Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard

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The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 22:38, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Archived discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 33#Arbitration motion regarding Palestine-Israel articles

Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:10, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Archived discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 33#Arbitration motion regarding Captain Occam

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 This restriction is now rescinded.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)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration motion regarding Race and intelligence

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)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Return of checkuser and oversight permissions to Yunshui

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Response to the Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing