Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard
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This noticeboard is for announcements and statements made by the Arbitration Committee. Only members of the Arbitration Committee or the Committee's Clerks may post on this page, but all editors are encouraged to comment on the talk page.
Arbitration motion regarding Palestine-Israel articles
The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:
The general 1RR restriction in the Palestine-Israel articles case is modified to read as follows:
- Editors are limited to one revert per page per day on any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In addition, editors are required to obtain consensus through discussion before restoring a reverted edit. Reverts made to enforce the General Prohibition are exempt from the revert limit. Also, the normal exemptions apply. Editors who violate this restriction may be blocked without warning by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offense.
For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 22:38, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
Arbitration motion regarding Captain Occam
Captain Occam (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was topic-banned from race and intelligence related articles in the Race and Intelligence case in 2010. Captain Occam was blocked for one year as an Arbitration Enforcement action in 2011 under the discretionary sanctions authorized in the Abortion case. In the 2012 Review of the R&I case, Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who shared an IP and who were found to be proxying for one another, were both site-banned. Ferahgo was unbanned in March 2014. Following a successful appeal, Captain Occam is unbanned under the following restrictions:
- The scope of his 2010 topic ban is modified from "race and intelligence related articles, broadly construed" to "the race and intelligence topic area, broadly construed".
- He is subject to a two-way interaction ban with Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log).
- If he behaves disruptively in any discussion, any uninvolved administrator may ban him from further participation in that discussion. Any such restriction must be logged on the R&I case page.
Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin are reminded that tag-team editing, account sharing, and canvassing are not permitted. These restrictions are to be enforced under the standard enforcement and appeals and modifications provisions and may be appealed to the committee after six months.
Arbitration motion regarding Race and intelligence
The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:
Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was unbanned in April 2016 under the condition that he
refrain from making any edit about, and from editing any page relating to the race and intelligence topic area, broadly construed. This restriction is now rescinded. The interaction bans to which Mathsci is a party remain in force.
For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 21:17, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
Return of checkuser and oversight permissions to Yunshui
Yunshui (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), voluntarily retired in November 2015. Their checkuser and oversight permissions were removed without prejudice against requesting reinstatement in the future. They are reappointed as a checkuser and oversighter following a request to the committee for the return of both permissions.
- Support
- GorillaWarfare, Mkdw, Doug Weller, Kelapstick, Newyorkbrad, Opabinia regalis, Euryalus, Drmies, DGG, Casliber
- Not voting
- Ks0stm, Kirill Lokshin, Keilana, DeltaQuad, Callanecc
For the Arbitration Committee, Mkdw talk 16:09, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
Response to the Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing
The Arbitration Committee has a number of concerns about the advisory statement about paid editing and private information released by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal team. Although we understand that many within both the WMF and the community want to crack down on undisclosed paid editing in an effective way, several aspects of the statement require awareness and discussion.
Relationship to outing and harassment
The Arbitration Committee, as individuals and as a body, has a great deal of experience with how private information disclosures actually occur in a community setting. The Wikipedia harassment policy, which prohibits the disclosure of other editors' personal information without their consent, reflects over a decade of accumulated experience and institutional knowledge about this precise problem. That knowledge has been hard-won, and in many cases has come at the expense of dedicated and productive volunteers whose personal information was exposed by others. While many of the people who chose to reveal that information strongly believed they were justified in doing so, this does not mitigate the damage they did or the fact that volunteers were hurt as a result of their participation in the project.
The views outlined in this statement are significantly weaker than the protections the community has historically provided against online harassment and disclosure of editors' personal information. We are aware that the Wikimedia Foundation, like the Arbitration Committee and most Wikimedians, is also concerned about the harassment of community members, and we appreciate the Board's statement of a few weeks ago on this issue. We are concerned, however, about tensions between the current statement on paid editing and the Foundation's other work on harassment issues. For example, the Terms of Use FAQ includes "Harassment should also be avoided. For example, under the English Wikipedia policy on harassment, users must not publicly share personal information about other users." The current draft of the harassment training module being developed by the WMF reads in part, "Cases of deliberate PII [personally identifying information] release might include an attempt to 'out' another editor, perhaps to link their account to a purported employer." These materials collectively make clear that releasing personally identifying information about another user without the user's consent should be considered harassment. Except perhaps in extraordinary circumstances, this position has our support.
According to the statement, "if someone is editing for a company and fails to disclose it, an admin properly posting that person’s company where it is relevant to an investigation is helping bring the account into compliance with those requirements." The Arbitration Committee and community policy do not consider posting such information to be a specific responsibility of administrators, nor do we believe that the threat of posting such information should be used as a means to bring editors into compliance. In our opinion, the harassment training material quoted above is correct in defining such posts as inappropriate. Being doxxed and treated in ways the community has defined as harassment is not a reasonable consequence of noncompliance with a website's terms of use, particularly where no distinction is made between isolated, minor, or debatable violations as opposed to pervasive and severe ones.
This statement suggests an almost unbounded exemption to the outing policy to allow people to post public information on any individual they believe is engaging in undisclosed paid editing. Furthermore, the statement does not define or limit what may be considered "public information". Combined with the addendum that this kind of investigation could be applied to address disruption outside of paid editing, such as sockpuppetry, this advice if broadly interpreted would practically nullify the existing anti-outing policy.
Ambiguity of the "paid editing" problem
We are also concerned that the statement does not clarify the existing definition of paid editing, which is vague and susceptible to multiple readings. We understand that the core concern about paid editing involves large-scale enterprises offering paid Wikipedia editing services as a business model, and if it applied exclusively in that context, the recent WMF statement would be much more understandable, although it would still raise issues worthy of discussion. But it is not at all clear that the statement, or the intent underlying it, are limited to that context. If read broadly, the current definition of "paid editing" may include editing for one's employer or an organization one is affiliated with, even if no money changes hands in return for the editing. Moreover, "editing one's employer's article" could mean anything ranging from correcting a typo on the employer's article, at one extreme, to creating or maintaining a blatantly promotional article as part of a PR department's job responsibilities, on the other. It is not clear where on this continuum, if anywhere, a user becomes a "paid editor" whose activities people feel violate the TOU and are subject to exposure. Further to this, the definition of "company" in the statement is unclear. It could refer to either a paid editing business specifically, or refer to any company which is the subject of a Wikipedia article.
There is a difference between a major paid editing ring that has created or is seeking to create hundreds of promotional articles about non-notable subjects as part of a major business enterprise, and other scenarios that could be called "paid editing" which should be discouraged, but not through draconian means. Consider, for example, a hypothetical college student who makes the ill-advised decision to write an article about a friend's company in return for $25. They would be violating the COI policy and the TOU, but are not a major threat to the wiki. We worry that the statement does not include any advice for proportional responses based on the severity or extent of undisclosed paid editing.
Possibility of misuse
The statement also does not take into account the possibility of intentional misuse or gaming to harass innocent editors. We have seen repeated malicious attempts (so-called false flags or "joe-jobs") to incriminate editors for paid editing, and this would make it trivial for harassers to out their targets under the guise of stopping a paid editor. Malicious outing is not a rare occurrence and numerous editors — including several current WMF staff — have been the victims of outing and the threat of it.
Role of the Foundation in developing community policy
Finally, we are concerned about a statement like this posted locally on the project with the perceived force of authority of Wikimedia Legal, even though it has been tagged as an essay and described as advisory, not as policy. We expect that some editors will interpret this as binding and lean on it as a justification to publish information on-wiki that previously was, and still is by policy, prohibited harassment. Any current policies that do not align with the views expressed in this statement will likely be challenged as contradicting Wikimedia Foundation's Legal team. This seems to be a substantial departure from the historic relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal team and the communities of the projects for which it is responsible, when it comes to matters that are not under Wikimedia Legal's direct purview. The paid editing and harassment policies are up to the local community to decide, and we hope that they will consider the statement carefully when making any changes. In the future, we feel a more discussion-based format such as an RfC would be a better way to provide input on local policies without the risk of statements being interpreted as binding.
Moving forward
The Arbitration Committee appreciates that the Wikimedia Foundation Legal team sought our feedback on an early version of this document, and accepted a portion of that feedback. The committee hopes this feedback is equally welcome. Furthermore we extend an invitation to the Legal team, and to any other interested community member, to commence a request for comments on this matter if they believe any aspect of local policy needs modification, in accordance with the consensus-building method the English Wikipedia has used for many years to develop local policy.
Signed,
- GorillaWarfare
- Mkdw
- Doug Weller
- Opabinia regalis
- kelapstick
- Kirill Lokshin
- DeltaQuad
- Drmies
- Ks0stm
- Keilana
- Casliber
Statements from individual arbitrators may follow.