request oversight"?

Thoughts?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:25, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

My take on it (for whatever that might be worth) would be that there is a difference between posting an edit that can be interpreted by other editors as revealing personal information, as in this example, and choosing to voluntarily post the actual personal information on-wiki. Thus, the example comes close to "investigating other editors", but is also an example of something where common sense points towards the identification. Therefore, the "I think you might be..." comment borders on outing, but I personally would only regard it as sanctionable if the comment were made in a hostile or battleground-y way. (Note that my opinion is also that administrators need to employ good judgment about whether there is an intent to harass, or a danger that outing might continue, before blocking, and that automatic or punitive blocking is administrative misconduct.) Anyway, I think that a pragmatic approach that would present no problem would be simply to say "Hey, it looks like you might have a WP:COI here, based on your familiarity with the unpublished material." That way, there is no explicit speculation about identity. As for suggesting to the editor that they redact the comment and have it oversighted, that seems like a friendly and good-faith attempt to help, rather than harassment, so long as it is not done in an overly attention-getting way. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:16, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Adding a small clarification to the blocking for harassment section

"Incidents of wikihounding generally receive a warning. If wikihounding persists after a warning, escalating blocks are often used, beginning with 24 hours." I suggest we change that to Incidents of wikihounding generally receive a warning from an uninvolved administrator. If wikihounding persists after a warning, escalating blocks are often used, beginning with 24 hours. If an editor comes to your talk page and asks you to stop wikihounding them, you may not agree that you are, and may continue on as before. However, if an administrator comes by and says "stop wikihounding User:X or you will be blocked", it is likely that you will cease. From there, you can make a case to them that you are not wikihounding User:X. If that doesn't work, you may consult the community at WP:AN/I. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 05:38, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

  • I disagree. It doesn't require an admin to give a warning. Valid warnings from anyone should carry the same weight, we admin aren't special. Warnings are not a "bit" and require no special tools. WP:RFA grants us tools, not the right to issue exclusive warnings. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:33, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Harassment of non-editors

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is consensus for adding the new paragraph proposed in change 1 before the current second paragraph of the lead section. There is consensus for implementing changes 2 and 3 as proposed. In general, supporters of the changes mostly felt that the changes would improve the clarity of the policy. The relatively smaller group of editors opposed to the changes primarily felt that the proposed changes were already covered by the BLP policy and that the proposed changes would be instruction creep. Ks0stm (T•C•G•E) 22:59, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Should the following three changes to this policy page be made, based upon discussions of the sentence This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors in the section about posting of personal information? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

1. Delete the second paragraph of the lead section of this policy page ("Harassment can include actions calculated to be noticed by the target and clearly suggestive of targeting them, where no direct communication takes place"), and replace it with the following paragraph:

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.
(Alternatively, the existing second paragraph could remain, and the new paragraph be added before or after it.)

2. Add the following new main-level section, immediately following WP:OWH:

Harassing those outside of the editing community

In alignment with the protection of editors from harassment described throughout the rest of this policy, edits that harass living or recently deceased people who are not members of the Wikipedia community are also prohibited. Per the oversight policy, harassing content will be deleted or suppressed. Editors who post such material in any namespace may be indefinitely blocked.

Content and sourcing that comply with the biographies of living persons policy do not violate this policy; neither do discussions about sources and authors of sources, unless comments about persons are gratuitous to determining source quality. See also WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:BLPCOI, and the associated discretionary sanctions.

3. In the sentence "This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors" in the outing section, blue-link the words "both editors and non-editors" to the new section.

Support proposal regarding harassment of non-editors

  1. Support as proposer. The sentence about "non-editors" in the outing section of this policy page has been templated "under discussion" for a long time, and has been the topic of a lot of discussion (and another recent RfC) in this talk, because it is not obvious to many editors how one can "out" someone who is not an editor. (The sentence was added in 2006 by Jimmy Wales: [2].) Oversighters, however, have pointed out that there have been ongoing and significant problems with people using Wikipedia as a sort of web-host to post doxing material about other persons; such edits are usually oversighted rapidly. Some editors have also been concerned that the existing language could be misconstrued as saying that normal BLP editing, such as linking to the person's official webpage, could be a violation. The three changes proposed here represent the outcome of lengthy discussions among many editors, and clarify and modernize the language of the policy. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
    After seeing further discussion, I want to add a few points. This is not a proposal to change policy in any way. It is a proposal to make language clearer. If some editors think it is obvious what that sentence that has been tagged "under discussion" for over a year means, then good for you, but you might want to consider that editors who feel that it could be said better are not idiots. And as for this proposal making it easier for bad actors to game the system, that's just not true. If that's your argument for opposing, you might want to explain specifically how that would happen, not just wave around vague sky-is-falling worries about wikilawyering. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:37, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
  2. Support sounds like an improvement. feminist 03:14, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
  3. Support This is fine. The existing text, though not perfect, is also basically fine. While the previous RfC above involved claims of hypothetical confusion that might arise from the current text, I'm not aware of any actual examples of problems that have arisen from it. Still, on balance it's better to be clear than not. Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:33, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
  4. Support. Proposals 2 and 3 are fine as it. I have no problems with proposal 1, but think it would be better preceding the existing sentence rather than replacing it - "Wikipedia must not be used to harass anyone... Harassment includes...". Thryduulf (talk) 11:41, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
  5. Support per Thryduulf's suggestion. I have a ton of respect for Dennis, and I agree that instruction/scope creep should be avoided, and also oppose the codification of common sense. However, it has been argued on this very page that our policy does not protect non-editors, or at least that there is enough wiggle room in it to get away with some level of outing of non-editors. I agree that they should be covered by the policy as is (and will not hesitate to suppress something that I see as a policy violation) but not everyone sees it that way, so I also support a clarification of the text. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 13:08, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
  6. Support per Thryduulf, and agree that the proposed text should precede the existing text. We cannot condone the harassment of anyone, whether they edit the site or not, and the current policy can be interpreted to allow us to be used to hurt innocent people without their knowledge. It's better to be crystal clear about this. Katietalk 13:20, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
  7. support. This is not CREEP, it just catches up written policy with the policy that is practiced every day, as I noted above, here. It will be useful in a few ways to have this articulated. Jytdog (talk) 04:58, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
  8. Support I would like to commend Tryptofish for putting this together. WT:HARASSMENT has been especially controversial this year. Any hopes for improvement were being undone by RFC exhaustion. This RFC demonstrates what happens when the work has been done beforehand with feedback heard from both sides of the aisle. The community still remains hugely divided on this issue so it's taken a tremendous effort to get to this point. There is still more work to be done; COI and undisclosed paid editing need to be strengthened but not at the cost of important protections for the community that builds this encyclopedia. This takes us one step closer to bring a harmonious relationship between BLP and OUTING. Mkdw talk 06:03, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
  9. Support per Tryptofish's initial recommendation and Thryduulf's suggested modification. I agree with Mkdw. This was essential. Risker (talk) 01:23, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
  10. Support brings policy as written more into line with policy as it's understood. Geogene (talk) 21:34, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
  11. Support per nom. Brings clearer language to an important and pre-existing policy. --NoGhost (talk) 21:47, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
  12. Support It's common sense, which most Internet users seem to be lacking these days. — Gestrid (talk) 23:09, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
  13. Support, per comments above. Lankiveil (speak to me) 06:07, 30 May 2017 (UTC).
  14. Support Not a substantial or potentially controversial change to the policy from where I'm sitting, but in my opinion the more times Wikipedia PAGs state directly that discussion of sources and their reliability is not a violation of BLP or HARASS (as the second paragraph of the proposed addition does), the better, as it seems far too many (long-term!) contributors are all too happy to shut down RS discussions with bogus claims of "harassment" and "BLP violation". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:31, 30 May 2017 (UTC).
    • It's worth pointing out that such a discussion can be harassment or BLP violation - for example if it discloses non-public information that is clearly not relevant to determining the reliability of the source or suitability for inclusion. It all depends on context though and you are correct that such discussions are not automatically BLP violations. If someone thinks a discussion is harassing someone or otherwise a BLP violation, it's always best to step back and examine whether it is before continuing - i.e. it's much better to be cautious than reckless. Thryduulf (talk) 10:47, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Oh, I know that it can (and that's presumably why the proposal specifies unless comments about persons are gratuitous to determining source quality and This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors). I'm just talking about when someone says This book gets basic facts relevant to the topic wrong, presumably because the author is a specialist in such-and-such other peripherally related field. and someone else says Hey, you need a reliable source to attack a published scholar's work in that way. It's peripheral to this discussion (and so would be "gratuitous" in this context) so I won't go into too much detail, but about three years back someone cited a book primarily about WWII in our Emperor Jimmu article; I went out and bought the book, and the relevant section got the Nihon Shoki confused with the Shoku Nihongi (something that no one who had examined the primary sources in any detail would never do), making it a tertiary source on a completely peripheral topic. But I can totally see certain users (again, not going to name names) claiming that pointing stuff like this out is a BLP-violation, harassment, defamation, or even "original research" (yes, it is OR to say without a source that a tertiary sources got details wrong from misreading primary or secondary sources, but it's the kind of OR that is acceptable on Wikipedia because it is on a talk page and not included in the article space). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:25, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
  15. Support Absolutely - Wikipedia should never be used to harass anyone, editor or not !  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  20:43, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
  16. Support Harassment != BLP violation, although of course they frequently overlap. We already have a codified harassment policy protecting editors, and we already have an uncodified policy of proscribing harassment of non-editors. Frankly, if at this point we don't codify the latter, we're almost implying that certain motivations for conduct on wiki are not proscribed. Moreover, the nature of the BLP-harassment gap (which can in some respects be reduced to intent) ought to skew us towards codification, in the service of eliminating the kind of nebulous ambiguity Hijiri88 brings up above. Advocata (talk) 20:11, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Oppose proposal regarding harassment of non-editors

  1. Oppose as creep. WP:BLP already covers everyone, including editors and non-editors, on basically all pages. We don't need potential contradiction that could arise, for starters. Admin already know if someone is defiling the reputation of a non-editor that this is not allowable, whether it is in an article or on a talk page. Whether or not it is harassment is moot, as harassment is only one type of behavior already covered by WP:BLP. Our policies on harassment are more about behavior between editors, actions that aren't BLP issues but troublesome, like following them and reverting all their edits or dragging them to ANI or AN3 for frivolous reasons. These actions are not possible with a non-editor, which is why they aren't covered. The more broad/nebulous we make policy, the easier it becomes to game the system, allowing the policy to be used to silence someone, rather than its original intent, while the "target" non-editor may not know we were even discussing them, and IF they join the conversation, they are instantly "an editor" so the whole thing is moot. In short: BLP already covers this. More rules = bad, simple, common sense rules = good. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:46, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
  2. Oppose - per Dennis Brown. WP:BLP covers this, and the likelihood of editors using this to game the system is real. sIf it isn't broken, don't fix it. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:39, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
  3. Oppose per DB, it's already covered by WP:BLP. If we make this policy big and clunky, it just won't work as well. Please keep it as simple as possible. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:04, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
  4. Oppose per Dennis. This point is so basic that even if we don't consider it to fall under BLP (which I believe it does), we can enforce it without it being written in policy. There's no policy that says to spell words properly in articles, or to use proper grammar in articles, but we still do it all the time, and we fix such problems when we find them. WP:NOTHERE also applies, since doing this kind of thing is definitely not encyclopedia-building. Between BLP and NOTHERE, we have the idea covered already, without any need to expand this policy. Also, since someone raises the issue of personal webpages: when would we ever do that? Aside from WP:ELOFFICIAL, e.g. you put up someone's personal webpage in the external links section of his own article (hardly a problem to put http://www.birchbayh.com in the ELs of Birch Bayh), they almost always fail a bunch of points at WP:ELNO, and aside from discussing whether a link qualifies as such, these links are basically never appropriate in other namespaces. Nyttend (talk) 23:00, 25 May 2017 (UTC) Post scriptum We already have the WP:ATP policy; it sounds like this proposal refers to the addition of attack-related content to pages that primarily have some other purpose. If we have a general speedy deletion criterion for pages that are nothing but X, adding X-type content to another page is surely something that deserves a reversion and perhaps sanctions. Nyttend (talk) 00:22, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Discussion of proposal regarding harassment of non-editors

Thanks for that. I put a message at the oversighters' talk page, but what you did is better. I've also left notes at Village Pump Policy and Proposals, and listed the RfC at WP:CENT. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:48, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Why is this needed? I thought common sense would indicate that harassing anybody is unacceptable. Cheers! Reaper Eternal (talk) 23:35, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I can see why you would ask that! I tried to give some rationale in my support statement, but you can also look at #RfC regarding "non-editors", above. The issue is not the need to codify the prohibition against harassing non-editors, but to clarify the existing very vague language about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:42, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not immediately clear which paragraph your first proposal is planning to replace. I presume it's "Harassment can include actions calculated to be noticed by the target and clearly suggestive of targeting them, where no direct communication takes place." (the second paragraph of the whole policy", but it could refer to the paragraph that starts "Any edit that "outs" someone must be reverted promptly, followed by a request for oversight to delete that edit from Wikipedia permanently." (the second paragraph in the section about posting personal information).? Thryduulf (talk) 13:38, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

It's the lead section (and not the outing section), sorry that was not clearer. I've tweaked the language above in hopes of making it clear. The existing paragraph seems to be rather low-information, and does not really do anything to explain the policy, whereas the proposed new paragraph comes from discussion at #Alternative proposal regarding harassment of non-editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:38, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks very much for doing that. Actually, that sentence is kind of unrelated to anything anywhere in the policy, which makes it seem unnecessary. The discussion about that began at #Alternative proposal regarding harassment of non-editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps the proposed addition to the lead could be made while leaving that sentence in place. The lead is short, and it wouldn't hurt to have both. SarahSV (talk) 19:57, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, that would be fine with me, if that's the way the consensus goes. I'll make a revision above. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:59, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Moved from above, reply to Dennis Brown's !vote:
Dennis, a lot of the discussion in the prior #RfC regarding "non-editors" was about how WP:BLP does not really cover what is needed here. In fact, some editors were worried that the existing language actually contradicts BLP, because BLP says it's OK to link to the official webpage of the page subject even if it contains "personal information". And what seems "common sense" to an experienced admin can be far from obvious to less experienced editors – just look at the differing perceptions of functionaries and "regular" editors in that recent RfC. The policy needs to be clear to users who are not experienced. I disagree that this proposal makes the policy more nebulous; indeed it's quite the opposite. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:13, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
How is linking to a personal webpage of a non-editor an issue? I think we are a bit presumptuous to focus so much energy on protecting non-editors, people who by their very definition have not asked for protection. I don't see how someone who isn't participating can be "harassed" here. We protect claims against all people that aren't substantiated, we block anyone just trash talking anyone. This is already done. This looks like a solution in search of a problem. Or if you can point to specific instances of someone who isn't an editor who claims they were harassed by an editor, while it wasn't covered by BLP or other policies, please do. This kind of overreaching makes me cringe. And I don't see how this helps us build an encyclopedia. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:14, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Ah! Now I see better what you are concerned about. What you are saying is, in fact, what a lot of non-admins (including me) thought when these discussions began. (How can you out someone who does not edit here?) If you go to that earlier RfC on this talk page that I linked to, and go to the first oppose section, you will find a large number of your fellow admins saying the exact opposite of what you just said here, and you can see their reasons why. Absent what they said then, editors would probably have simply deleted the sentence "This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors", for the same reasons you give here. About that personal webpage thing, consider that it's perfectly alright to link to the official webpage of a BLP subject, even if it has their office address, who they work for, stuff like that – but if someone were to track down that information about me, and posted it here, they would be blocked for violating outing. Personally, I think it's common sense to see the difference, but a lot of editors have disagreed. We need to make it clear, even to inexperienced users, that this ain't the place to dox anyone, and while we're at it, we might as well clarify the differences with BLP. But the big point is that we need to make clear to the inexperienced that we don't allow doxing, while also not leaving editors wondering how the bleep can anyone out a non-editor. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:33, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
I disagree. If something is common sense, then leave it alone. You don't try to codify common sense, policies are written with the assumption you are competent enough to understand standard English. If you aren't or have no common sense, you don't belong anyway. Once you start dumbing down the rules, you open loopholes. I don't see any possibility of an inexperienced user coming here to see if their doxing is allowed or not, and admin are already fully capable of handling the problem with existing policy. This will NOT empower admin or the community in any way. It will create fodder for wikilawyering. Creating more rules for non-editors is a Pandora's Box I would rather not open as well. I don't want to get into any longer of a discussion and take up the page, but suffice it to say my opposition stands. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:04, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Dennis, it's understandable to have skipped over all of the preceding discussion on this, because it's tediously long, but most of what you're posting here has been covered there already. Your argument that BLP covers all relevant scenarios has already been discussed, and is factually incorrect; people can and do use Wikipedia as a platform for harassing people - sometimes article subjects and sometimes not. The idea that admins need no clarification and are fully capable of handling such issues already is apparently not the case, as the previous RfC above was initiated by an experienced admin offering a scenario that would seem to be straightforward, yet was presented as an example of potential confusion. This proposed change of course suggests no new rules "for" non-editors; it suggests a rewrite of an already-existing rule for editors about what they can post on Wikipedia's pages. Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:33, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
First, I didn't say BLP covers every scenario, I said it covers every human. The replies I'm getting seem to imply that because I oppose, I am ignorant of the ramifications. I would disagree since the ramifications are rather known and have been the status quo for most of my experience here. The rest is semantics of what "for" means, so I won't bother with a reply as you surely knew what I meant and my grammar isn't faulty. From my observation, this is a flawed attempt at regulating what should be common sense, which is always a bad idea. What I don't care for is using the polling part of a poll to attempt to discredit my valid expression of opposition. My opposition stands. Perhaps the badgering can stop now. Perhaps a neutral party should move all this banter into the discussion area, where it should have been to begin with. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 01:02, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Never mind, moved it myself. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 01:08, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
I just want to say that I never intended any of it to be badgering, and I definitely do not think that you are ignorant of the ramifications. Sorry that any of this made you feel badly. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:25, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
When others who oppose see a long line of questioning on the only oppose, it makes them less likely to want to get involved. Wikipedians, in general, have a habit of demanding explanations from anyone who opposes an idea, much more than they do those that support it. In general, mind you. RFA is a good example. I don't take it personally, but I'm not willing to have my !vote watered down with questions that belong down here. Everyone has the same right to participate unmolested. Even me. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 01:46, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
  • This discussion puts a lot of energy into telling Dennis Brown that if he only read various walls of text he wouldn't make so many mistakes. It would be a lot simpler to directly "point to specific instances" as he requested. At least it would be easier if there are specific instances rather than overlooked mischief. People occasionally find hoax articles or BLP violations that have gone unnoticed for years, but I would be astonished if no action resulted from a report showing that an editor posted harassment regarding a non-editor. Johnuniq (talk) 05:41, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Personally Dennis I am just waiting for this further farce of a discussion to come to an end before I start to go change BLP's to make them compliant with this policy as it is written. I predict that will cause a swift response somewhere... Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:18, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Johnuniq, I take your point about a specific example, thanks. I'm at a disadvantage here because I do not have advanced permissions, but in that wall of text multiple functionaries have said that they frequently get complaints from people who are (a) not editors, and (b) not subjects of pages in any way, just private individuals, and these complaints are about somebody posting doxing information about them on-Wiki. Those posts get oversighted rapidly, which is why most editors do not see them, and why I have no way of linking to them. But I AGF that this does happen. If you look at Opabinia's comment, she confirms this where she says "sometimes article subjects and sometimes not". And if any functionaries can flesh out what I said, that would be great. So yes, if an editor posts harassment about a non-editor, there is a swift response. That's existing policy, and this proposal does nothing to change that. But it does change the cryptic sentence in the outing section that is tagged "under discussion" into clear language. Now, having mentioned AGF, I would suggest to both you and Only in death that you might want to try a bit of that with me. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:29, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
      • Well of course attacks are posted on Wikipedia! That won't be unexpected to anyone who saw usenet from a previous era, or who has seen the forums and blogs since. The point is that such attacks are swiftly handled—adding market-speak to this policy will have no effect on harassment other than to add confusion. Will I be able to post harassment about people who died more than a month ago? Six months ago? What about that corrupt local politician who died a year ago? Maybe someone should tell the world about the evil things they did, using every noticeboard and user page that can be found? What if someone wants to talk about their dog, using every noticeboard and user page that can be found? Policies should not try to list every prohibited action because that leads to wikilawyering—I don't see dogs mentioned in any policy! The basic principle is that we are here to build an encyclopedia. Anyone not helping that needs to go elsewhere. Johnuniq (talk) 23:05, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
        • Thanks for the follow-up. I guess that what it comes down to for me is that there is no substantive change in policy proposed here, but rather an improvement of language to make it clearer. (The answers to your questions about amount of time after death are answered at WP:BDP.) Maybe it's already clear enough for some people, but others of us believe that the proposal makes some unclear language clearer. It does not add confusion, but rather reduces it. What you see as "market-speak" does not look that way at all to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:48, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
          • Umm, did you just agree with me that WP:HARASS is about editors (not non-editors) and that WP:BLP is the policy about everyone (editors and non-editors)? The fact that WP:BDP is at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Recently dead or probably dead substantiates the point I made at 10:17, 10 April 2017 above. Johnuniq (talk) 01:36, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
            • Very seriously, that is what I used to think, until quite recently. And I was in favor of deleting the sentence about "this applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors" for that very reason: because I did not see how harassment in the way that we define it at Wikipedia could possibly apply outside of the WP community, whereas BLP would cover non-editors. Really: if you look through the wall-o-text and find my earlier comments, that's what I was saying! But then I saw the outcry from oversighters and other functionaries against deleting the sentence, and they persuaded me to change my mind. Apparently, there's a big problem with people who try to use WP to post doxing information about non-notable non-editors. Go figure. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:56, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
    • User:Only in death would you please provide examples of current content that in your judgement would need to be removed if this amendment gets consensus? I don't see what that could be since the proposal specifically says that any content that is BLP compliant is fine, so am curious what problems you see this causing. thx Jytdog (talk) 15:02, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What about use of WP to harass a group of people?

So the proposal above catches this policy up with the already-widely accepted practice of preventing WP being used to harass any individuals.

What about use of WP to promote racist, sexist, etc agendas -- in other words, use of WP to harass a group of people? This is relevant to the case that User:Dennis Brown brought to AN for review, here. The block rationale was specified misusing an alternative account for WP:Advocacy, to push fringe ideas and an obvious agenda. The actual policy there is WP:SOAPBOX but it is true that this block falls under that already-existing policy. My sense is that the frisson around this is the nature of the advocacy in this instance, and this policy would be the place to address that, perhaps. Jytdog (talk) 22:28, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Interesting question. There is certainly no question that the kinds of conduct in question are disruptive and unacceptable. I suppose that one caveat that needs to be kept in mind if codifying this is that it can potentially be wikilawyered to an effect opposite to the intended effect. (See how in current US news some alt-right neo-nazi groups are shielding themselves as "free speech" advocates. I can envision users who would claim that factual content about a repressive government regime somewhere is harassment of that regime.) There is also a potential difference between harassment and hate-speech: can the edits be accurately described as harassing individual members of a group of people? If "yes", it's just multiple simultaneous violations of the existing policy, and probably does not need a policy change. After all, if someone simultaneously hounds two editors, that's violating the existing policy twice, rather than a new category of harassment. (I think that would apply if a user posts harassing material about a small start-up company.) But if it is logically impossible to identify individual members of a group of people as suffering from harassment, it's more like a soapbox problem than a harassment problem. Overall, I'd be reluctant to make policy changes here. This is one time where I think that admins "know it when they see it", and that's good enough. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:03, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
  • This is the kind of muddying I spoke about when opposing above. I didn't even consider this policy when applying the block. WP:NPOV and WP:SOAPBOX (albeit sneakily) already provided more than enough justification for the block. To me, as blocking admin, my actions had nothing to do with harassment. It had everything to do with disallowing someone to poison Wikipedia with their personal views. The victim was the reader, and that is who I was protecting. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:55, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Recap of RfC discussion regarding WP:Outing and WMF essay

The RFC discussion regarding WP:OUTING and WMF essay about paid editing and outing is now archived. Milieus #3 and #4 received substantial support; so did concrete proposal #1. It is too lengthy to summarize, though I recapped the results at WP:administrators' noticeboard. --George Ho (talk) 23:53, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

WMF request for anti-harassment edit filter ideas

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Community_health_initiative_on_English_Wikipedia/Edit_filter. Jytdog (talk) 16:28, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy

Just to notify you about the ongoing discussion: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy. Join in there to comment. --George Ho (talk) 16:48, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted The discussion was moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy. Then I have relisted the discussion, i.e. gave the discussion additional 30 days. Therefore, more participants would be welcome to comment at the newer page there during the extended time. --George Ho (talk) 01:47, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Dates of birth without references

here we have an editor who adds someones date of birth without any good reference (in fact with no reference at all).

We also have them adding a link to their linked in.

Have trimmed the date of birth. Wondering if people feel this counts as outing / harassment? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:32, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

As has been said, in many of the previous harassment policy discussions, this falls under WP:BLPPRIVACY: "Wikipedia includes full names and dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources, or by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object. If the subject complains about the inclusion of the date of birth, or the person is borderline notable, err on the side of caution and simply list the year, provided that there is a reliable source for it." If the information is contentious and does not have [a] source, it should be removed immediately per, WP:BLPREMOVE. We have article content policies that govern these situations. In this particular case, the subject's age is published in the LA Times. I wouldn't personally advocate going after them for "outing" or harassment on that individual contribution as I think it would be particularly difficult to demonstrate in this exact case. This is why I've always advocated for reviewing situations on a case-by-case basis rather than using a surface level example to inform universal decisions. Mkdw talk 05:06, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
Do not see it in the link you gave?
When I do a news search for the added age all I came up with is mirrors
What are your thoughts on the linkedin link?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:17, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
The LA Times article mentions his age. I haven't seen any sources in my preliminary search engine test that could verify their exact date of birth. In that case, it might not be public. As for Linkedin, a social media networking website, we also have article content policies regarding the WP:SOCIALMEDIA of a subject. It's been used as a source but also akin to WP:ELMINOFFICIAL. I would personally vote in favour of removing it as undue and primary. The subject is seemingly a notable public person. They are plenty of significant coverage in independent reliable sources. They have a published bio. A website. Their contact information at UCI is available. Their Twitter and Linkedin accounts appear early on in the search results. Linkedin is certainly less commonly included because it's behind a membership wall further providing that it's not a suitable source or perhaps within the acceptability of ELMINOFFICIAL.
Do you believe this editor is not acting in good faith to create an article about a notable person, and instead is harassing the subject by outing them? All these policies rely on judgement and assessment. It's why we don't have robots automatically blocking editors who add information without providing a reference. It's when we judge editors to have crossed the line away from our content policies into deliberate harmful actions. If you belive this to be the case, then they can be investigated and a decision made, if by wider community input if necessary on one of our administrative noticeboards. Mkdw talk 05:42, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
I agree with the other 99% of what Mkdw said, but I think he meant to link this LA Times article. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:56, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
Opps, yes that's the article. I must have clicked onto the next article about him. Mkdw talk 06:18, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
See their age mentioned in that LA times article, thanks. Agree Judgement on a case by case basis is required :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:11, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
The cleanup of the article looks good, though I'd add the LA Times article as a source, which looks fine as a source for his age.
Dates of birth without references should be removed per WP:BLPPRIVACY (quoted above)
LinkedIn generally should not be linked or used as a reference. --Ronz (talk) 16:41, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
I'll just add that this question is closely related to the recently RfC-approved addition to the policy page: in essence (very much my paraphrase), that BLP-compliant edits are not harassment but those that violate BLP may be, on a case-by-case basis as noted already. So this seems to me to be one case where, in fact, the BLP policy is the place to look, rather than here, although the behavioral pattern of edits comes into play when deciding whether a BLP violation is also something more. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:07, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Linking to public advertisements to recruit paid Wikipedia editors

The policy states

Posting links to other accounts on other websites is allowable in specific situations (but see also Wikipedia:Linking to external harassment). There are job posting sites where employers publicly post advertisements to recruit paid Wikipedia editors. Linking to such an ad in a forum such as the Conflict of interest noticeboard is not a violation of this policy.

However, I am told that posting such links is not really allowed (User_talk:Rentier#Wikipedia_talk:CheckUser, User_talk:Rentier#Post_to_WP:COIN). So which is it?

And a wider question: is the outing policy really meant to protect owners of farms of single-purpose sockpuppets? Rentier (talk) 22:18, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm watching here, so I'll give you my individual opinion, but please keep in mind that I am not an administrator. The answer to your wider question is an easy one: of course not. As for your first question, I want to be careful, because I do not know all of the background. Obviously, what you quoted from this policy is what it says, and should be quite clear, as long as one recognizes that there is judgment involved in what constitutes "specific situations". The passage was added to this policy as the result of an RfC, and most certainly was added in accordance with proper process. Beyond that, it sounds to me from the second link you posted to your talk page (the one about the COIN post) that there is good reason to think that the situation that you are asking about is not one of those "specific situations". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
I think that's a pretty straightforward statement in the policy and I think all involved are interpreting it correctly. But I strongly resent an administrator vetoing written policy with the Tools. Everyone can disagree with policy, everyone can choose to avoid enforcing a policy they don't like (per VOLUNTARY), but nobody has the right to actively obstruct somebody else's editing because they don't like the policy behind it. In that case you should build a consensus to challenge the policy directly. Email approval from the Oversighters doesn't change that. This particular use of the oversight tool was a Supervote by someone that didn't like how a policy was written. I'm disappointed that that is tolerated. If we're going to allow it, then why not just delete all the policies and let the Admins run this site however they like? There might be some advantages to that. Geogene (talk) 00:01, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I am also not an admin, but I did start the RfC in question, and it did pass 28-6 in a very well advertised set of RfC's started by members of ArbCom. Please see Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest/Archive_27#Concrete_proposal_1. If anybody has the nerve to say that this RfC was "out of process" please send them to me for correction.

That said, I'll ask Rentier to be gentle when linking to these sites. There were some editors whose opinion I trust completely who opposed the RfC. There's no need to go emailing everybody and putting in 5 links where 1 link will do. Any help appreciated. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:03, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

You are likely referring to one of my first two reports - you are right, I may have been overeager. I have tried to tone down the recent ones. Rentier (talk) 02:33, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Speaking just for myself, I think the removal of the material was most likely a failure to entirely realize that Consensus had changed, and that this is not prohibited outing. I might or might not have been prohibited a year or two ago--consensus was probably unclear. I agree with Rentier and Smallbones that it is it permitted, and I will go a little further and say that I personally think the discrete postings of such links helpful. I am not sure if other arbs will like the current policy that permits this, but policy is made by the community, not arb com. DGG ( talk ) 04:37, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
I do not have sufficient details regarding this case, but if we have people with oversight privileges not following policy, this is something we need to look into.
User:Bbb23 and User:GB fan appears not to accept the current policy per some of their comments here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:40, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
I have unsuppressed the content. It is available for all editors again. 07:57, 6 July 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by GB fan (talk • contribs)

Speaking generally, it is possible that job adverts will out someone other than the people placing or responding to the adverts (whether done in good faith or bad). In such cases links to the job posting should definitely be suppressed, and there are other situations in which suppression is also justified on at least some occasions (e.g. if the link is being used to harass somebody or contains libellous claims). If it is unclear whether something (not just related to undisclosed paid editing) it is sometimes better to suppress then discuss and unsuppress if necessary. Indeed I think the lack of ability to undo is one of the key reasons why the original Oversight tool was replaced by suppression. Thryduulf (talk) 13:23, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes there might be exceptional circumstances where suppression might be appropriate. I am not seeing any concerns with these upwork links.[4]
By the way many of the accounts on upworks use pseudonyms / fake names at least on the undisclosed paid editing side of things. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:10, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
I thank GB Fan for making the edits visible again. I went to each of the Upwork links that were posted at COIN, but I did not do any further digging – simply viewed the Upwork ads as they were linked to. Consequently, I don't know (and don't want to know) whether any further "investigation" would have revealed more personal information, but I do not think that it would be relevant to what Rentier actually did. Yesterday, when I could not see the suppressed material, I decided to be very cautious in what I said. But now, I want to say very clearly that I am certain that what Rentier did was not only permitted under this policy, but was also very helpful to Wikipedia. Thanks. Period. Yesterday, my gut was telling me pretty much the same thing as what Geogene said just after me, but I was being careful. Now, I'm confident of what happened, so I'm talking frankly. It seems to me that GB Fan has been acting in good faith and listening responsibly to other editors. And I recognize that there was plenty of room here for discretion, and that it is appropriate to err on the side of caution. Again, thanks. But the other checkuser who scolded Rentier at Rentier's talk page was seriously out of line, to an extent that it compromises my ability to trust that user with advanced permissions. It's fine to disagree with the community, but it's not acceptable to use advanced permissions to disregard a policy with which one disagrees. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:42, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Information for potential victims of outing

I know that editors feel like there has already been an awful lot of discussion here about the outing section, and perhaps would prefer not to see me raise yet another potential revision, but there is another thing I'd like to suggest that I hope is relatively uncontroversial.

It seems to me that the current version of the section centers on the "thou shalt not" aspects, but that there is also a need for some helpful information for victims or potential victims, particularly new or inexperienced editors, because of the magnitude of the potential harm. It's mostly common sense, but I'm trying to view it from the perspective of an inexperienced editor. So I'm suggesting that a paragraph be added at the end of the outing section:

If you have accidentally posted anything that might lead to your being outed (including but not limited to inadvertently editing while logged out, which reveals your IP address, and thus, your approximate location), it is important that you act promptly to have the edit(s) oversighted. Do not otherwise draw attention to the information. If an editor has previously posted their own personal information but later redacted it, it should not be repeated on Wikipedia. Referring to still-existing, self-disclosed posted information is not considered outing, and so the failure of an editor to have the information redacted in a timely manner may remove it from protection by this policy. Further information about protecting private information is at Personal security practices, On privacy, and How to not get outed on Wikipedia.

I'm starting by simply posting this here for discussion, and I'll be guided by what other editors say as to whether or not this proposal needs to go through an RfC. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:33, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Bump. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:59, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
In my view this should read "If an editor has previously posted their own personal information but later redacted it then had it oversighted, it should not be repeated on Wikipedia." If it exists in the public record of WP, it exists. I don't want to get tripped up citing a diff by this. Jytdog (talk) 19:00, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for replying, much appreciated. It's an interesting point, and I had been wondering about it. I'd like to hear what other editors think, but my reasoning is that simply self-reverting but not knowing to ask for oversight (or just having it revdeled) should not be a loophole that deprives a user of their protection by this policy. If someone undoes their post, it can be accurately assumed that they no longer want the information to be public. You are concerned about the reciprocal loophole, in which another editor gets in trouble for citing something from page history that is no longer on the page. I'm inclined to think that it's reasonable to expect editors to check whether or not personal information is still posted before repeating what they remember from the past. But I'm open to persuasion. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:58, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
You know what, I just looked again at the policy, and the second paragraph already says: If an editor has previously posted their own personal information but later redacted it, it should not be repeated on Wikipedia, although references to still-existing, self-disclosed information is not considered outing. Self-facepalm, sorry! I'm deleting it from the proposal here, so that makes the issue moot for this discussion. (Earlier, the section blue-links "redacted" to revdel, implying that it's more than reversion.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:07, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
:) The rest of it is fine by me. Jytdog (talk) 21:11, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether the absence of any other replies means that there are no objections, or that the pitchforks will come out if I were to go ahead and add the paragraph. If anyone objects or has comments, it would be very helpful to hear about it. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:36, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
It might be worth a subheading, but other than that I have no objections to this. Thryduulf (talk) 13:55, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for that, especially because I already added it (sans subheader) to the policy page. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:41, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Please see meta:Requests_for_comment/Interlinking_of_accounts_involved_with_paid_editing_to_decrease_impersonation. I am sure this has been raised somewhere on en.wiki before and rejected but can't find the discussion. I may be wrong... Posting here as the net result would be to force paid editors to out themselves. SmartSE (talk) 16:22, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Hounding vs. wikihounding

Why isn't "wikihounding" just "hounding"? There should be no difference other than that the prefix of "wiki-" makes it cutesy. If it's hounding and we're against it, why not call it by its name? (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 22:32, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

They are both the same as WP:STALKing right? Legacypac (talk) 23:15, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
In the section called "Wikihounding", I think it would indeed be better to change it to just "hounding". I don't see any point in appending the "wiki" prefix to it. Does anyone object to making that change? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:37, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
A dog is a dog even if you call it a wikidog. Legacypac (talk) 23:39, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
And likewise for a hound. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:43, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure. In some rare but highly significant cases, real-life hounding has occurred and of course that is wildly different from wikihounding. There is WP:Wikilawyering and WP:WikiProject and wikilink, so wikihounding fits a tradition. Johnuniq (talk) 00:29, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
I don't understand how the real-life version would be so very different. Could you clarify that please? I can see that there can sometimes be cases in real life where the consequences for the victim would be worse, but that seems to me to be a quantitative rather than qualitative difference, so it's not really a difference in kind. In contrast, wikilawyering is specifically based upon policies and guidelines, making it a Wikipedia-specific kind of conduct. The issue here is not that the "wiki" prefix is contrary to practice, but that in this case it makes no useful distinction from hounding in general. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:57, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
Huh? Real-life hounding is where they phone your employer. Wikihounding is where they edit Wikipedia to oppose your views in a manner indicating a lack of regard for the encyclopedia. Johnuniq (talk) 23:12, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
No, I'm serious. There have actually been cases on-wiki where the harasser did contact editors' employers. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:19, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
Umm, obviously I know that and that's why I mentioned it. A logician might argue that the two behaviors are harassment and are logically equivalent. The victim would probably regard that as nonsense. Wikiharassment is bad, but it varies drastically in degree. Blatant cases are quickly dealt with once reported, particularly when the evidence is clear. By contrast, proving that a particular editor phoned your employer would be almost impossible, while the annoyance level and potential real-life consequences would be much worse. Using the same word to cover such different things is not helpful. Johnuniq (talk) 02:46, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

"This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors"

Have tagged with "disputed" as it appears even though this policy contains this wording there's not much of a desire to actually apply it.[5] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:39, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Oh, for goodness' sake, no. We just went through months of discussion leading to that language. There is no need to open it up again. You are not getting the response you wanted at that ANI thread, so bringing it up here is frankly WP:POINTy. You of all people should know better. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:41, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
This wording is incredibly confusing. I have clarified it some. Nothing pointy about it.
But it appear User:Tryptofish has reverted so it appears you are going out of your way to keep it confusing. Whatever. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:38, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
My objection was to the "under discussion" tag, and my revert was because it would be saying the exact same thing twice. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:42, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
I had removed the tag before you posted your comment here but I guess you might not have noticed that. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:05, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Please also note that, per the consensus of those previous discussions, the phrase about editors and non-editors blue links to the section about non-editors, where the language that you duplicated is already there. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:44, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
IMO it would be useful to have the language in both places. But not worth starting a RfC about. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:05, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, I appreciate that. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:23, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Retaliatory editing as a form of WP:Harassment

I think this issue, retaliatory editing, should be mentioned on WP:Harassment as a subsection (or under the "stalking"). It is quite common here on WP. --98.193.101.213 (talk) 13:04, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

It might be helpful if you defined your terms. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 13:51, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

RfC to raise NCORP standards

Am posting this here, because so many times in discussions of dealing with OUTING in the context of COI work (see search results here), people responded with things like "deal with conflicted editors by doing things like raising notability standards". So for those folks here you are:

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)#RfC:_Raising_NCORP_standards Jytdog (talk) 02:31, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

withdrew it - discussion is ongoing at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)#RfC_discussion. Jytdog (talk) 16:36, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Big media websites attacking Wikipedia users

...Yeah. This happened. Twice. By RT both times. Now IPs are starting to spam his userspace saying that he's "a very dangerous person" and "should not be allowed to enact his crusade". What should be done about this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nixinova (talk • contribs) 05:59, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps the editor in question should not have spent several years openly taunting on Twitter the very same people whose Wikipedia biographies he was editing enthusiastically. That showed very bad judgment. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:09, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
Agree with Cullen328 100%. Jusdafax (talk) 08:36, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
I don't see any reason to change the policy page to deal with this, which is what this talk page is about. If there is concern that the editor is being harassed, he can bring it up at WP:ANI or similar (or he can request semi-protection of his user talkpage at WP:RFPP). Likewise if there is concern that the editor is using Wikipedia to harass others. There is also WP:BLPN if there is a problem with the content of biography pages. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:25, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

WP:HOUND

This policy is not effective, at least partly because of the bystander effect. It may be that access to user contributions and user talk page histories should be restricted to admins. James500 (talk) 02:59, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Specific problems with dealing with wikihounds include: (1) Where the wikihound follows his target to a content dispute, editors on the other side of the content dispute will often ignore or even condone the wikihounding for tactical reasons because they want to win the content dispute. (2) Wikihounds often travel in packs, meaning it is difficult to get a consensus against them, because there are too many of them. James500 (talk) 06:08, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

It also needs to be made more explicit in the policy that wikihounding that consists of persistently following another editor to discussions and voting the opposite way to them for reasons that have nothing to do with building an encyclopedia (WP:COI) such as revenge, is actually a form of meatpuppetry that cannot be allowed because it would have the effect of skewering consensus and risks turning discussions into a ballot. When I say "more explicit", I mean in block capital letters the size of a man. James500 (talk) 03:34, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

The idea that we would or could restrict access to contribution histories is so wildly out of step with what Wikipedia is and how it works that I don’t even know where to begin explaining to you how many things are wrong with it. I am struggling to comprehend how a user with nearly 10 years of contributions could even suggest such a thing. My best guess is that what you are really saying is that you are being hounded right now, which is a bad time to try and make policy change proposals. If you feel you are being hounded by an editor you should bring it up at WP:ANI. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:09, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
Nah. Terrible idea. Without being able to view contribution or page histories, how can the average Wikipedian discover or keep track of disruptive editors? I think someone's just upset that they can't make personal attacks without the same person objecting to it numerous times. Reyk YO! 09:37, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
The ability to view contribution histories can also be used by disruptive editors to make personal attacks against a particular editor in every discussion that editor participates in by following him there to do it. I said nothing about the discussion you linked to. I have seen so many editors subjected to so much wikihounding by so many other editors over the course of ten years that I wonder if the costs of allowing un-vetted access to contributions outweigh the gains. I would not suggest anything so drastic if I did not think there was a long term epidemic. James500 (talk) 10:38, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
This is a dead end. It will never happen. Even if you somehow managed the near-impossible task of getting the community to accept this bizarre idea, the WMF would block it per WP:CONEXCEPT as it is completely against the whole philosophy of openness that the project is based on. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:35, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
Not only is it against the ethos of the project it is also likely against the law. Without access to editing history it would be impossible to maintain copyright attribution. Even if some acceptable workaround could be found for en.wp it would make forking and reuse impossible.
Also, there is a difference between following someone to harass them (hounding); following them because their editing is problematic; and having intersecting interests but diverging views. This last is perhaps more germaine to 'back-end' areas like policy and XfD. Most editors who work in these areas have relatively settled views on high level topics like notability, COI/PAID, editing restrictions, acceptable sourcing etc. Those with moderate viewpoints may variously agree and disagree with each other while those with more extreme viewpoints will nearly always be opposed by those who do not share their vision. Only the first of these three things is problematic. The other two are just the nature of Wikipedia. Jbh Talk 19:25, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
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