Wikipedia talk:Harassment

Other contact information

Under Posting Personal Information there's the sentence: Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person had voluntarily posted his or her own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia. Personal information includes legal name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation, telephone number, email address, other contact information, or photograph whether any such information is accurate or not.

What is classified as other contact information? As an example, Would it be accounts a person has on another site or forum? --Kyohyi (talk) 15:28, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

other websites

Somebody recently added [1] "including any other accounts on any other web sites" to that phrase, without any visible discussion here, allegedly after off-wiki discussion on a functionaries e-mail list (which I haven't checked). I believe that clause does not have consensus in the present form and certainly doesn't reflect established practice. While I can certainly imagine situations where posting claims about other websites may constitute harassment, there are certainly situations where it doesn't. If somebody posts, say, on Wikipediocracy under the username of "Newyorkbrad" and states – on Wikipediocracy – that he is the same "Newyorkbrad" as the one here on Wikipedia, then no matter whether our on-Wiki Newyorkbrad has previouly also confirmed that identity here or not, I will have no qualms addressing him about it here (for example in order to find out whether it's really him or an impostor).

Among factors that I believe commonly contribute to making open discussion of such identifications justified are the following:

• The apparent identity between the on-wiki and off-wiki accounts is deduced from data that was made freely available on either site (e.g. shared nicknames on both sites)
• The other site is being used by the off-wiki account to discuss Wikipedia matters, especially if it is done in an attempt to influence an on-wiki situation
• The off-wiki account claims to be a Wikipedia editor, and their statements and attitude (POV, cooperation with other accounts, etc.) appear consistent with those of the on-wiki account
• The off-wiki activity does not link to more real-life identifying data (real names etc.) than the on-wiki account does.

Depending on the combined presence or absence of these and other factors I can see that there may be a gray area between what is or isn't legitimate, but the strong statement as it is now certainly doesn't work. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:36, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Note: For further information, see here. Flyer22 (talk) 19:05, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I support the addition per meta:Privacy_policy#your-account-info. What a Wikipedian does off wiki isn't anyone's business, except in rare cases. And posting information deduced from off-site has long been considered doxing. NE Ent 19:12, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

What, "per meta:Privacy_policy#your-account-info"? That section is about what the Wikimedia Foundation can or cannot do with your account data; it has nothing whatsoever to do with what other wikipedians can or cannot discuss about you. Completely off-topic. And whether off-wiki activities aren't "anyone's business" is just the question. I was talking about situations where off-wiki activities are clearly directed at Wikipedia and designed to influence Wikipedia; I consider it plain common sense that such activities are in fact our business – and of course they have always been considered as such in common practice. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:24, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

• I think the previous edit (allegedly an interpretation of policy from the functionaries) is a reasonable interpretation of the policy before that edit (although not the only reasonable interpretation). As such without an assertion that it was not based on an interpretation of the functionaries, I don’t think we should change the policy from that edit without consensus. If the edit was not under the authority of the functionaries it should be reverted immediately (no-consensus for a change in policy and fraudulently claiming authority).

We have a private process people could go through to make accusations based off of off-wiki information. Currently off-wiki activities are not subject to WP policies/sanctions unless it “involving grave acts of overt and persistent harassment or threats or other serious misconduct” which was intended or had a “direct and foreseeable damaging effect on the encyclopedia or on members of the community.” (see WP:EEML#Off-wiki_conduct) More minor infractions are unlikely to rise to that level of importance. But if it does, current policy is to email a functionary (or potentially all of ArbCom/Functionaries at their email lists if it is serious enough), thereby not violating WP:OUTING.

Assuming for a moment that the previous edit was from the functionaries and as such that it was current policy to that other website’s account names were personal information. I think that just removing “other websites” from the list of personal information would be a bad idea. Let’s say someone has a twitter handle that is “somewhat” close to their wikiname but not exact. And on their twitter account they confirm their real life name/address/employment. Assume for a moment that one of the WP editors thinks based on this that the user has a COI about a given page they were editing (say they revealed on twitter that they donated to the politician’s page that they are editing). I don’t want someone on WP to be able to go to that person and force them to confirm or deny that the twitter account is “really theirs.” That opens the person up to potential harassment at their business/home from other wikiusers that don’t like that editor. I would support a change that did not consider it outing if the other sites account claims to be someone on WP. At that point the person has either outted themselves (on the other site), or the other account is a fake (either way it doesn’t matter anymore if someone on WP talks about it). That would be a good policy change in my opinion, but it requires more than just removing it from the list of personal information.

As to your factors. The first one of what can be deduced might be open to a lot of interpretation in some cases, and your last one may be one in which the WP editor thinks there is not more real life information attached (but say misses the tweet from 5 years ago). I would be fine with #3 (even if that was all we had that they claimed to be the same off-wiki). --Obsidi (talk) 22:21, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

(ec) Functionaries don't create policy. The community creates policy. It doesn't matter one jot what some people on some non-public mailing list discussed that allegedly led to that edit (plus, I wonder what kind of discussion it can have been anyway, given that the editor who made the edit here, @GRuban:, isn't a functionary and hence doesn't have access to their list, and gave no indication anywhere here on the wiki in what form and through what channels and with whom he discussed it.) What we have here is a recent, contentious addition to a policy that was made without discussion (in the only place that matters, i.e. here), and which rather blatantly goes against established long-standing practice, so the addition gets removed until a consensus is achieved for its addition. Simple. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:24, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't claim that functionaries create policy. But they are the ones who are tasked with dealing with potential off-site confidential problems that would otherwise be considered WP:OUTING. Also, all members of ArbCom are functionaries. ArbCom again doesn't create policy, but it does interpret policy (as it must to enforce it). This appears to me to be a reasonable interpretation of policy, which I think ArbCom would have the authority to make. As such its at least a borderline case, one in which I would like to find out if this change was actually made by the functionaries (or if it was just a lie). --Obsidi (talk) 22:32, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Also I just saw Arbitrator Beeblebrox say on the Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/GamerGate/Evidence page about what evidence for ArbCom is: "It is clear, specific evidence that a specific Wikipedia user, who has tied an off-wiki identity with their WP username by (and this is the really important part) publicly making the connection known here on Wikipedia is co-ordinating or encouraging unacceptable behavior on other websites. Attempts to tie WP usernames with off-wiki identities without on-wiki supporting evidence are not acceptable, per WP:OUTING." Which I think suggests what he thinks current WP:OUTING policy is. --Obsidi (talk) 22:44, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

He may of course well think that, but he is wrong. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:59, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Could you define why you believe he is wrong in what way and how? As far as I know, if there is an issue of COI and posing info would violate OUTING, then the issue can only be brought up in the beginning through private communication with a member of ArbCom. --Super Goku V (talk) 03:05, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Duh. Begging the question, much? We are just discussing here what actually does or doesn't "violate OUTING". Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:02, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

If I am begging the question, then it is because of what I have understood from the archives of OUTING, COI, and COIN seems to conflict with what your belief is of the issue. That is why my question stands as I do not see how he is incorrect. --Super Goku V (talk) 20:30, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

(I have notified functionaries-l of this discussion; I'm not sure why no one thought to tell us a change made in our name was being reverted/discussed.) I have not checked the mailing list archives, and though I do recall us discussing "accounts on other sites", I don't remember offhand whether we requested or condoned a change to the policy page on that basis. That said, however, it would make sense to me if we had, as a matter of clarification of practice: there are absolutely situations where a linking a user to an account on another site constitutes outing and/or harassment. To make one up off the top of my head, most dating site accounts link the user to personal photos and their location; if someone posted a link to what they claimed was someone else's Match.com account on Wikipedia, that would unquestionably be, in my mind, the posting of non-public personally identifying information, and subject to removal and suppression under the same policy that covers all other personally identifying information. Certainly not all online accounts carry that level of information (linking someone to, say, their Reddit account that only posts gifs in r/ILoveCuddlyPuppies or something would hardly be considered personal), but the fact is that almost no one's accounts are that spotless, and tracing a person through their other online accounts will, much of the time, reveal information that person has chosen not to share on Wikipedia. It's how many doxx are assembled, in my experience: find a common link and trace it back to any other place you can find it. It is not a change in policy to say that linking to accounts or websites which may contain personal information is outing; that's the same policy that covers, say, linking a user to their personal website, or linking to a website that has doxxed them. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:42, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

• While we would like Wikipedia to be an island of tranquility where no one mentions what goes on elsewhere, the current Gamergate issues demonstrate that the encyclopedia is sometimes attacked by people organizing off-wiki. Having a policy that editors cannot provide links to show what is happening would be extremely unhelpful. Like most policy matters, no pre-defined rule covers every situation and the context needs to be examined. If someone makes a habit of posting off-wiki links because they can, and if there is no apparent reason for the posts other than to be obnoxious, then the poster needs to dissuaded with blocks if necessary. However, it is sometimes necessary to point out off-wiki activity with the aim of developing a strategy to protect the encyclopedia from a particular incident—judicial standards of proof are not required. Johnuniq (talk) 21:39, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

I would think, with or without this change that you could link to off-wiki things that seem to be talking about WP. Just you couldn't claim that user X on WP is User Y on the off-wiki site (at least not to anyone other then a WP:FUNC via email). That might not be good enough (ie may we want the community to be able to sanction these users for the off-wiki behavior rather then just WP:FUNC's), but it is better then nothing. --Obsidi (talk) 06:46, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

"somebody" in the original post was me, and in this case it does seem that functionaries do create policy, since they enforce it, even the part that isn't written down yet. In this case my post (specifically, 13:43, September 12, 2014 (diff | hist) . . (+2,744)‎ . . Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents ‎ (→‎Tutelary: Restore, not WP:OUTING, no personal information)13:33, September 12, 2014 (diff | hist) . . (+2,303)‎ . . Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents ‎ (→‎Tutelary: Support ban, per Essjay precedent, convinced by evidence)) was removed based on the fact that it mentioned "off-wiki information in the context of OUTING, namely the reddit username... Although it seems your intention was to stay within the letter of the law of the WP:OUTING policy, in this case this particular edit violated the current interpretation of outing. Although in this case the user has not posted their real name, you are obtaining alternate contact information which was previously undisclosed." That was on the functionaries mailing list, and can presumably be found in the archive by those with access. (It also took several months to get; getting oversighters to respond to why exactly they oversighted your post is like pulling teeth. They never did respond to whether it was all right for the original oversighter to delete the post, then vanish for a month when asked why that was done.) So any alternate user account on any other website is alternate contact information, and they feel that is removable. This needs to be written in the policy, since it's silly to have a policy that the only way to find out about is after it hits you. --GRuban (talk) 15:00, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, I still disagree, though of course I see your point from your perspective: if this is what some of the oversighters think the policy is, then the oversighters need to be told the community disagrees with them. The oversighters simply do not have the right to impose a form of the policy on the community that the community doesn't want. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:22, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

The oversighters disagree. :-) --GRuban (talk) 20:15, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I really don't see this as some sort of ideological war between different policies, or between policy-changing oversighters and policy-maintaining community members. In the particular case GRuban experienced, the decision was apparently that the link constituted or contained private information (I don't remember the specific context, but this seems a safe assumption given the result); that doesn't mean that every link ever is going to be suppressed, any more than it means no links ever will be suppressed. Again, we're not making new policy here. We're determining whether content that's submitted to us contains (or is) information that's covered in the policy that's already there, which does not and cannot exhaustively list every BEANSy, possible type of content that we would suppress (what about "person goes by a name not their legal name, and that name is posted onwiki", or any number of other things that aren't explicitly listed?) - that's why it says "personal information includes", not "personal information is the following exclusive list". A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:42, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, but the problem was that, at least according to what GRuban understood the Oversighters' position to be, and according to the change to the policy text he submitted [2], each and every such link was supposed to fall under "personal information". That's what we are discussing here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:03, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

There was explicitly no private information except the specific account on the alternate site, and that was what the responding oversighter wrote: "namely the reddit username" - that's a direct quote. --GRuban (talk) 21:41, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Right but my point is, knowing someone's username on another site will, very often, open up a treasure trove of other information about them. If I know someone's Reddit username, maybe I can see what subreddits they follow, and find out that they really love asparagus. If I search that username on asparagus.com, then, I may well find them discussing how their local grocery store in Nowhereville, Maryland only stocks white asparagus, and does anyone know of other stores in CountyName that has green asparagus. Now, that's obviously a deliberately-absurd example (no one likes asparagus!), but hopefully you take my point: a username is rarely just a username. If knowing that username means you can find out other, probably-not-published-on-Wikipedia stuff about them, then that username is essentially a link to private, personal information - and we suppress links to private, personal information. Again, on this specific case I haven't looked into the details, and I would not encourage you to share any more here; if someone thinks the oversight done in Gruban's case was improper/overreaching, AUSC would probably love to hear from you so they can have something to do. They're really your only port of call for hashing out specific oversight cases.A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

My respondent was quite clear that the reason was "you are obtaining alternate contact information which was previously undisclosed". Nothing about what information is associated with the username, just that you can use it to contact the person. That's true of all usernames on other sites. --GRuban (talk) 01:07, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

That's not true actually; there are plenty of circumstances where it is not possible to contact that person even after registering at the relevant website. In fact, an user may only be able to make a post on that website in the hopes that the person responds. Ncmvocalist (talk) 04:36, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

RfC: should the policy extend harassment to include posting ANY other accounts on ANY other websites?

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.

Consensus and practice say No. Guy (Help!) 00:13, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

---

This concerns the first paragraph of WP:OUTING as below:

Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person had voluntarily posted his or her own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia. Personal information includes legal name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation, telephone number, email address, other contact information (including any other accounts on any other web sites), or photograph whether any such information is accurate or not. Posting such information about another editor is an unjustifiable and uninvited invasion of privacy and may place that editor at risk of harm outside of their activities on Wikipedia. This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors. Any edit that "outs" someone must be reverted promptly, followed by a request for oversight to delete that edit from Wikipedia permanently. 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. If the previously posted information has been removed by oversight, then repeating it on Wikipedia is considered outing.

The bolded words were added on 22 October 2014 by GRuban on the basis of a discussion with the functionaries on their private mailing list. This has been subject to some discussion above though it was never resolved. I have reverted this to seek clarity from the community before an alternate version is inserted (or before this is reinserted if there is no suitable alternative, or to confirm that the text need not be inserted again). Is the blanket statement that 'any other accounts from any other websites should never be posted' consistent with the community's view? If not, but something does need to be in the policy, how can it be reworded or reintroduced - as I am not sure myself how to cater for this yet. Also pinging the other users from the above discussion: Fut.Perf., A fluffernutter is a sandwich!, Obsidi, Johnuniq, NE Ent, Super Goku V, Kyohyi, as I'd rather put this right the first time around than find ourselves here again when something doesn't work. Ncmvocalist (talk) 04:12, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose this addition. We have cases of people using multiple sockpuppets. The are running businesses where they sell their Wikipedia editing and were they link together their many sock puppets. Basically it is usually one sock per job. These businesses are not always attached to their real names. Thus in these cases this evidence should be allowed. We need to add an exception to the posting of information which joins socks together after a SPI confirms the issue in question. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:48, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
• Support language noting that posting another editor's accounts on other websites can be outing. Iffy on the exact wording involving "any account on any" website. It is absolutely indisputable in my mind that connecting a Wikipedia editor to their accounts on other websites can be outing - to re-use the example I've used before, connecting a Wikipedian to their dating site profile means you're revealing their location, sexual preferences, etc. Not all other-site accounts are going to contain this level of information, and I can think of cases where it would constitute no personal information at all, but I would rather err on the side of protecting our users and include "other accounts" in the policy. In addition, it's not like we don't have venues to submit evidence that might constitute outing if posted onwiki. The Arbcom-l and Functionaries-l mailing lists deal with that sort of information regularly. So I'm not sure that even in cases where the link is obvious, we need to allow space for it publicly onwiki. It seems to me that the choices are:
  1. Remove "other sites" from policy entirely, and err on the side of people getting outed when those "other sites" contain private information. Result: everything from Reddit to OKCupid to genealogy websites becomes fair game to publicly post about other people.
  2. Leave the clause as it stood before this RfC, so it bars the public sharing of any other account from any other website, to draw a clear line in the sand. Result: No one may post another user's accounts from another website, even when they're so obvious they nearly punch you in the face. ("OMG Fluffernutter is "Wikipedia user Fluffernutter" on this subreddit! Outing!"). However, users still have the option to submit this information to Arbcom if they feel it needs to be actioned.
  3. Soften the clause somewhat, to say something along the lines of "including accounts on other websites that contain information the user has not shared on Wikipedia". Result: editors are advised that linking a user to another account on another website might be outing; the Oversight team is able to review each case individually and decide whether suppression would be appropriate.

Now, to me, Option 1 is a clear no-go. It's not ok; we need room to handle the cases where the other account reveals serious personal information. Option 2 is draconian, but it has the benefit of being clear as crystal: if you have information about a user's accounts elsewhere, submit it to Arbcom or drop it. Option 3 brings in a little of the best of both, allowing leeway for the obvious or silly cases. The disadvantage to option 3, though, is also its leeway. Nobody will be sure what kind of other-site accounts are across the line; they will either over- or under-submit requests to the OS team, and oversighters have no more magic powers than anyone else when it comes to figuring out in a timely manner what information a Reddit account with 50,000 posts may or may not have shared at some point in its 6-year history.

Given that people seem very concerned about being allowed the freedom to post people's other accounts in some circumstances, I am willing to support Option 3 as a middle ground that allows the "bleedin' obvious" cases to pass through the net that otherwise catches the "actual private information" cases. However, I have a feeling that in the long term, "it could be, or it could not be, take your chances and find out" isn't really a solution to the question of other-site accounts, and when we run up against this again and have to discard option 3 and choose between options 1 and 2, I'm going to go with the option that errs on the side of overprotecting editor's personal information. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 05:28, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

• If option 3 route is taken, it does need to work in the short & long-term too - so it may need a bit of thought, and a bit of work, but it needs to be done rather than reacting to obviously foreseeable problems later, like with the bolded words insertion (with just a mailing list and a few users apparently knowing about it). Other than Doc James comment above, Fut.Perf.'s comment below explains why there are too many problems with option 2 (the bold words) both in the long-term and the short-term; that signals removal unless it is tweaked through rewording/restructuring. There is more which could be added to that too. So rather than just a few words, perhaps a paragraph, or part-paragraph and bullet points, or something along those lines would need to be drafted to start off the option 3 proposal...? Ncmvocalist (talk) 11:37, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

• 1. Fluffernutter You do realize that option 3 leaves AN/Arb/Etc open to zero investment JoeJobs right? Hasteur (talk) 17:55, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

     No more than, and probably less than, Option 1, Hasteur. 3 is a compromise position I'm willing to take in light of how strongly some people seem to feel about how they must out COI editors onwiki; 3 is at least somewhat less harmful than just declaring open season on all offsite accounts, as Option 1 does. As I said in my vote, I don't think 3 is a long-term solution, but if it's as much as people can agree on, it's still better than nothing. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:07, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• Endorse said revision. Outing another person's account on another website should never be acceptable unless that person has posted a link on the domain 'en.wikipedia.org' linking directly to said account. Doing such is an attempt to harass the individual by attempting to bring out of dispute matters into dispute. For example, I have a Twitter account in which I post more political stuff. Should my opponents (using it in the context of people who've taken an opposite position from me, not actual opponents) then be allowed to dox me, post my account link and remark about how the political stuff I said and that I shouldn't be able to rule on X topic? No, because that's harassment. If we allow people to post sites or supposed accounts that people have registered with, on other forums, that's bringing that account into the discussion when it should never be in the discussion. Posting someone's apparently account link on Wikipedia is harassment, and I can't really believe that OP would find it otherwise. Additionally, why are you only restarting this discussion now? Tutelary (talk) 05:33, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
• Comment: @Ncmvocalist: Notifications (pings) only work if it is a "simple" comment with the ping and the signature added in the same edit. This diff did not notify me. I am pinging everyone mentioned who has not replied here: Fut.Perf., Obsidi, NE Ent, Super Goku V, Kyohyi. Johnuniq (talk) 05:34, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the note. I'll also ping Black Kite who highlighted the need for at least tweaking the change, which got me looking at this now. Ncmvocalist (talk) 11:37, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose addition, as before. The addition is far too broad. In principle, off-wiki activities are fair game for on-wiki discussion if those activities are related to and directed at Wikipedia, in a way that influences Wikipedia editing procedures (e.g. participation in a web forum dedicated to criticising Wikipedia or organising POV campaigns on Wikipedia). Identification of an on-wiki account with an off-wiki identity is fair game for on-wiki discussion if it is based on voluntarily disclosed information, no matter where and how it was disclosed. If Wikipediocracy account X chooses to say, on Wikipediocracy, that they are Wikipedia account Y (but haven't said so on-wiki), then that is still voluntary disclosure, and we'd be mad if we were to prohibit mentioning the obvious connection (if relevant to on-wiki affairs). Likewise, if somebody chooses to edit both Wikipedia and an external Wikipedia-related webforum under the same anonymous nickname, that too is voluntary disclosure: they have freely chosen to invite the inference that they are the same person, so they can't complain. It really is no different from the situation where somebody works under the same (apparent) real-name identity on-wiki and elsewhere, which we've always treated as voluntary self-disclosure. Of course, in all these cases, including the real-name one, there is still the issue of how to be certain they actually are the same (the "joe-job" issue), but acknowledging that as a possibility is a very different thing from claiming that the mere raising of the question on-wiki would automatically amount to "harassment". Doing that would lay Wikipedia open to the most brazen-faced forms of abuse – people could openly engage in abusive behaviour off-wiki as much as they liked, and just thumb their nose at people on-wiki observing them, or even use it as a weapon against on-wiki opponents to get them blocked if they finally speak up about it. (Actually, that's exactly what we have been seeing in a recent dispute, isn't it?) Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:29, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Indeed (and I couldn't believe we have been seeing that so soon after the change was made to the policy). Ncmvocalist (talk) 11:37, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Thanks User:Future Perfect at Sunrise. Does this mean it is acceptable to link the accounts of paid editors on Elance.com with their army of sock puppets on Wikipedia? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:07, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
      • I should say, yes, certainly (and now I look at it, I notice my previous statement wasn't even yet broad enough to cover this case: in the case of obviously abusive behaviour such as paid-editor COI socking, we indeed shouldn't place ourselves under any artificial restrictions whatsoever, no matter if there is "self-disclosed" identification or not.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:25, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
        • Do we need a RfC before we can add this to the policy? Or is it already sufficiently accepted that we can go ahead and clarify this? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:16, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
          • I believe you would need to change the WP:COI guideline before you could do anything like that. Last time I checked, it placed some pretty serious "artificial restrictions" like absolutely prohibiting editors from OUTING suspected COI violators. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:21, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
• "there is still the issue of how to be certain they actually are the same." Exactly. We can't; therefore anyone wishing to smear a wiki editor could create "evidence" off-wiki and then use it on-wiki if this proposal were to pass. Furthermore, while there's no policy against individual Wikipedians participating at Wikipediocracy, as that site does not have the privacy safeguards of WMF sponsored sites, the last thing we should be doing is promoting it. NE Ent 20:11, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Red herrings are flying low today, it seems. Who said anything about "promoting" Wikipediocracy? (I was merely mentioning it as one external website whose authors we do in fact routinely link to their on-wiki accounts.) About the joe-job issue, the fact you are missing is that this theoretical problem is exactly the same in the case of the real-name situation. What's the difference between these two scenarios: (1) We know that a person with the real name "John W. Doe" is the publicity manager of real-world company X; a Wikipedia account who says on their user page that their name is "John W. Doe" has been editing the article on company X on Wikipedia; and (2) A person under the anonymous nickname "TheTruthDefender" has been posting on an external web forum trying to organize a meatpuppet campaign regarding article Y; a Wikipedia account named "TruthDefender" has been editing that article? In case (1), everybody has always taken for granted that the obvious link is fair game (e.g. when assessing a potential COI situation), since the identity is "self-disclosed on-wiki", but for case (2) you suddenly want to impose a taboo upon us all against even mentioning the coincidence? The truth is that, if we are to take the possibility of "joe-jobs" into account, the identity in case (1) is just as likely to be a fake as that in case (2), and the person in case (1) has made precisely the same free choice to publicly invite their identification as the one in case (2). Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:05, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
• Endorse per Tutelary, and sorry to say, but its unfathomable to me to think we can extend Wikipedia's influence to include basically any other account on the web. This is an encyclopedia lest we forget not an empire whose control extends beyond our own borders. While the wording change seems small; it is in fact highly significant and requires more input than from a few editors.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:12, 10 January 2015 (UTC))

Who on earth said anything about "influence" or "control"? Nobody has suggested we should be trying to "control" what people can or cannot do elsewhere. What we can and must do, however, is react to what people do elsewhere, if and when those activities are directed at influencing Wikipedia from the outside, and in order to do that we obviously have to be able to talk about such activities. That's the only thing that is at issue here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:04, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

The result is influence and control. Nor did I say we are trying to control anyone. What I see and have seen is permission to out which I do not agree with.(Littleolive oil (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2015 (UTC))

• Support addition due to inability to actually know authorship of off-wiki content. NE Ent 20:12, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Another red herring. It is one thing to remain aware that it is sometimes (by no means always) difficult to know with ultimate certainty that two accounts are the same person. It is an entirely different matter to suggest, as this addition seeks to do, that the mere mentioning of the possibility of such a link by a Wikipedia editor should automatically be treated as a block-worthy offence. That is sheer madness. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:42, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Future Perfect, I would rather users not get harassed because some trolls on some other site decide to want to get other users on Wikipedia blocked. That's how I see this working out. 'Same name = automatically true = blocked'. Seriously, it's a recipe for disaster. Tutelary (talk) 21:45, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

What about the elance.com accounts were people say "I was paid to start these 6 pages and am taking money to start more pages. Please hire me."? Doc James (talk ·contribs · email) 21:48, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Great, look at the pages involved and see if they correlate. Talk it over with the user if they do. "Is this your account on X website advertising Wikipedia services?" is a fine question to ask. If yes, advise them on the policies. Only if there is an affirmative 'Yes, that's my account' then you can link on site identity with off site identity. Otherwise, if they're 'No, that's not my account', then you can't continually assert that it is because that's harassment. If you want to conduct an elaborative investigation regarding it and the user has denied such, contact ArbCom. Tutelary (talk) 22:04, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

The above question - "Is this your account on X website advertising Wikipedia services?" is a violation of the exact policy you support. Hipocrite (talk) 14:35, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

More often than not it is are these 10 accounts yours? :-) And then once they admit that these are there 10 accounts what can we do? Still nothing? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:11, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose addition. Buckets of AGF are lovely, but tying up good editors by preventing them from alerting others to off-wiki campaigns is very counterproductive. Each case has to be considered on its merits—if someone makes a habit of linking editors to their off-wiki profiles where the linking has no discernible benefit, the person needs to be given a final warning and indeffed on the next repeat because they are just being obnoxious. However, if a handful of good editors defending the gamergate articles are being pounded, they need to be free to provide links demonstrating what is going on. That applies also to pages enlisting paid editors, or any other kind of unforeseen malfeasance. The outing provisions still apply—no linking to personal profiles that out an editor. NE Ent's concern regarding authorship of off-wiki comments is not a reason to prevent all linking—we know about joe jobs and other forms of planting false allegations, and people are able to evaluate evidence, but we have to at least see what evidence is available. Johnuniq (talk) 21:47, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Read the actual wording. This would not prevent alerting editors from off site campaigns. "X subreddit is saying 'EDIT THIS PAGE', be aware of SPA votes and reminder that this is not a !vote!" You would still be allowed to do that. What you can't do is 'This user on Reddit seems to be the Wikipedia user Tutelary" because there's no proof, and would lead to witch hunting, harassment, and the like. Only if they confirm then can you be allowed to do a COI investigation or the like. Otherwise its baseless speculation. Tutelary (talk) 22:07, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

No, under the wording of the proposed addition, the mere mentioning of the connection, including the asking of a question about it, would be automatically deemed "harassment". As for "baseless speculation": Wikipedia is not a court of law, and when it comes to countering disruption, we rightly do not demand judicial standards of proof. There is, in principle, no more and no less "speculation" involved in linking an on-wiki account with an off-wiki one on the basis of shared behaviour and shared names, than in linking two on-wiki socks with each other on the basis of "Duck" behavioral evidence. If we routinely do the latter, I don't see why we can't in principle also do the former, which you seek to exclude so categorically. Both are things where there will, of course, often be doubtful cases where the connection is not safe enough to justify action, but there is no reason to think it categorically impossible to reach a reasonable degree of certainty in some. We all know that there is at least one case in connection with the recent Gamergate fracas where it's plain obvious to everybody with half a brain that editor "L." on Wikipedia is the same person as participant "L." in a certain troll forum; I, for one, will not be silenced from speaking out about this obvious fact, whenever I choose to. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:18, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

If individual editors choose to make this kind of reference that's one matter, giving an implied permission to do so is another. Further once an editor has to cry harassment the damage is done, and frankly depending on who the editor is many won't care in the least if some editor is being harassed. Better to not sanction the behaviour and thus open the door for misuse in the first place.(Littleolive oil (talk) 22:45, 10 January 2015 (UTC))

Wikipedia is not a court of law, and when it comes to countering disruption, we rightly do not demand judicial standards of proof. This is incorrect from my point of view. A judge is required to be impartial to the case that they represent. To quote User:Beeblebrox once more, This came up in an off-wiki matter the committee dealt with earlier this year, where a user who had just been blocked here was severely harassing another user via youtube, using the same username. I was personally 100% convinced that they were one in the same, and I believe most of the arbs were as well, but the user in question denied it was them so we simply couldn't consider the connection verified. --Super Goku V (talk) 00:45, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

• @Littleolive oil: Frankly, that doesn't make any sense to me. I've been on this site for several years, and I have especially cared that editors should not be harassed. In fact, I specifically recall assisting then-arbitrators in drafting a decision in 2009 which dealt with such a case. My contention with the bolded words which I removed are that: (1) it is a loophole which permits more effective and aggressive harassment to be effective, (2) relies on a set of functionaries to sanction such disruption despite the fact they are often unable to address concerns of this nature in a timely manner, and (3) prevents the community from otherwise handling such disruption effectively. Historically, we have seen many for coordinated POV-pushing and disrupting Wikipedia on other websites, public mailing lists, and forums, and this will no doubt continue. The bolded words mean that no reference can be made about posts or pages on such sites - anywhere on Wikipedia - because it might "out" an editor from here who has an account on such a site. I find that utterly ludicrous, and that is what led me to pose this question here. There are several trigger-happy bureaucracy-loving administrators who will be all too happy to enforce the bolded words in the most bogus of circumstances, and nothing can be done to prevent the damage that will cause for the site and its users because of the superficial way in which it is dealt with in the policy, and because of the foolishly broad language used found in the bold words. Even ArbCom is bound by the policy and would be unable to address any issues. We have many big name editors and administrators complain that editor participation is declining; is it any wonder a harassment policy permits editors to be harassed and all efforts put in the project to be so-easily disrupted? If there is a desire to place some limits around the way in which off-site accounts expressly, that's one thing, but that so obviously cannot be dealt with as it is above (it would need to be more detailed and well-considered). However, the bold words here simply go too far (even if it is just in the interim). Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:06, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes this would prevent the addressing of users who create attack pages about other users. Recently we had a user get a friend to create an attack page about me and forward it to my university. Now if he would have just emailed it to me and not also posted the url on Wikipedia I would not have been able to have brought the evidence to ANI. The harassment policy unfortunately often protects and thus promotes harassment. In fact this policy was used as justification for why this evidence and the evidence of this user was being paid to edit Wikipedia should not be allowed at ANI. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:20, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
• Endorse Addition The additional text does nothing to change the policy on outing, merely clarify application. The previous wording included other contact information, I'm fairly certain that accounts on other sites can be used to contact that user, or at least who you believe that user to be. What's more, the second paragraph of the Harassment policy "The fact that a person either has posted personal information or edits under their own name, making them easily identifiable through online searches, is not an excuse for "opposition research". Dredging up their off line opinions to be used to repeatedly challenge their edits can be a form of harassment, just as doing so regarding their past edits on other Wikipedia articles may be." would imply that going around and posting a users other accounts is opposition research. While I am sympathetic to the intents of curbing off-wiki coordination of disruption on wiki, I don't think weakening this policy is the appropriate approach. --Kyohyi (talk) 14:22, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose this addition. It's not harassment de jure to say "Hey, User:FlyOffTheHandle, are you FlyOffTheHandle on Elance?" Now, it might be harassment if it meets other tests in this policy, but just connecting the accounts is not the harassing act. Hipocrite (talk) 20:14, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. This represents an unwarranted expansion of the outing policy. It actually could increase harassment, by encouraging people to go off-wiki to harass Wikipedia editors, and give them a safe haven by making it impossible to talk about their off-wiki activities. Terrible idea. Coretheapple (talk) 22:18, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• Comment This addition would also protect those that pay people to edit Wikipedia. Often the evidence of paid editing include those paying and those being paid. For example should our readers not be informed that some of the content of this article, Derwick_Associates for example, was written by someone paid to do so and which accounts specifically are being paid? The companies often also pay people to remove the COI tags though but that is another issue. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:32, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

That's absolutely correct. Coretheapple (talk) 22:35, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• Endorse with Support for rewording - As stated by Arbitrator Beeblebrox on a recent Arbitration Case, "It is clear, specific evidence that a specific Wikipedia user, who has tied an off-wiki identity with their WP username by (and this is the really important part) publicly making the connection known here on Wikipedia is co-ordinating or encouraging unacceptable behavior on other websites. Attempts to tie WP usernames with off-wiki identities without on-wiki supporting evidence are not acceptable, per WP:OUTING." I will support a rewording and working with WP:COIN over the exact wording, but the policy already prevents contact information which an account on another website is. --Super Goku V (talk) 22:58, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• Note: I have left a pointer to this RfC on the Administrators Noticeboard, as either outcome of this RfC will affect how administrative actions are applied. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 23:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
• Endorse the addition per Tutelary, Kyohyi, and NE Ent. We should be very specific and clear in our language regarding outing being unacceptable. Additionally, NE Ent makes a good point regarding lack of ability to verify the authorship of such off-wiki content. Given the level of wp:battleground , POV pushing, and harassment I've seen on WP, I wouldn't be surprised if such wiki-warriors created fake Twitter account etc, with same username as the wiki-target, and use that manufactured account to harass or attempt to discredit/eliminate opponents. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 23:49, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• Please comment on the actual problem: this proposal would mean that anyone linking to any of the several off-wiki sites coordinating attacks on the gamergate articles would be blocked for harassment because they contain posts by people with the same user names as editors. Suppose you wanted to show that www.example.com has discussions about how paid editors are puffing-up a politician's article and adding negativity to the opponent's article—adding that link would get you blocked if any user names are shown there, despite there being no personal information. Naturally we do not accept an off-wiki page as evidence that someone is being paid to puff-up articles, but we should be able to link to evidence that such discussions are occurring. Johnuniq (talk) 00:25, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• I think our exiting policies on WP:NPOV, WP:OWN, WP:CABAL etc should be used to handles those situations. I also think Fluffernutter makes a good point above with this statement, "it's not like we don't have venues to submit evidence that might constitute outing if posted onwiki. The Arbcom-l and Functionaries-l mailing lists deal with that sort of information regularly. when necessary, it seems such links could be sent to ArbCom."--BoboMeowCat (talk) 00:36, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• Using Arbcom or Functionaries will not scale—they already have too much work and cannot respond to relatively minor issues such as an elance.com page soliciting socks to puff-up an article. Good editors cannot combat off-wiki recruitment without alerting other good editors about the problem. Johnuniq (talk) 01:49, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Johnuniq, I understand what you're saying but don't think ArbCom would be only way to deal with problem. Editing behavior tends to make it clear when an article is being puffed up. Such articles can be brought to BLP noticeboard or other noticeboard to notify good editors. I agree that paid or recruited editors are really bad for the project and that they need to be dealt with, I just think it's better to deal with them on the basis of their editing behavior not a twitter account or a website that may or may not be legit, and I don't think we should deal with this problem at the expense of relaxing our harassment/outing policy. Also, I think such links unfortunately only scratch the surface with the respect to this problem. The most established and problematic paid or recruited editors will tend to be smart enough to not leave such an obvious online evidence trail, so it seems the best way to deal with this very real problem is to get more serious about enforcing our existing polices of WP:NPOV and WP:OWN and also be more on the look out for WP:TAGTEAM and WP:CABAL behavior.--BoboMeowCat (talk) 02:23, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• Support bolded addition per various arguments above. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:03, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
• Endorse additions The reason for requiring disclosure to be on-wiki is that on-wiki is the only place where we can verify that the one disclosing is actually the editor in question. Apart from such disclosures, the principle of on-wiki anonymity should be protected. The attempt to link an editor with an off-wiki account is bad for all the same reasons that attempting to link an editor to a real-world identity is bad. Why is there any difference? Anonymity is anonymity, whether online or offline, and the community has chosen anonymity. When it comes to the problem of off-wiki organization, what is it about such organization happening on the internet that means we should make an exception to the outing policy? If I posted an advertisement in a newspaper, offering to edit for pay and giving my telephone number, then linking that advertisement to my account would be a violation of the outing policy and should be. How is this any different to the scenarios posited above? GoldenRing (talk) 02:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose per Fut. Perf., Doc James, Johnuniq and Coretheapple. The abuses this proposed change enables are greater than those it is trying to prevent. Andreas JN466 04:44, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Am I wrong in seeing that this addition allows editors to link to off Wikipedia information topotentially use against editors here? Am I missing something? I'm not sure why we should enable that kind of behaviour. I'm open to explanation.(Littleolive oil (talk) 05:02, 13 January 2015 (UTC))

This user was involved in creating an attack page, was involved in encouraging fellow vapors to create accounts and vote in discussions and was involved in paid editing were they removed negative content about a Venezuelan company for money from said company among others.[3] They edit warred to do this.

They posted the link to the attack page on Wikipedia which led to their paid editing work. But what if they would have just emailed it to me, would I still have been able to submit it as evidence? Per the change one could then create attack pages on what ever site they want and email them to the employers of Wikipedians and the Wikipedians themselves without repercussions. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:12, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for responding to my question: What I see is that harassment occurs off Wikipedia no matter what we do and has to be dealt with. However we have a route for dealing with personal information with out posting it on WP. If we allow the posting of information at the discretion of the posting editor we open the door for on WP harassment and the eroding of the protection we afford to our editors anonymity. As one who has been harassed off and on WP what I see is that we are opening a Pandora's box of problems. (Littleolive oil (talk) 18:30, 13 January 2015 (UTC))

I aswell have been extensively harassed on and off wiki. Being harassed on wiki is less of a problem than being harassed off wiki. Thus addition would help with the "off wiki" harassment IMO Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:32, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose per the above opposers. I don't really see a need to further strengthen the policy with this wording, as putting that information out there does not necessarily constitute outing. In the case of Elance, it would hamper any and all efforts to enforce efforts against paid editing, and would cause chaos for anyone who wanted to stop this trend from occurring. In terms of harming others, if you put up information on the internet, you should reasonably expect that it will be found by someone, as the internet is a very powerful tool. Unfortunately, we live in a world where anyone can be found and stalked based on what they put online (and that is a horrible issue in and of itself that needs serious addressing), but that does not mean that we need to strengthen our policies to address this with overly-broad terminology, as we have no control what goes on outside of WMF sites. This is a solution seeking a problem, not the other way around, at this point. I do think that something should be done to address the rules (maybe state that an exception can be made if you're violating our terms of use or something), but an overly-broad action won't really solve anything at this time, as it will harm people who are trying to help combat paid editors. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:43, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

WP:OUTING takes precedence over WP:COI, according to ArbCom. Tutelary (talk) 03:23, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• Clarification Opposing the proposal is not an attempt to allow off-wiki links in order to sanction an editor—obviously that would lead to all kinds of trolling and joe jobbing. The purpose of linking to, say, elance.com would be so an editor could ask for help dealing with off-wiki coordination to subvert Wikipedia's procedures. People may try to help with such a request, but would ignore a generic request because the topic does not appeal. Johnuniq (talk) 06:35, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• If the purpose of such off-site coordination is to improve the encyclopaedia, then I don't see a problem. If the purpose of the coordination is to disrupt the encyclopaedia, then I don't see any indication that our existing processes for dealing with disruption are not up to the job.

• I think we need to be careful here. It is fairly clear that a lot of the opposition to the revised wording is related to the current situation with reddit, 8chan and the GamerGate controversy. But any change that would allow linking eg a reddit account to a Wikipedia editor could also be used the other way. I believe that it is not exactly a secret, for instance, that various members (and ex-members) of WP:GGTF co-ordinate off-wiki. Do you really want to encourage digging up links between editors and off-wiki co-ordination? GoldenRing (talk) 06:51, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• Support the addition of the bold-face words.
  Separately, I think it would be useful to consider expanding this policy's ==Dealing with harassment== section to explain that "posting" (notice that first word in this paragraph) identifying personal information is harassment, but "e-mailing" exactly the same thing to a relevant team of volunteers is fine. Despite the comments above, the rule that says not to post someone's real name in public, right in the middle of one of the busiest and most heavily indexed websites in the world does not actually mean "sit on your hands while crying 'boo-hoo, I can't post this private information on wiki, so nothing can be done to stop this bad editor'". The rule is don't spam the world with your (possibly wrong) doxxing; instead, e-mail it to the group that's supposed to deal with it. Private information belongs in private communication channels. We have lots of them. You should use them whenever you have private information about an editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:21, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
• I'd oppose such a change. In some circumstances, linking off-wiki accounts can constitute outing - and I trust the functionaries to act to suppress such information - but come on, such a blanket lock down is insane. People's actions outside Wikipedia can have consequences on Wikipedia - Wikipedia is not an island. Worm^TT(talk) 13:35, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Linking to off-wiki personal chaff is frequently used as hounding or harassment. We have often seen banned users posting allegations of this sort on forums, email lists and even other Wikimedia projects, which are immediately raised on-wiki to inflame drama. Wikipedians should be accountable for their on-wiki edits and they should be accountable in rare and exceptional circumstances, such as if they are demonstrably gaming the system by off-wiki means such as faking sources or maliciously cyberbullying and doxxing Wikimedians to get their way. The exceptions have pretty much been defined by past Arbcom cases. Wikipedia has a long way to go before it could be a safe space for contributors, restricting personal information and links where the user has not clearly done this themselves would help, in a further qualified form if necessary for consensus. --Fæ (talk) 13:59, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. When one or more editors engage in WP:Canvassing by asking another website's editors to help them influence a Wikipedia dispute, as seen in this case, there should be freedom to mention that matter on Wikipedia...even if mentioning it clearly ties the WP:Canvasser to another website account. Flyer22 (talk) 14:36, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

  I would argue that you could post that something was being coordinated off-site -- you just couldn't draw conclusions as to who was doing it.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:44, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

That would be explicitly allowed under the wording. You are not outing another person's account, you are merely letting someone know that a Reddit thread was created with the implicit request to edit a Wikipedia article. What would not be allowed would be. "X's editing habits make it obvious that he is Y on Wikipedia.' That's outing. Tutelary (talk) 03:23, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I read a similar argument above, and then I read Future Perfect at Sunrise (Fut.Perf.)'s "22:18, 10 January 2015 (UTC)" reply to it. Flyer22 (talk) 14:54, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I disagree with him. That's not what the wording says. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:45, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose This would hinder my job as m:SWMT member when I trying to track spammer IPs (when I try to report Cross wiki vandals IP and information on en.wp to be handled locally), not only that, because of this restrictions now people can do canvassing freely per Flyer22.--AldNon^Ucallin?☎ 16:57, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose Because it doesnt matter what the wording says, functionaries will interpret it any way they like anyway. When I requested an edit (by a now indef'd editor) be oversighted in which one of my off-site identities had been posted, one which I had not previously made any link to on-wiki, I received a lovely email reply from Salvio Giuliano saying that it could not be oversighted as it was not covered by the oversight policy. Glad to hear everyone works from the same book! Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:29, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Only in death does duty end, is your off-site identity still on Wikipedia? If so, perhaps Daniel Case can help you out? He's been helpful to me with personal WP:Oversight cases. Flyer22 (talk) 03:08, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose as written ("including any other accounts on any other web sites"). It would seem odd not to be allowed to ask, "are you the XYZ123 who also posts on ...?", when it's obvious that it's the same person and they're using the same name. It's sometimes important to discuss those connections when someone is causing the same type of problem on WP that they've caused elsewhere, or where there might be COI/paid advocacy. I wouldn't oppose similar wording if it excluded the obvious cases. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:45, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

  Since WP:COI says not to reveal such alleged "connections" without permission from the editor, even for suspected paid advocacy, maybe it isn't all that "important to discuss those connections" on wiki. The COI guideline tells you to e-mail your information to Checkuser; this policy gives additional options. I'm not sure that I've seen a case in which it's actually "important" to discuss such connections in public and without the user's permission. I've seen lots in which it was convenient for editors (and especially for POV pushers on the other side of a dispute), but I'm not sure that I ever saw a case in which it was actually necessary (and I did spend a couple of years over at COIN, so I've seen more than a couple of cases).
  Speaking of COIN, overall, I think that a bright-line clarification might make COIN discussions much easier, but it might tend to fill up the e-mail inboxes of whoever has been dealing with that noticeboard since Atama disappeared. Did anyone post a notice over at WT:COIN to solicit their opinions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:09, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

• Support - it's not a change in policy, just a clarification of some examples of "other contact information". That has always included "any other accounts on any other web sites" and rightly so. WaggersTALK 14:27, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
• Specify. I actually oppose the policy (as per the legendary SlimVirgin's example), but I will absolutely insist that it be written down. It's ridiculous that the post "Editor XYZ123 posted as Reddit user XYZ123" may be seen as completely fine by some oversighters and a clear violation of WP:OUTING by others, and it's a matter of luck or persistence until you find someone who will remove and oversight it. This common case should be made quite clear in our policy. --GRuban (talk) 15:36, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

  I think this is a very sound rationale. We should have fewer unwritten rules and fewer gotchas. If we're enforcing this (and therefore if we are punishing people who post such information in perfectly good faith), then we need to write down this rule. Some people actually read this policy to make sure that it's okay, and we don't want them to read the policy, rationally conclude that their message is safe, and then get embarrassed or punished because someone else read the policy and came to a different conclusion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:57, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose change in policy, as too many policies too strongly worded can be too easy of a target for too many malicious people to use to gain the system. (And, yes, I did try to think of additional places to add "to(o)" to that sentence.;) ) No objections and some support to GRuban's proposal immediately above, provided that all due effort is spent to verify that the person is in fact identical. However, speaking strictly on my own, I think, maybe irrationally, that in most of the cases where this might reasonably apply policy changes might be ultimately unnecessary, although if GRuban or anyone else can think of instances where such action was not taken that would be very welcome information and might help me change my mind. John Carter (talk) 16:30, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose when directly related to Wikipedia and discussion of Wikipedia and Wikipedia editors. But when not related to Wikipedia in any way shape or form it is indeed inappropriate and should be covered under outing. KonveyorBelt 18:30, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

  Yes the policy need to be clarified to say this. If someone is running a Wikipedia editing business, use not being able to discuss said business as the money end of things occurs off wiki is while, unreasonable. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:53, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

  How do you get from "don't link to other accounts on any other web sites" to "you're not allowed to discuss a business"? Businesses aren't "accounts at web sites". WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:57, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

  At Elance businesses / individuals operate through accounts. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:25, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose I think User:Protonk has summed up best why this is a dreadful change that leads to absolutely farcical situations. So I'll just post diffs of what he's said (can I notify him about this discussion or would that break canvassing rules?) [4][5] Bosstopher (talk) 21:50, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
• Support per WP:OUTING, nothing is stopping me from creating an account named XYZ on twitter and saying I'm XYZ on Wikipedia Loganmac (talk) 02:14, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• That is not the issue—everyone understands that impersonation and trolling are easy. This is nothing to do with OUTING—linking to personal information is prohibited, and will remain prohibited. The proposed wording means that we cannot link to a page showing off-wiki coordination if that page has posts by someone with the same name as an editor. Paid advocacy or POV pushing could be planned on a website and no one could expose the situation if someone calling themselves, say, Jimbo Wales was posting there. Johnuniq (talk) 06:03, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• Let's be crystal clear what Loganmac is complaining about here - he's transparently, obviously Logan_Mac on reddit. In fact, he uses his Wikipedia reputation on reddit to increase his reddit reputation - ref (redacted). (redacted) - of the main harassment board on reddit focused on GamerGate - he wouldn't want anyone to think he's biased on wikipedia however, so he wants this policy in place so he can continue to lobby people offsite to harangue people on wikipedia. That's why this addition is ridiculous. Hipocrite (talk) 13:39, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

You do not need to out someone to raise the issue of gaming the system or harassing others using off-wiki tactics. Arbcom has banned users who have deliberately manipulated Wikipedia this way in the past. We just need to move away from a system that allows irrelevant allegations to be made or linked to publicly on-wiki, unless there are indisputable reasons to publicly discuss this, say during an Arbcom case or where there is legitimate whistle-blowing, for example in cases of paid editing that may be introducing bias.

For serious cases, the starting point should be raising the off-wiki material by email, then agreeing that it is appropriate to become part of a public case, not potentially making false allegations using Wikipedia as a platform. My experience on Wikipedia was to have false assertions that I supported publishing sexual images of children while at the same time having my home phone number published off-wiki, and some rather stupidly irrelevant claims about my gay sex life both on and off Wikipedia. We need to move away from an environment where these types of "debating techniques" are used to inflame drama and may cause real life harm. --Fæ (talk) 14:34, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

You just accussed an entire group of people of being harassers, and you accused me of lobbying people here, when links to the Cultural Marxism articles have been posted everywhere from Twitter to 8chan, The Escapist forums, etc. Suddently I'm to blame, alright. An Arb already said on the case to stop bringing this up since it's irrelevant to anything, now on the topic of this policy, frankly I don't give a damn about the result of the vote, but you just gave the perfect example of why it is in place. User PresN already did a long rant on offsite accounts and was deleted, so did The Devil Advocate. If criticism of Wikipedia is forbidden, then you should ban the entire staff of Wikipediocracy, Wikireview, etc. At no point have I sent harassing tweets to Ryulong or anyone related to Wikipedia. I don't know why am I to blame for what happens to people when as seen by a quick GamerGate Ryulong search, the entire movement is angry with him and others, see Operation Five Horsemen. As other fandoms are angry with him. NorthBySouthBaranof was according to him doxxed by 8chan, will you try and say that was me too? Because I got someone already saying I was an "8chan troll". On the topic of being biased, let me remind you that we're not forbidden from having personal views, as long as those views don't interfere with our neutral editing. My last edit to the 8chan article included mentioning that they were reported for alleged child pornography, would a biased editor include that? David Jaffe came out saying he found GamerGate stupid, and I made the entire article on his latest game Drawn to Death. I'm a lefitst, I intend to vote the Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner party yet I helped fix the William S. Lind lede, a conservative, I watch this little show that analyses the rightist media called 678, I follow them on Facebook and Twitter. I understand how Wikipedia works, I'm here since 2007, I have helped on es.wikipedia, I have NEVER been sanctioned for anything. I know how to be neutral. Now I think this is personal drama and I would even hat myself Loganmac (talk) 03:30, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

What on earth are you talking about? There's no way Logan_mac and Loganmac are the same person. In fact I have proof! Here is Loganmac talking about canvassing being a boogeyman, and asking people to not make accusations unless they can pinpoint editors canvassing. Yet on the very same day, this mysterious "Logan_mac" figure (whoever he is), was canvassing the same topic on Kotaku in Action. If Loganmac and Logan_mac were indeed the same person, wikiLogan would never have done something so foolish as to dare other editors to pinpoint canvassing. Either that or our outing policy is currently so broken in its current state to allow flagrant breakers of rules to rub it everyones faces. But I am certain that it is the former, and that Logan_mac and Loganmac are two separate people. Bosstopher (talk) 19:52, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• @Loganmac: Do you honestly think we're all fucking stupid? Protonk (talk) 02:38, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. It seems pretty obvious that posting a link to someone's profile on a dating site falls afoul of the policy as it stands. But step back for a moment and think about the reason we have this policy in the first place. Policy exists to support the goals of the project - that being, to write a fucking awesome freely available, NPOV encyclopaedia. Outing is a problem because it's a way to harass editors, to drive them away from the project. Which undercuts our ability to do what we're here to do.

  Adding the proposed text to the policy would hamstring work to prevent paid editing, work to identify off-wiki canvassing, work to identify people who are harassing editors. The good stuff exists already - if someone posts a link to another site which includes your home address, and does it as a way to out you, they are working against the best interests of the project, and should probably be banned. If someone posts a link to a site where you're organising a sock army, they're working to further the aims of the project. And shouldn't be punished. Guettarda (talk) 00:27, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. As written this would constrain open discussion too much. If linking to the "other site" account discloses truly sensitive identifying information such as real name or address, then the offending link can be deleted. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:06, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - Not all so-called "outing" is a bad thing. See, for example, the Qworty affair. We can either have a dedication to NPOV and periodic revelation of real life identities to expose underhanded COI editing behavior or we can have a Cult of Anonymity. I choose the former. Carrite (talk) 21:27, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - I would support a slight change such that asking if someone is another account with the same name on a different site or that claims to be a WP user on another site is not outing. Beyond that, unless the account on the other site takes actions that reasonably lead someone to believe they are the same person, they should never be linked on WP. Even if the other account outside of WP claims to be a WP user, we should not assume that they are the same person on WP until the WP user says so on WP (and claims to do so would should be casting aspersions). My main objection to the "revert back" was to make sure that the change was actually authorized by the functionaries (which so far it seems to not have been as they did not revert it back once notified). I do think it is CRITICAL that we resolve this dispute in a clear manner such that there is no doubt as to what is considered outing (either all connections to off-wiki accounts is outing, or none of them are, or explicit exceptions are laid out). --Obsidi (talk) 03:17, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Uhm, "oppose" means "oppose the addition of the wording about off-wiki accounts". You seem to be supporting the addition in principle, are you not? Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:44, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
    • I oppose the proposed wording which prohibits any linking of WP account to an offsite account. I would support a more limited wording that allowed linking WP to an offsite account in some circumstances where the offsite account claims to be the onsite account or has the same name. --Obsidi (talk) 20:19, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
      • How about were the off site account claims to have written the content written by an onsite account? One does not need to claim that one is the same as the other. Maybe just allow "account X on site Y states they have written Z for this much money. User A on Wikipedia has written Z. User X has also claimed to have written this other stuff. Are these other accounts associated with User A?" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:14, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
• As has been noted above, I'm on record opposing this. We need a common sense OUTING policy, not one twisted primarily to avoid inconveniencing people who want to harry and "expose" editors on reddit. Protonk (talk) 19:44, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. There have been many recent examples of misuse of the bolded words in WP:OUT to suppress evidence of off-wiki canvassing and meatpuppetry. For instance, a Reddit user coached other redditors on how to circumvent our content policies. He then announced his changes on Reddit and preformed said edits on-wiki, under the same name as on Reddit. He also volunteered information about himself on Reddit that had very serious implications for the safety of Wikipedia editors. Editors must be able to discuss and report such misconduct without being accused of "outing" the canvassers, although no identifying information has been mentioned. --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 18:10, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose the added parenthetical. The outing policy should be weakened as necessary to strengthen defenses against paid advocacy. But I am not opposed to paid editing under the COI guidelines, because I think it's inevitable. We need a policy of disclosure of paid editing just as we expect editors to disclose their conflicts of interest. EllenCT (talk) 12:53, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Question

For those who wish to be able to post other accounts on other websites, have you tried using the methods already described in the policy? Meaning, have you emailed administrators with your concerns? And if so, did you find the process lacking? --Kyohyi (talk) 14:20, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

If one has found a bunch of undisclosed paid editors running businesses through a number of websites and both arbcom and the WMF feel the community should address this if they so desire, trying to address the issues without being able to talk openly about the evidence is difficult.

It is unclear if one is allowed to say on Wikipedia: "X website has a job posting to write Y article on Z date. Two days later it was picked up by A editor and on B date a Wikipedia article by the same name was created by this new account. Likely editor A is one of many sock puppets of this individual as they have picked up 20 other Wikipedia related jobs. We should run a check user and look at all the articles created by these sock puppets." Etc etc etc. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:44, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

James, do you really, truly need to post that? (Note that I'm using the word "need" in the sense of "this trauma patient needs emergency surgery, or he will die" and not in the sense of "I need to eat some cookies")?

Wouldn't it be equally effective to say ""X website has a job posting to write Y article on Z date. There's been some spammy activity at that article recently. I'm going to e-mail my concerns to Checkuser right now, exactly like all of our policies and the COI guideline tell me to do with information like that"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:46, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

There are two problems with that approach. First, many would regard posting information about X, Y and Z as a recipe for how to find the page in question (Google would probably show it without effort), and therefore the post would be seen as an attempt to wikilawyer the policy, and the poster should be blocked. Second, editors have limited time, and if they see a generic message with an unsupported claim of yet-another problem they are likely to move on to something else. By contrast, it was when people could easily click a provided link for one of the gamergate forums and see the problem staring them in the face that they understood the severity of the situation. Such a link would violate policy if it contained a single post by someone with the same user name as an editor (or even a similar name—see the Loganmac vs. Logan_mac discussion above). Johnuniq (talk) 09:04, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Why do we have to ask the question outright on Wikipedia? Why not send that question, and supporting evidence directly to the functionaries? --Kyohyi (talk) 19:33, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

There is no magic process at Wikipedia. The pages showing off-wiki plans to disrupt the gamergate articles would be ignored by functionaries and arbcom—they just show people planning to push certain points of view in articles, and discussing how to subvert Wikipedia's procedures. Such pages alert editors that attention is needed to defend the encylopedia—that's all we can do. Notifying functionaries would achieve nothing. Johnuniq (talk) 23:08, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

So why do we need to post such information on Wikipedia? Well the functionaries have stated that they do not see that they currently have in the mandate to address this. While others state they do not have the staff to deal with such an issue. The WMF sees this as a community issue. Arbcom does not feel like they have a direct role in undisclosed paid advocacy editing as it is not supposedly prohibited by policy. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:19, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Outing a company

If a company's business is to spam Wikipedia, does linking that companies 100s of sock puppets to it count as outing? What if the company only has a few employees? What about individuals who livelihood is writing Wikipedia articles for pay using socks? Can these issues be discussed on Wikipedia as part of an effort to clean up / block all the socks in question? What about the companies that pay for these services can we mention them? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:30, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

The policy is about "target(ing) a specific person or persons" which would seem to exclude large companies or businesses in general being covered by this policy. Probably a 2-3 person business would be covered though. Just my 2 cents. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:15, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Does this policy protect companies and individuals who are paid to spam Wikipedia? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:39, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

It kinda does, at least from public discussions. However, paid editing without disclosure is now a TOS violations, isn't it? So such information can still be forwarded to legal who should handle it from there, making this, imo, a non-issue. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 00:04, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

And if legal wishes the community to help deal with it? I assume that we can also enforce TOS violations.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:51, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

• Legal has responded and stated they see enforcement of paid editing issues as up to the community. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:37, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Do you truly need to post the company's actual name with the list of accounts on wiki, or do you have other, less outing-like options? For example, would it be sufficient to post the list of accounts with a name-free comment like "I suspect these accounts of being undisclosed paid editors, and I think their contributions should be reviewed"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:32, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
    • We already from time to time post links to the urls of companies were there are descriptions of their spamming techniques for Wikipedia. I think many of those who are attempting to address these issues do not know whether or not this is allowed thus the request for clarification. In these cases we are starting with a known entity and than linking dozens of accounts to them rather than linking accounts to entities. In this case most of the accounts only make a couple of edits before they are on to the next one. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
      • Are you actually saying things on wiki like "this account belongs to this small business"? Or are you just posting, "Here's is a website that says the owner was paid to edit this article"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:51, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
        • We are saying this website describes this technique of spamming. Lets run the last month of edits to pick up concerns. We are than generating a list of edits and thus accounts that are using this technique and potentially associated with the website in question. Of course one never knows. And who cares if an account with 4 or 5 edits is in some companies sock army. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:54, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
          • Something like that should be okay. You're not actually posting the names of the accounts (right?). You're just posting diffs to edits that would benefit from review. What the famous web search engines (which is one of the main motivations here) will see isn't "User:Example is James Real"; they'll see something like "Here's a link that describes a spamming technique. Here's a list of diffs that might be employing it. Can someone help me check these?" No names (at all), no foul. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:15, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
            • Yes more or less. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:21, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

While the laws of some countries consider corporations to be people, I don't think we should. Chillum 04:03, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

A "company" is not necessarily a "corporation". AFAICT, most corporations in the US are owned by one person or a (small) family (usually husband and wife, sometimes parent and child). It's not unusual for a single business person to own multiple corporations here. Thus the question becomes, if I have a small, zero-employees business, should you treat me differently based on your best guess about my tax-driven business structure? If I convert from a sole proprietorship to a registered corporation, or the other way around, but nothing else about my tiny business changes, should the rules for how you treat me change? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:32, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Question about outing section

In terms of posting another editor's personal information, does linking a Wikipedia account to an account on a different website count as personal information (perhaps as defined by the phrase "other contact information")? If so, should this be something that is explicitly specified in the text? Deli nk (talk) 22:05, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

That is currently under active debate - see Wikipedia_talk:Harassment#Other_contact_information. My read is that there is likely no consensus that such is harassment, but it is possible that there is consensus that it is not, in and of itself, harassment. There are, of course, extenuating factors, which could turn it into harassment. Hipocrite (talk) 22:07, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. I should have looked at this page more closely before posting. :) Deli nk (talk) 22:09, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

query

[6] called another editor a "former professor at Yale"

That person's user page does say he got his Ph.D. at Yale and is a Research Professor at Montana State University. He is, however, not a former professor at Yale, and he has now indicated in his reply that he was a professor at Harvard. He also does give his "real name" on his user page.

Is the odd misstatement as to where he was a professor of any import at all under this policy? Thanks - this one puzzles me a tad. Collect (talk) 14:21, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Not particularly. NE Ent 14:30, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I had seen "outing" complaints which seemed even less substantial in the past - and wondered here. Clearly the person "wanted" to make a disparaging personal comment about the other editor - but screwed it up. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:35, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Dealing with harassment

For simpler, on-wiki matters, such as a user with whom you have arguments, see dispute resolution as the usual first step. It makes it easier to identify the problem you are having if there are some specific diffs. For more serious cases where you are willing to address it on-wiki, you may request administrative assistance.

The linked text in WP:DR#Resolving user conduct disputes says:

If the problem is with the editor's conduct, not their position on some matter of article content, then you may ask an administrator to evaluate the conduct of the user. You can ask for an administrator's attention at a noticeboard such as the administrators' noticeboard for incidents (ANI).

Both steps go to ANI. Is one of these sentences out of date? Burninthruthesky (talk) 16:56, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Linking a user's Twitter feed

I asked this question a few days ago at WT:SPI but got no response. I'm interested in presenting evidence per WP:OTHERSITES that an editor here who uses the same username as his Twitter account is the same as an IP account he has been using to avoid recognition. If I link to the Twitter account in the SPI then would that be considered outing? -Thibbs (talk) 19:13, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

There is discussion above which covers this, and it is still ongoing. My opinion however is that yes, it would, underneath "other contact information". And as such, the evidence should be sent by email, instead of on wiki. --Kyohyi (talk) 19:25, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your helpful response. This is in agreement with the answer I've now received at WT:SPI too. -Thibbs (talk) 21:18, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

The RfC on "should the policy extend harassment to include posting ANY other accounts on ANY other websites?" has been closed and states that posting of other accounts is sometimes allowed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:04, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

WP: OUTEX

Seeing as the RFC concerning other accounts at other websites has closed with sometimes it is okay to post such information, is there any agreement as to what information, and where it may be posted. I'm looking to clarify and improve the wording regarding what would be considered an exception to outing. --Kyohyi (talk) 15:10, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes agree this is an exceedingly important next step. I would propose that one situation in which it should be okay to post other accounts is when the other accounts are involved in the business of paid advocacy editing (such as account on Elance, Fiverr, Odesk, etc). That this should be allowed at both WP:SPI, WP:ANI and WP:COI noticeboards. In this situation making statements that the account belongs to a Wikipedia user is typically not needed. Most it is "1) this Elance account took a job to write X 2) Wikipedia user Y has just written X. Can we get a CU?" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:53, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

A good exception would be when someone someone (using the same username as their wikiaccount) makes a canvassing post in a public and visible forum, or a post smearing or attacking another editor. It seems legimate to point out that someone sharing a username with an editor is doing this offsite. This seems to be reflective of comments in the RfC.Bosstopher (talk) 15:47, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes agree that is another reasonable use. I guess the question is should we have a RfC for each situation in which linking to another account on another website is okay? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:43, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Would it be considered disruptive to have multiple RfC's on the same page? Because I've got a few ideas for parts of OUTEX I want to propose.Bosstopher (talk) 16:57, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

When I made this section I was thinking that we'd have a general discussion which would list a number of cases, then have RFC's on specific wording around each of those cases. --Kyohyi (talk) 19:32, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I am thinking one RfC for each instance. So yes multiple RfCs is fine. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:37, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

The potential downside here is that you won't be able to think of all possible scenarios in advance. If you try to make a list of all scenarios where it is okay to link to an off-site account, the assumed implication will be that it's forbidden for any case that isn't listed. That prevents the organic development of consensus. If such a list is eventually made, please add a sentence to say that it makes no claim to being exhaustive. Andreas JN466 13:50, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes the first question will be "can we get consensus for any case" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:36, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Links related to paid editing

I propose the addition of "Link to accounts on other websites through which paid editing appears to be taking place may be used on Wikipedia during discussion at WP:COIN. This includes accounts from websites such as Elance or from websites that specialize in Wikipedia editing such as WikiLinkPro among others."

Amended proposal:

WP:OUTING already says: "Posting links to other accounts on other websites is allowable on a case by case basis."

Add, following that: For example, links to freelancing sites or other sites involved in soliciting paid editing, where editors disclose their Wikipedia usernames, take paid editing jobs, or provide examples of Wikipedia articles they have written for pay, or the like, may be used to address issues related to paid editing. (note - amended proposal per discussion below Jytdog (talk) 21:48, 4 March 2015 (UTC))

Support

• Support as proposer. The WMF has made it clear that they do not have the personnel to enforce our terms of use with respect to undisclosed paid editing. They feel that the community should be involved. For the community to be able to take this on we need to feel comfortable discussing issues openly. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:36, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Support amendment. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:55, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Support This makes sense. Many freelancers on these sites actually link to their WP user pages and to articles they have written for pay. Used in conjunction with actual edits to articles, this would provide ~pretty~ clear proof of paid editing, and help us deal with paid editors using multiple socks - many of these editors have a stable username here and create one-off, throwaway accounts here per job. But they need to fix an identity somewhere and those brokers are the place where they want to establish their reputations. Jytdog (talk) 01:39, 2 March 2015 (UTC) (add a bit and strike a bit - have learned more since my !vote Jytdog (talk) 14:10, 4 March 2015 (UTC))
• Support Absolutely. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 03:59, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Good idea, commonsensical. Would tweak to allow utilizing of such links at ANI and other official noticeboards. Coretheapple (talk) 14:13, 4 March 2015 (UTC) To clarify, per Guy's comment below, it is important to distinguish between "outing" as a form of harassment and punishment and self-disclosure via advertisements, which this passage is specifically designed to address. One caveat: see my comment re "joe jobs" in the discussion section.Coretheapple (talk) 21:43, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Re the amended version: good stuff, helpful improvement. We don't want people banned or blocked for quoting from sites where people advertise. My only concern is the possibility of "joe jobs." If I don't like User:PainInTheButt I post an ad saying "My name is "User:PainInTheButt on Wikipedia and I am for sale." But in cases in which there is clear advertising, and we are sure it's not a joe job, we need this kind of clarification. I am pretty well satisfied by Doc James' comments in the discussion section, and do support this proposal. Coretheapple (talk) 22:04, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Cautious support subject to careful analysis of any cases. The present system is broken. A user can be banned for noting a link made elsewhere exposing a material conflict of interest. This is not a good thing. We don't want to become a venue for witch-hunts, and we certainly don't want to enable or support the kind of obsessive stalking of Wikipedia opponents that has led to bans in several cases, but there is a definite need to protect the integrity of the project against conflicted editors. Guy (Help!) 17:09, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Re the amended version: this is a clarification of what should be current practice. In reality people simply get banned for outing, and I am told this happens for a first offence in some cases, even to long-standing editors who are acting in good faith. That is unacceptable. I think it's important to include this clarification. Guy (Help!) 21:57, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Support amended version. John Carter (talk) 22:33, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
• Support the outing claims below are clearly not in keeping with practice - with or without this section being proposed being explicitly stated, it will continue to be practice as it always has (and true consensus) to say 'this subject of this article is being advertised at [link]'. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:26, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
• support as an individual. The relative importance of different policies is a matter for discussion, and when they come into conflict, the necessary course is to adjust one or the other either explicitly or by interpretation. I think our practices have gone much to far in the direction of protecting anonymity, to the extent that it is harming the encyclopedia. A limited degree of investigation of identities without our actually revealing them in public is already permitted in sockpuppettry, and this has proven very useful in addressing disruption. The current epidemic of undisclosed paid editing is as much a threat to the encyclopedia as the usual forms of puppetry, and we need as way of dealing with it. The TOU is explicit that the enforcement of the terms of use is jointly by the foundation and the community, and we therefore have the right to do so in any part that it is directly related to enWP, and not specifically prohibited by the Foundation. I think in particular we have a responsibility to enforce it in areas directly related to enWP where the WMF does not currently do so, even if we wish they would take the burden from us. As a minimum we have the obligation to do so in those cases where the WMF does not have the capability and we do. The existing manner of investigation of sockpuppettry is the appropriate manner here also, and our success there shows that we do have the capability to do it. There are obvious limitations to what we can effectively do; some of them have been treated in the discussion below,and others will be devised by guidelines and customs just as with other policy questions. Personally, I am not sure we do not already have the right to do as this proposes, but I think it necessary to be explicit. It is probable that some members of arbcom may oppose this proposal, but this is an instance where they need to be guided by the community. I regret very much that they never adopted this rule explicitly on their own, but I would not like to think that arbcom would actually refuse to implement a community policy. DGG ( talk ) 00:00, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

  Wait, DGG, I'm confused. You're supporting a proposal that is intended to allow us to link, onwiki, to off-wiki identities/accounts, but your rationale is that we should be investigating paid editing in the same manner as we do with sockpuppetry - which is to say, private checkuser investigation, public administrative action, but no onwiki publishing of personal/offwiki information about the suspected account. A sockpuppetry investigation will, as I understand it, pretty much never publicly connect an account name to an IP, exactly because an IP can be used to track down undisclosed personal information about the account holder in much the same way an off-wiki account (especially one related to real-life employment) can. So your two points seem mutually-exclusive to me - if you're supporting publicly posting the information, then you can't be doing it on the basis of the right system being one in which we're careful to not post private information...can you? Or am I misunderstanding something from your rationale?

  For the record, I agree with you that something along the lines of SPI would be a good starting point for handling paid advocacy editing - a small group of trusted users empowered to privately look into the "man behind the curtain" details of questionable accounts, and then act onwiki based on the results of their investigation. I just can't figure out how that reconciles with a proposal explicitly approving public posting of that non-public info. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 01:32, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Details will need to be developed, and there will be more several methoda needed. One is to permit the posting of useful links to published sources; another is to permit the private investigation of the relationships; a third, as mentioned in the discussion is the involvement of OTRSA, which is where people with COI conflicts often ask for proper assistance.

I wish this and the proposal below had not been done in this manner. The first steps that should have been taken is1/ a statement that to avoid all doubt, the WMF TOU apply at the enWP,2/ that accruing to the TOU, the community at the WMF has have a joint responsibility with the WMF to enforce them, 3/ that the Arbitration Committee has the power and the responsibility to investigate and enforce them within the limits of its abilities, with appropriate deletion to other group and individuals, all in accordance with guidelines to be developed. And then 4/ this particular proposal of permitting linking in certain cases being one of the methods. It would have been more helpful not to have skipped the intermediate steps, although , to be personally, the first 3 of them seem pretty obvious. DGG ( talk ) 04:44, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Clarifying the other three can still be done. The paid editors likely are not going anywhere anytime soon :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:09, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose We've always argued that WP:OUTING trumps WP:COI, and I'd rather a different solution than sacrificing this. The problem is the amount of information typically provided on an Elance or other account. If it was simply a matter of linking a username to a username and jobs list I'd be ok with it, but this would publicly link a WP account to (potentially) a real name, employment history, photo and area of residence. - Bilby (talk) 06:49, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose: I was about to !vote support, but reading Bilby's comment changed my mind. If an external profile lists things like employment history, photograph and other real world details, it would violate every WP:OUTING criteria. We'll need to find another way. After all we're handling sock puppets (a greater evil) in other ways as well and even that does not take precedence over outing. --lTopGunl (talk) 18:53, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Many of these users are using armies of sock puppets. And we are not handling them thus this proposal Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:32, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Check user solves that problem as far as you are able to find basis for reporting at SPI (if not, linking an identity to one of the suspected accounts won't change that). The issue here is outing a person which was not even considered for things like plain socking, and should not take precedence over paid editing either... paid editors eventually get detected anyway due to their obvious promotional editing. It shouldn't take much time building a consensus among experienced editors with that. I guess, WP:COIN is what needs a reform. --lTopGunl (talk) 19:39, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Often on Elance one can figure out that account X has taken jobs to write Y and Z. One can than discover that both Y and Z are written by brand new but different accounts. This is good support that these two new accounts are likely sock puppets. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:08, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

You are right about that one... I think emailing a private list such as the ArbCom would avoid outing and still get it handled. It's something already being done about socks when outing is involved. --lTopGunl (talk) 20:44, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes so arbcom does not feel they have the mandate to deal with undisclosed paid advocacy editing. The WMF does not feel they have the personal to deal with undisclosed paid advocacy editing and wish the community to take this on. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:18, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

The WMF didn't have a problem with unilaterally changing the TOU. Now they want us as a community to enforce their unilateral policy? Yeah, right. They've got more than $50 million in the bank, they're free to unilaterally hire a little bureaucratic detective force and to issue their unilaterally created SanFranBans™ (from which there is no appeals process) against alleged perpetrators. This entire RFC process is a waste of time, going nowhere. Carrite (talk) 19:33, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

What arb com thinks on this is uncertain, because different members of arb com at this point have expressed in public different views on this. Speaking boldly for myself, I cannot imagine that the committee would not welcome an explicit decision of the community. DGG ( talk ) 01:41, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose but for a different reason - this is too much specificity. We do not write in WP:NPA "you may not call other editors 'halfwit space pirates from the planet zorp.'" Likewise, this is already covered in "case-by-case." Hipocrite (talk) 14:13, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
• This is a request to change policy into allowing real-life sleuthing of other editors. It's against the policy and ethos of Wikipedia, and is very unpleasant. Editors have been banned from Wikipedia for doing such things. It is fair to advise users that their contributions may not be complying with our policies and guidelines, but it is not appropriate to seek out the real life person behind the account, and to publish revealing details about them, including where they work - regardless of what that place of work is. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 15:35, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Exactly, as much as we love to work here as volunteers on this project, after all, Wikipedia is just a website (something like we tell the ones we block and tell them to take it easy and go elsewhere). Outing a real life person on the other hand is something more serious and can have unknown repercussions. --lTopGunl (talk) 15:42, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Holy cow you are both missing the point, and so much! The goal here is not to find out anything about anybody's RL identity. It is only the identity they create on Elance and similar sites, and only to to the extent that they link that identity to WP. How strongly they link that identity to their real life identity is none of our concern. None at all. do you see what i mean? Jytdog (talk) 02:04, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not about making links to the real people doing the editing. If there's a problem with an article, we have policies and guidelines to help us resolve that. If there's a problem with an editor, we have policies and guidelines to help us resolve that. Pointing a finger at Editor X and saying, "look there's a user with the same name on a website that pays people to edit on Wikipedia" is not dealing with the issue on Wikipedia, it's about chasing the person behind the account. If Editor X is making inappropriate edits, they need to be told. If they continue to make inappropriate edit, they need to be blocked. Being paid to edit is not in itself a problem. It is inappropriate editing that is the problem - and that can be done by paid or unpaid editors (and most of it is by unpaid editors, who are often enthusiastically unaware that what they are doing is wrong). Devising techniques and tactics to deal with inappropriate edits (such as this method to counter what WikiLinkPro is claiming they do), is more cost effective and less risky than sleuthing the user behind the account anyway, because while we can block an account, we can't prevent the user from carrying on editing Wikipedia. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 03:02, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose. It's part of the bedrock of the project's morality that the pursuit and publication of real-world identities is not allowed, and deliberate outing is anathema to that principle. It's hard to find undeclared paid editors, sure, but it's more important to protect people's real lives and safety, and we should not sacrifice the latter for our convenience. Identifying information for paid-editing investigations could be sent privately to ArbCom, for example, and that should be good enough. Squinge (talk) 18:28, 4 March 2015 (UTC) (ArbCom doesn't want to know, apparently. Squinge (talk) 18:02, 6 March 2015 (UTC))

  I still oppose the amended version. Suppose I know the real life details of a Wikipedia editor and I want to cause trouble for them and out them on Wikipedia. All I'd need to do is create a fake profile at Elance (or wherever) and name their Wikipedia account along with listing those personal details. As written, the proposed wording would then allow me to publicize that Elance account here on Wikipedia and so do the outing. Links to external accounts should only be allowed if the link has been made here on Wikipedia and not only on the external site, so we know the external account really does belong to the named Wikipedia editor and is not a fake. Squinge (talk) 05:01, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose - We don't need editors opening their Junior Detective bags and start publicizing real world information about other editors. If they are wrong, it damages the RW person and if they are right it provides free publicity. Suspected paid editors should be reported to SPI or other appropriate and discrete places so it can be hashed out. A quiet ban as a paid editor and subsequent quiet blocks for socking is much preferred over an advert. As an example, publicly outing User:MyWikiBiz as a real world someone that will write articles for pay doesn't help the encyclopedia but it does point customers to his real world name and website. Like most things, the less drama the better and we should avoid advertising activity we don't want. --DHeyward (talk) 22:15, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

@DHeyward: I'm all for denying paid editors recognition, and agree with your "free advertising" point. However, as a practical matter how does one raise the issue of an editor advertising his services somewhere without going to a public noticeboard? One can write privately to somebody-or-other on the arbitration committee perhaps, but that would not give the accused paid editor an opportunity to defend himself, which is important in the case of a "joe job." Coretheapple (talk) 22:58, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

You can't unring the bell. An on-wiki outing of a person that isn't violating policy is not acceptable. Their defense should be private as well as the accusation. I understand the need/desire to remove paid editors but when I fill in the Prisoner's dilemma chart, the best choice is always private. --DHeyward (talk) 10:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

But@DHeyward:, that's what I'm asking, how does one raise it privately? Who do you write? The subject has come up in the past and I would really like to know; this is not a rhetorical question. Coretheapple (talk) 15:24, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom has mailing list, admins have email enabled, etc etc. If it's compelling, that would be enough. If it's not compelling then it shouldn't be posted anyway. --DHeyward (talk) 20:33, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

If they are being paid to edit then they are, de facto, violating policy. It's a breach of the terms of use. Guy (Help!) 15:20, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

If the evidence is so compelling, emailing a single admin should be sufficient. If it's not that compelling it definitely should NOT be posted on-wiki. --DHeyward (talk) 20:33, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose I believe the ban on outing should be a blanket one. Anything else invites wikilawyering around the edges. If the paid editing is damaging the encyclopaedia, then that should be clear from the edits without having to link the accounts on-wiki. There's nothing stopping you from looking at elance, finding jobs that have been taken, finding the relevant edits and reporting problems with them; allowing linking the accounts on-wiki is unnecessary for this purpose and invites problematic actions in other areas. GoldenRing (talk) 23:16, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

GoldenRing - 2 questions. First, in the world you are painting, on what basis do we report problems if we cannot cite the source? 2nd, what do you make of the fact that this policy already allows linking off-wiki on a case-by-case basis? Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 02:02, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Jytdog, I think you are looking at this from the wrong end of the telescope. The problem is with the article, not the person doing the editing. Your comment suggests you are seeing paid editors as the problem rather than biased or otherwise problematic editing. Some of our most damaging biased editing is politically or ethnically motivated rather than financially. And while we should be alert to what organisations or groups plan to do on Wikipedia, we should not ever be in the business of asking users "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party Elance?" SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 03:15, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think SilkTork puts it well. I'm not worried if an account is on elance; I'm only worried if their edits are bad. If their edits are bad, then they're bad and linking to elance doesn't change that. If they're good edits, which improve the encyclopaedia, then yay, someone is paying to improve the encyclopaedia. GoldenRing (talk) 04:53, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

And I don't think the policy should allow linking off-wiki on a case-by-case basis (I !voted this way in the recent RfC on this, IIRC). It makes it too easy for someone to phrase outing in a way that looks at least plausibly related to one of the exceptions. Then that editor's supporters pile on the ANI report and nothing happens. GoldenRing (talk) 04:56, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

SilkTork and GoldenRing there is no fucking McCarthy commission here - i have been subject to that - and i am being subjected to that even right now on Jimbo's Talk page by POV-pushing editors accusing me of COI. You are preaching to the fucking choir. So please get off your high horses about that and get down here in the dirt and look at the problem; about the "telescope", I would say that your "telescopes" are not directed to the actual issue here at all. Paid editing is a well documented problem on WP, and we have already shown, with concrete diffs in this discussion, how single editors working through elance take jobs and use throwaway sock accounts to create articles, which are generally shit.

We are talking about how to strategically turn off the shit spigot, in a way that is consistent with an exception that is already part of policy: by

• taking away the protection of OUTING for those who advertise their undisclosed paid editing services in violation of the ToU; via email some of those editors have mockingly cited their protection via OUTING to me.
• for those who go ahead anyway, stopping their activity by connecting concrete edits in WP with concrete claims in elance

This is not about witch-hunting. I have never seen either of you dealing with COI issues and to be frank I don't think you even are trying to understand the problem we are trying to address. Which is not what consensus is about. We have tried to show that we are very concerned with OUTING and have zero desire to harm anybody, but rather, to connect concrete actions here and there, which are done in blatant violation of the Terms of Use. All this amendment seeks is an example of the existing case-by-case exemption, so we can proceed with this important work safely.

I want to emphasize that paid editing has a place in WP, as do paid editors I am not opposed to paid editing at all and I work with paid editors who properly disclose and who ask for content to be added to articles through edit requests. Which is something else that I have never seen either of you do. Many of their suggestions (definitely not all) are great improvements. Jytdog (talk) 13:47, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose Per Squinge and DHeyward. This proposal and its tenets are extremely problematic and asking for all kinds trouble. -- WV ● ✉ ✓ 05:31, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose, while there is an issue with paid editing, which falls under WP:COI. Anonymity is also important so that outside individuals may not unduly influence editors who do not engage in paid editing in how they edit. IF there is a false COIN investigation, that proves false, than that person's RL information has become a matter of record here on Wikipedia. While I understand that the proposer means well with this suggestion, IMHO WP:OUTING is more important not to violate. If there is the belief that someone is violating the alternate accounts policies that is what WP:SPI is for. If we need to empower certain bureaucrats to be able to do higher level investigations (with necessary checks on their abilities, so that they don't abuse their powers), than propose that maybe.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 05:32, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

RightCowLeftCoast the point of this amendment, adding an example to the existing "case by case" exemption, is exactly to facilitate the work at SPI and ANI with these undisclosed paid editors. That is exactly the point. Jytdog (talk) 14:39, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:CREEP and WP:BEANS. Andrew D. (talk) 00:00, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose per Wikimedia:Privacy_policy. NE Ent 02:51, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose It is absolutely never acceptable to disclose another editor's address, phone number, name, SSN, or the like when they have not actively put out such information on Wikipedia. WP:OUTING should absolutely trump WP:COI, and that's the way it's should be. This also seems to stem from a misunderstanding of what qualifies as outing. Saying that there is X username on Y site, which X username corresponds with a user on Wikipedia (in all exactness), and asking the user whether that is them is not outing. Outing implies personal information about the user. This is also just putting more bureaucratic nonsense into Wikipedia. If you can't discuss a COI with a user without outing them, you probably shouldn't even be discussing said COI with them. Name, address, personal information, etc. There is no excuse for it and there should never be an excuse for it. Tutelary (talk) 19:11, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

User:Tutelary We are trying to clarify that "Saying that there is X username on Y site, which X username corresponds with a user on Wikipedia (in all exactness), and asking the user whether that is them is not outing" is the case. Thus this RfC. This is not about disclosing the person address, phone number, SSN or the like. It is hard to tell if people are using real names on Elance but many are not. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:02, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. I am expressing only my own opinion here, not the opinion of the whole Arbitration Committee, however I am speaking as someone who would be dealing with the consequences of anything posted. In my view it is never acceptable to out anyone on Wikipedia, regardless of the motivation for doing so - and that explicitly includes the possibility of a person being a paid editor. While it is possible that no harm will come from suggesting that User:X here is User:X elsewhere, this is not always going to be the case. Even if the linking is correct, and especially if it is incorrect, there always exists the possibility of real world harm. Investigations should also not be undertaken - Wikipedia editors do not have the skills, resources or powers to conduct such investigations. I personally will not be doing any, even if asked as a member of the Arbitration Committee, without the prior and explicit written approval of the WMF to investigate the specific user and the prior and explicit written statement from the WMF legal department that they will cover 100% of the legal costs that I might incur from undertaking that investigation (for example if I am sued for defamation or libel). I do not have the resources to defend myself against any legal action, especially considering that I am subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, which are the world capital for libel tourism (and not without reason). As others have said more eloquently above, the problem is not with paid editors (disclosed or undisclosed) but with biased edits and biased articles, which may arise for any number of non-financial reasons. Thryduulf (talk) 17:25, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

• Comment from a paid editor Adding a couple qualifiers like "compelling off-wiki evidence" and "to investigate breaches in Wikipedia's Terms of Use" would help make sure the policy only supports legitimate cases where evidence is needed to investigate covert activity and not for harassment. CorporateM (Talk) 15:21, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

• Amended comment: Regarding the amended version, it seems too specific. Policies aren't intended to cover every circumstance individually in that way. The second RfC below seems like a better direction to me. CorporateM (Talk) 22:57, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Commnet - Could OTRS be used for this disclosure along with a link to the OTRS ticket in the conflict of interest discussions? That would seem to resolve the concern regarding WP:OUTING while still allowing an open discussion at WP:COIN based on trusted OTRS users vouching for the conflict of the Wikipedia editor being discussed. Vertrag (talk) 15:31, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
  • interesting ... will ask them! Jytdog (talk) 20:07, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
    • • OTRS has a many month backlog. They cannot effectively take on more work as they are not able to do their current work in a timely manner. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:10, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
        • • i just looked over there and they have a really serious obligation to keep things private. i don't reckon they would look kindly at bringing brought into an "enforcement" scenario which would muddy their "helping" mission.... and the backlog is a problem i didn't know about. i like the thinking creatively! we need to find a way to better deal with these broker companies. Jytdog (talk) 20:13, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
• question to TopGun - would you please say more about what kind of reform you think is needed at COIN? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 20:07, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Nothing specific in mind, but the point was to hone in on the issue at hand... having more experienced editors watch it would certainly help. An RFC-like format for analyzing specific cases (perhaps calling in an RFC at COIN) would help too. --lTopGunl (talk) 20:53, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi TopGun, thanks for your reply. I would love it if more admins hung out at COIN, but it seems that few are interested now. Atama was spending time there for a while and was a great presence, but has moved on to other things. I understand this... this remains a volunteer project and folks work on what interests them, when it interests them. But the point of this RfC is that our hands are really tied by OUTING. I don't know if you are aware of this, but freelancers on Elance and the like are so brazen as to link to their WP user pages and give examples there of articles they have created for pay. (This is one of those rare cases when "brazen" is actually apt.) They do this, knowing they are protected by OUTING. It would be good for the encyclopedia to take that protection away from them, for this narrow case. Do you see what I mean? Jytdog (talk) 13:58, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Totally see what you mean... I dropped in because I watch this venue rather than COIN but I guess it's a good idea to watch that as well... from my occasional peaks into COIN I do see many COI / paid editors being dealt with as well. But if a wikipedia editor goes so far as to link to their wikipedia profile from somewhere such as an elance profile and offers paid services, I think those are grounds to a private ArbCom report already. If they have their hands full, maybe another private committee can be formed which can sort out the cases before finalizing them for ArbCom. My objection is due to the fact that outing a person's private details is something that was not even done for those who break every rule of wikipedia and sock on articles - they are also dealt with in private and I've had my hands tied a few times in that case as well. Maybe there can be another possibility if forming a committee is something too bureaucratic, find volunteer admins who would deal with such situations via email, list them under a category or something and get them to take a look at it so that there's a case of SPI or something. Just to add to it... say if some one searches up an editor, John Doe, registered with their actual name on wikipedia, makes a fake profile of them and puts in the same details that of their own or those collected from around the internet and claims that one of their article was "paid" for... they can game the system and out the person just by running them through the process (whether or not they can get them sanctioned). I just thought of this one, but I think there might be other flaws and possibilities of gaming the system with this too. Whereas, as of now, any outing is oversighted right away. --lTopGunl (talk) 15:31, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Bilby - i hear your objection very clearly generally. and I think that Doc James sought this carve-out on purpose. Paid editing remains a problem in WP. It is great we have the Terms of Use but we need to enforce it. I would say that if WP editors are getting jobs on Elance etc and are coming here and making undisclosed paid edits, they put themselves at risk. No editor at elance who complies with the ToU and discloses paid edits, would get outed via the action of this exception. We need this exception to be able to make the ToU stick. Does that make sense? Also, I witnessed your block of johnmoore, and as far as i could tell, you more or less did what this exemption would make clear is OK. If you are going to stick to your guns on this, i would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on how the community can manage the other johnmoores among us. thx. Jytdog (talk) 22:28, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

The whole problem is ugly, and I'd like to see a solution too. But in the past we've taken the idea that we don't out editors as a kind-of golden rule, so if we had to publicly out an editor in order to prove that they had a COI, we couldn't prove the COI. We can communicate privately, though, and my approach in the past has been to get a case together to send to a checkuser or oversighter for independent verification, although normally evidence found on-wiki is easier to work with. (I haven't been overly pleased with working with ArbCom, and probably won't worry about contacting them in the future). In regard to Johnmoor, that was an unusual case as we had good on-wiki evidence, and if needed he'd previously made the connection through publishing his real name on WP with a link that connected the paid editing account to his WP one. - Bilby (talk) 14:16, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that was a thoughtful answer. I hear everything you said. The thing that I struggle with this is that the approach you discuss leaves us unable to work as a community to deal with paid editors... what we end up with instead, is editors who want to collaborate to work on the problem of undisclosed paid editing are forced to do that work off-wiki, in a non-transparent fashion... and ugly shit grows in the dark. I was the target of such an effort myself and when the idiots emailed me their "work" I was disgusted almost as much by sloppiness of their thinking and their conspiratorial glee in trying to tear someone else down, as by the effort itself. Much better to have the work be done in public and transparently. But we need the exception to OUTING to do that. The exception here is narrowly targeted to people who post on freelancer sites. Narrow. And as I mentioned, freelancers do their work in blatant violation of the ToU and they do it knowing they are protected by OUTING. I think we need to take away that protection, narrowly. You couldn't live with that? Jytdog (talk) 14:28, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I have asked the foundation to create a group of functionaries whose position is to help with enforcement of the TOU. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:43, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I think that's a good step. There needs to be a way to balance "allowing clear-as-daylight evidence of paid editing" with "not posting people's personal info on Wikipedia", and "allowing Elance etc. as evidence but passed privately through functionaries" seems like a potential way to harmonize those goals. Like checkuser, sort of. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:57, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Hipocrite about your oppose, and specifically the "covered by the 'case by case' exception" piece of it. In my view, OUTING is really serious policy in WP and we have, rightfully, a zero tolerance for outing. Without a clear exception I would never take the risk of getting banned for OUTING by bringing evidence from Elance. Please consider that. Jytdog (talk) 14:19, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

If you can write language that does not remove the case-by-case but rather adds on to it, then my objection is obviously ignorable. Hipocrite (talk) 14:20, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Hm! Thank you! So something like "Posting links to other accounts on other websites is allowable on a case by case basis. For example, references to freelancing sites or other sites involved in soliciting paid editing, where editors disclose their Wikipedia usernames, take paid editing jobs, or provide examples of Wikipedia articles they have written for pay, or the like, may be used." Something like that? Jytdog (talk) 14:27, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Fine w/ me. Hipocrite (talk) 14:32, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! SilkTork, TopGun, don't know if you looked down here. Doc James, does this work for you? Hipocrite pointed out that there is already a "case by case" exemption to OUTING and we can include this the new language there, as an example. Please really do take a moment and consider this - I know you are busy and that this is a contentious issue, but the WMF made this part of our Terms of Use and we need means to enforce that, responsibly and respectfully. Jytdog (talk) 15:49, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes thanks USer:Hipocrite this was not to replace the "case by case" but to add to it. Happy with Jytdogs wording. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:32, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

worth amending the RfC and pinging those who have already !voted? I think the anchor in existing policy is very helpful and will help people be more comfortable with it Jytdog (talk) 18:55, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes not sure if we need a new RfC for the new wording. Maybe we should ask if some of those opposing would agree to that. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:10, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

ok amended, notices to AN, COIN, and talk:COI, and notice put on Talk page of each editor who has !voted or commented. Jytdog (talk) 21:57, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Comment I support this proposal, but I do see one problem: the prospect of somebody trying to "get" an editor by posting a phony ad naming an innocent editor. Such "joe jobs" are possible even today, and might be hard to counter. Coretheapple (talk) 21:50, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I totally hear that, Core. There are evil motherfuckers out there who could try to do that. Would take deeper investigation and probably cooperation of elance who ever to work something like that out.... hopefully in the real world this will happen infrequently if ever.. Jytdog (talk) 21:58, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• • • One needs a few things. 1) the content added needs to be promotional 2) the job posted at Elance needs to mention what Wikipedia article they are paying for 3) the person who took the job thus may be the person editing the Wikipedia article
    • Usually armies of sockpuppets are used for these edits. We want to be able to use this evidence at CU. Currently it is not allowed because it cannot be posted on Wikipedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:02, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
      • That's a good approach. I just think we need to be on our guard. Coretheapple (talk) 22:06, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Comment re some opposes. I'm seeing a bit of sentiment to the effect that we should have mercy on editors who advertise their Wikipedia work, and in so doing disclose personal information about themselves. Give-me-a-break. These people are voluntarily outing themselves in a public forum with the intent of violating our terms of use and denigrating Wikipedia for their own selfish commercial ends. Providing them with a cone of silence and protection because of their advertising efforts is downright perverse. Coretheapple (talk) 22:16, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
• Comment The wording in the alternative doesn't seem like a significant change from the original, in that it reads as if there are three situations where linking to accounts is permitted - if they self-disclose their WP account by naming it; if they self-disclose their Wikipedia account by listing articles they have written; or if they take paid editing jobs. Am I reading this correctly? - Bilby (talk) 23:08, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Those are the three specific examples offered within this larger example. The key thing is that Hipocrit commented above, that OUTING already allows use of external links in some cases. The RfC is now correctly framed to be an example of the kinds of "cases" where linking is permitted - as opposed to it being some radical new exception to OUTING. Context is important! Jytdog (talk) 23:19, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

In that case, the new wording doesn't fix the problems from the old, as it still allows linking to personal information where the editor hasn't made that connection on or off-wiki. The main change seems to be a broadening of the situations where outing is possible. - Bilby (talk) 00:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Bilby. Not sure I am following you, in two ways. First, the "case by case" exception was already there... right? Additionally, what we are looking to do, is to be able to link to somebody's profile or posting in elance etc, who says "i am user X in Wikipedia" or "i created article X in WP" or "i accepted the job to create article X in WP"... and there would only be action if there is undisclosed paid editing going on. Otherwise nobody cares. While I acknowledge that personal information might get revealed, in my view that is not our problem. It is like saying that prison is a dangerous place so we shouldn't send people there. People who do undisclosed paid editing would be putting themselves at risk of OUTING, and that is, as it should be, in my book. Jytdog (talk) 01:47, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The "case by case" addition wasn't intended as a means of circumventing the rule not to post links to personal information. It was in regard to situations where, for example, someone has a Twitter account being used to canvas, with the same username as their WP account, referencing their on-WP actions. That's not the same thing as linking to someone's resume with a list of information that the policy specifically forbids revealing.

The situations where someone on Elance reveals who they are on WP are very rare - almost all Elance/Odesk/etc editors simply describe their background (x number of edits, editing for n years) without providing additional information. But be that as it may, the proposed wording isn't limited to that - it allows linking to an account based on a suspicion that they are engaged in paid editing, whether or not they reveal their WP account on the Elance/Odesk one. - Bilby (talk) 03:12, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

So as long as you include something that could be a photograph of you are a name that could be yours than you can use any webpage you want to run a Wikipedia editing business or engage in meat puppetry in your opinion? You can also use other accounts to create attack pages about Wikipedians and laugh about them on Wikipedia but as long as you do not link to them yourself you are safe. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:17, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you were looking for an answer, but no. If someone posts personally identifiable information off wiki and doesn't link to it, then no, we can't link to it, but that isn't the same as saying that we can't address the problem. We just can't do it through outing. - Bilby (talk) 23:50, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• Comment Even with the amendments and new ideas, I think this proposal is misguided. Focus on edits, not editors. It's one of the core principles of how we work at wikipedia, but this sort of proposal encourages people to do exactly the opposite, focusing on who is making the edit, not the merits of the edit itself. GoldenRing (talk) 05:51, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The major freelancer sites are willing to take down accounts when we ask them to. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:55, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• Note - prompted by a thoughtful note on my Talk page, i have publicized this at WP:Village pump (policy) and WP:CENT.Jytdog (talk) 17:03, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
• General comment regarding all of this: The fact that Arbcom does not believe the ToU are policy or that they are bound by such a policy is extremely frustrating for those of us trying to deal with paid editing. However, I don't believe the solution to their refusal is to throw away a protection that has been very important to both our users and the WMF for pretty much as long as Wikipedia has existed. It is not merely a hypothetical that publishing a user's details can lead to them being harassed irl. It has happened, repeatedly, and that's a very significant reason why we have reacted by not allowing personal details to be thrown around in public. If Arbcom won't privately investigate paid editing cases, I suppose we can't force them to do it (short of passing an arbcom recall procedure and then recalling the whole committee at once, which is about as likely to happen as me being made the next Queen of England), but we can create another committee to investigate it, or hand it over to the oversight team, or start talks with the WMF about them globally enforcing it. We could even empower individual admins to do one-person, private investigations-and-blockings, if we want to err on the side of false positives rather than catching nothing at all. All of these are better options than shrugging and saying, "Well, I guess it's open season on the personal details of anyone we think might be getting paid, even if we turn out to be wrong!" The answer to "we have no current mechanism to do this in private" shouldn't be "...so let's just throw away the idea of privacy!" A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:39, 6 March 2015 (UTC) Partially copied from now-closed RfC below A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:45, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• • Fluffernutter the admin who proposed this RfC has been professionally harassed due to his work here. The RfC was not posed in blindness or ignorance of the the problems that OUTING is meant to prevent. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Signpost_.22cabal.22 for one example. What is being proposed is a narrow set of cases where people violating the ToU flaunt their intention to do so. Jytdog (talk) 22:51, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• Comment - Of course is is a good idea and commonsensical, but it is in direct contradiction of site "outing" policies... What to do, what to do? Hey, wait, didn't opponents of the anti-paid editing crusade note time and time and time and time again that there is absolutely no way to "ban" paid editing without having restricted registration (to end socking) and an end to so-called "outing" rules so that bad actors can be identified and weeded out... Oh yeah, you anti-paid editing activists forgot that, didn't you? Well, the contradiction remains and there is no way to make the math of (apple + orange = banana) work out. Sorry about that. We can bluster and hurrah about the vanquishing of undeclared paid editing just so long as we are cognizant that it hasn't been vanquished at all, only driven deeper underground where the work is more difficult to scrutinize. Oh yeah, we warned you about that, too. Carrite (talk) 19:10, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
• Comment - The unsolvable nature of this problem is why Wikipediocracy remains a valuable institution, by the way. Carrite (talk) 19:27, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Carrite fwiw, I am not an anti-paid-editing-activist. Paid editing has a place in WP; paid editors just need to follow the ToU and the COI guideline, that's all. I work with paid editors who do so and many (not all) of their suggestions are valuable. HINT - we could use more editors who do work with disclosed paid editors; you can find edit requests awaiting help at WP:COIN. The point here is exactly to bring transparency. Jytdog (talk) 22:56, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

How can something remain what it's never been? NE Ent 02:53, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

• Comment I have mixed feelings about this. I've spent a lot of time on conflict-of-interest problems. I was heavily involved in the attempt to stop the massive paid editing push at Banc de Binary. There it was discovered off-wiki that Banc de Binary was offering $10,000 for someone who could get their article rewritten to omit their problems with the CFTC, SEC, and the Federal courts. See WP:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive844#Banc de Binary, Round 2 for how that went. That received press coverage in the Wall Street Journal, and in the ToS change on paid editing. We need to be able to deal with episodes like that without being accused of "outing".

Most conflicts of interest are a nuisance problem. I deal with a lot of those at WP:COIN. Usually it's enough to tell people that, no, Wikipedia is not a place for promoting your band/DJ/company/product. That deals with at least 3/4 of conflict of interest problems. In practice, excessive promotion from a single source isn't a big problem. They get reverted by multiple editors, and they either stop, or they hit 3RR and get blocked. Identity doesn't matter. Trouble that might lead to "outing" generally comes from multiple editors seemingly acting in concert. That's when "sockpuppet" or "meatpuppet" accusations appear, and have to be dealt with somehow. Still, outing in the commercial area tends not to be a big problem. Editors often admit they work for a PR firm when they're close to being blocked.

It's on popular controversial topics where Wikipedia runs into problems. WP:OUTING is intended to protect editors writing on controversial or dangerous topics from retribution. Abortion and Israel-related topics, where there are organized advocacy groups on both sides, are especially difficult. I don't know what to do there. We had some problems at Landmark Worldwide (which is either an educational operation or a cult, depending on point of view) recently come up at WP:COIN. I passed the buck to AN/I. They passed the buck to ArbCom enforcement.

So, as a practical rule, I'd suggest that we protect the anonymity of editors strongly on anything which could broadly be considered public or political discourse. In the private sector, where paid promotion is more likely, we can reasonably ask whether editors have some connection with the article subject. John Nagle (talk) 09:44, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Self-outing

If a paid editor lists their Wikipedia user name and articles they've created on an external website, we would not be violating outing by linking to it. The editor already outed themself. Banning an editor for pointing this out is ludicrous. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 16:53, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

I would hope so. We likely need a RfC to clarify. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:38, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

What if I started an account on an external site and called myself Oiyarbepsy there - and said the Oiyarbepsy account here on Wikipedia was mine too? It's entirely possible for someone on an external site to lie about their Wikipedia user name, so it's only genuine self-outing if the external site account is confirmed here on Wikipedia. Squinge (talk) 18:55, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Just by debating whether that is a case of self-outing or not while considering a specific user, that user would be outed with impunity without having accepted it from his actual (Wikipedia) identity. That's a no no. But if an SPI proves someone to be another account who maybe self-outed, that's a totally different story. --lTopGunl (talk) 19:05, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Links related to Wikipedia

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I propose the addition of "Links to accounts on other websites may be posted, in cases where the content being linked relates to the editing of Wikipedia, and no undisclosed personal information would be revealed by posting the link." Would welcome a rephrase from someone better at writing concisely. The aim of such a change would be to allow for better handling of off-wiki canvassing, coordination, defamation etc. Bosstopher (talk) 21:54, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Support 2

• Yes if it does not disclose anyone than it is fine. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:04, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
• Support the general principle that if an editor self-discloses on an external website then it is not "outing" for editors here to point that out, if it is specifically related to Wikipedia. In other words, if I post on another site and say "Hi there, I'm User:Coretheapple on Wikipedia, and I think this and that such and such about User:PainInTheButt," then that should be allowed. But if I use the username "Coretheapple" on the "Fruit Fly Message Board" but don't link myself to Wikipedia, that's sleuthing and harassment and not allowed. Big difference between the two. In one I am trying to influence Wikipedia or I am talking about Wikipedia, possibly to skirt the rules here. In the other I'm just discussing my passion for fruit flies. Coretheapple (talk) 22:21, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

  But suppose I, not you, have the name Coretheapple on an external site, and I claim on that site that I'm also Coretheapple on Wikipedia and that I'm open to paid editing, bribery, etc? Squinge (talk) 05:13, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

  You need much more than that. We would need said user picking up a job for article X and than Coretheapple editing article X with promotional content. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:25, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

  See my reply in the Discussion section below. Squinge (talk) 05:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Oppose 2

• Oppose. If I wanted to make a groundless accusation of paid editing against a Wikipedia editor, all I'd need to do is create a fake profile at Elance (or wherever) that names their Wikipedia account as if it were mine. As written, the proposed wording would then allow me to publicize that Elance account here on Wikipedia and so make the dishonest accusation. Links to external accounts should only be allowed if the link has been made here on Wikipedia and not only on the external site, so we know the external account really does belong to the named Wikipedia editor and is not a fake. Squinge (talk) 05:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Ah you also need the Elance to have taken a job that pertains to a specific article. And the Wikipedia account to have edit said article with promotional content around the same time. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

That's not what the proposal says - see my reply in the Discussion section below, to avoid having this dialog in three places. Squinge (talk) 05:36, 5 March 2015 (UTC) (updated Squinge (talk) 06:12, 5 March 2015 (UTC))

• Oppose: as per my original !vote in the first discussion, this not only has privacy issues and real life concerns but also flaws such as possibilities of gaming the system (see previous oppose comment and related discussion). Any one could just run some one through this process and out them regardless of sanctions or even actual paid editing. Outing has to be dealt with privately. A bad precedent to set anyway. WP:BOOMERANG will not undo the damage done by outing or even attempted outing... this opens a Pandora's box. --lTopGunl (talk) 15:16, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

How could this have real life concerns? The wording specifically states that a link can only be given if there is no undisclosed personal information within it.Bosstopher (talk) 18:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Obviously linking to an outside profile or identity is known as outing / attempted outing (and it's inherently because it's not disclosed). Any link you connect to a wikipedia account reveals something undisclosed such as real name or workplace (be it a freelance website). Secondly, the possibility of fakes and gaming the system is a greater concern on top of something mentioned by another editor above of everyone opening their junior detective bags against their wikipedia 'opponents' and throwing accusations. --lTopGunl (talk) 18:55, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose for several reasons:

• The text as it stands is self-contradictory; off-wiki accounts have always been regarded as personal information, and so, unless the editor has disclosed the association of accounts on-wiki, the current proposal amounts to, "Certain types of undisclosed personal information may be revealed ... as long as no undisclosed personal information is revealed."
• There is no clear line where "undisclosed personal information would be revealed." What counts as undisclosed personal information? It will probably be pretty clear from the contents of someone's Twitter stream which country they live in. Is that personal information? What about what city they live in? What about what football club they support, or what their hobbies are? What sort of drink they prefer? Where's the line here?
• How much research do we expect someone to have done to see what information might be disclosed? What if someone on Twitter posted a photo of their house, or to their LinkedIn account, several years ago? There seems to me to be lots of room here to claim that the outing was done innocently, not realising what information it made available.
• And the classic objection: If the link between accounts is disclosed off-wiki, how do we know that the accounts are actually linked? Or, if the link between accounts is assumed based on similarities, how do we know they're actually linked? There is too much room for joe jobs here. GoldenRing (talk) 22:48, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I would note, also, that Bosstopher's amendment only makes my second point worse; in contentious issues, one person's disruptive editing is another person's good faith attempt to accurately reflect the sources. Do you really want to encourage eg. the army of politically-motivated POV-pushers editing in subcontinental topics, or similar accounts affiliated with Landmark Worldwide, to go doing opposition research on their opponents? Many editors on the side of right and good in those disputes have nonetheless edited disruptively (3RR violations, civility violations, minor personal attacks etc). Doesn't this proposal give the POV-pushers justification for digging into the off-wiki lives of their opponents? GoldenRing (talk) 22:58, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Discussion 2

I think this might need to be adjusted a bit. Instead of "relates to the editing of Wikipedia" should be along the lines of "relates to the disruptive editing of wikipedia". Or at least add some remark that this is about linking disruptive accounts and not just people who discuss wikipedia off wikipedia. --Kyohyi (talk) 22:04, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

This seems fair are there is no real point to posting undisruptive wikibehaviour, however I'm slightly unsure as to how to go about amending such a thing. Bosstopher (talk) 18:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• This appears to overlap with the existing RfC. Is that accurate and your intention? Jytdog (talk) 22:08, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
  • This was not my intention and I dont believe it is (see the section bit above the RfCs for context). The other RfC is specifically about paid editing, which (as someone who doesnt participate at WP:COIN) I assume would usually require the disclosing of personal information when posting a link. This RfC was meant to be about more general exceptions to outing policy where real life personal details are not relevant. I meant this to be a parallel proposal to the one above. Bosstopher (talk) 22:14, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
    • hm. in my view, it does read very much on the same matter. and creates confusion. if the above RfC passes, and yours passes... then if I wanted to disclose a link to a profile at elance, and that profile had something like a nationality, or an email, i would be violating your clause. it conflicts. I think the timing is unfortunate and for what it is worth, request that you withdraw it while the other is running. They look very similar. Jytdog (talk) 22:18, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
      • for example here is someone who mistook your RfC for the one above, and then reverted. It is really unhelpful to have launched this now. It would be great if you withdrew this until the other is done. thanks. Jytdog (talk) 00:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
        • I doubt that sort of mistake will be made anymore now that the support and oppose sections have been retitled "Support 2, Oppose 2." Main reason I am reluctant to withdraw this is the glacial pace at which this is moving. There was a discussion about amending outing for a few months, then an RfC that lasted over a month, and now I'd have to wait another month for the RfC above to finish to re propose mine. All the while Outing policy can be freely abused by trolls, stalkers and slanderers as they wish. If both RfC's were to pass then all that has to be done is a slight rewording that accurately represents both, (you cant post personal information except on COIN for instance). As it stands I really dont want to withdraw this RfC, but would be willing to do so if asked by a few more people. Bosstopher (talk) 18:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Bosstopher: My shot at it below. Feel free to take all, none or some from what I've written: "Personal information published off-wiki can be linked to and discussed on-wiki if (a) the editor themself willfully discloses the real-world identity associated with their account on or off-wiki and (b) the information being discussed is relevant to an on-wiki investigation or discussion. Exceptions to this rule include things like discussing an editor's sexual orientation, marital status, address, religious beliefs, or other subjects of a highly personal manner."

I disclose a COI wherever I have one, but also do not disclose my real-world identity, so this is an important issue to me, as I have experienced off-wiki harassment as a result of my disclosure. I'd like to see Wikipedia empowered to chase down the bad guys despite WMF's lethargy (probably not related to a lack of resources btw), but without endorsing harassment.

On the other issue, I do believe this RFC is different and @Jytdog:, you probably shouldn't change the RFC after editors have already voted, because it gives the appearance of looking like they voted for something they didn't. CorporateM (Talk) 22:27, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

you are commenting on the one above. I dated the amendment so any closer will clearly see and I notified every person who commented or voted, including you. I realize it is kind of messy but did the best i could.... i do hear you tho. Jytdog (talk) 22:40, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I did not !vote, though I'm not sure I actually have a COI per se. However, I added an amended comment I guess. CorporateM (Talk) 22:59, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• All of these proposals are ignoring the elephant in the room - that it is impossible to tell if someone on an external site with the same username as a Wikipedia editor is actually the same person, unless the link is made here on Wikipedia too. Squinge (talk) 05:16, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually it is fairly easy. They state they have written article X on Elance. They were paid to write article X on Elance. And than you find an account that creates article X right at that time in a very promotional tone. The account is "brand new" but has great template abilities and formats references perfect. Content however reads like spam. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:27, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

An example or two

• [7]
• [8]
• [9]

All the same user. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:34, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

That's not what the proposal says - the proposal says nothing about having to have independent evidence first before the external site could be mentioned. And once you start adding "We would need said user picking up a job for article X... and than you find an account that creates article X right at that time in a very promotional tone..." conditionals to the proposed wording and trying to define what constitutes sufficient evidence before the external site can be disclosed, you end up with a nightmare of complication. Once actual evidence of undisclosed paid editing is available, why not just get ArbCom on it and send them the evidence? If actual hard evidence is needed first, I don't see that the proposal actually brings us any benefit. Squinge (talk) 05:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Arbcom states that dealing with paid editing is not part of what they do at this point in time.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:38, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, I'll strike that bit - perhaps we need some other body or method for dealing with undisclosed paid editing, but that doesn't answer the rest of my points about this actual proposal. Maybe a more open question of how to deal with undisclosed paid editing needs to be discussed? Squinge (talk) 05:41, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

This is part of the question. Are we allowed to link to other websites on which undisclosed paid editing is being transacted? This has been linked in the past http://www.wikilinkpro.com/ This is a business that spams Wikipedia is a specific manner. A lot of work is going into trying to deal with this. Are we allowed to link stuff like this? Without such links it is hard to even talk about the issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:49, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I agree this proposal is part of the question, but I think it needs to be discussed in a wider context rather than as a proposal in its own right. Squinge (talk) 05:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I also agree that we likely need a body to deal with enforcement of the TOU. The only way to move forwards is try to get some consensus on little question. I guess we could have a RfC regarding if we should bother enforcing the TOU at all. There was one on meta that received 80% support. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, we can't say it's the only way, just one possibly fruitful way. So on the little question do you have any thoughts on my suggestion that "once you start adding [...] conditionals to the proposed wording and trying to define what constitutes sufficient evidence before the external site can be disclosed, you end up with a nightmare of complication"? (I'm awake too early, so I'm going to try to get back to sleep for a couple of hours before I have to start work - will hopefully catch up tomorrow). Squinge (talk) 06:01, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I do not think it is that much of an issue. Basically do we want people to be able to link to information that may contribute to already existing information that an account is a sock puppet involved with paid editing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:51, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

So how, precisely, would you word the proposal to allow what you want but prevent "joe jobs" from causing damage, in a way that would be broad enough to work but sufficiently narrow to prevent harm to innocent people? Squinge (talk) 09:20, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• Comment The way the RfC is written now may not even be a policy violation. I've had an editor link to an offsite discussion that simply mentioned my WP username making a false statement. Since it did not reveal any real world identification, it wasn't eligible for oversight. I've seen other editors link a WP account to a Twitter account without repercussion since it didn't contain real world info. The admin that reviewed it said it was fine as long as the editor didn't say they were the same person, only that they had the same username (yes, we have admins that are obtuse and anal at the same time). Personally, I'd like it to be against policy and when I likened such links as "opposition research" (which is exactly what it was), the anally obtuse admin said that was a stretch. It seems the proposal may already be allowed. If it's already forbidden, a pointer would be appreciated. --DHeyward (talk) 10:58, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I think this shows why we need more clear language on this policy. I've seen an editor indef blocked for posting private information when the editor isn't even remotely named in the post. --Kyohyi (talk) 15:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

There is clearly a lot of uncertainty around this issue, see this enforcement request for an example of when it went the other way. Bosstopher (talk) 18:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes this is why we are trying to develop greater clarity about what is and is not allowed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@CorporateM:Surely this a different issue altogether? I meant this amendment to refer to situations in which no personal information is disclosed. Bosstopher (talk) 18:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I would say that "User:X has a freelance account at eLance" is personal information. Squinge (talk) 09:21, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• General comment regarding all of this: The fact that Arbcom does not believe the ToU are policy or that they are bound by such a policy is extremely frustrating for those of us trying to deal with paid editing. However, I don't believe the solution to their refusal is to throw away a protection that has been very important to both our users and the WMF for pretty much as long as Wikipedia has existed. It is not merely a hypothetical that publishing a user's details can lead to them being harassed irl. It has happened, repeatedly, and that's a very significant reason why we have reacted by not allowing personal details to be thrown around in public. If Arbcom won't privately investigate paid editing cases, I suppose we can't force them to do it (short of passing an arbcom recall procedure and then recalling the whole committee at once, which is about as likely to happen as me being made the next Queen of England), but we can create another committee to investigate it, or hand it over to the oversight team, or start talks with the WMF about them globally enforcing it. We could even empower individual admins to do one-person, private investigations-and-blockings, if we want to err on the side of false positives rather than catching nothing at all. All of these are better options than shrugging and saying, "Well, I guess it's open season on the personal details of anyone we think might be getting paid, even if we turn out to be wrong!" A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:39, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Fluffernutter is your comment about the 1st RfC above? This one has nothing to do with the ToU. More confusion from the inaptly launched 2nd one, i fear.Jytdog (talk) 17:07, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm responding generally to the idea that "we have to be able to link people to offsite identities because Arbcom won't handle them" is a good reason to drastically change a protective policy, and this seemed as relevant a place as anywhere in the discussion to plunk commentary on that. I guess that applies a bit more to paid editing since that's the thing Arbcom explicitly disavowed, but my overarching point is that we shouldn't be responding to "We don't have a mechanism to do this in private right now" with "ok, let's throw away the entire idea of privacy, then!" A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:27, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

what is happening is exactly what i feared. i asked the poser of this 2nd RfC to withdraw it because it appears to me overlap the 1st one. He wrote>: "This was not my intention and I dont believe it is (see the section bit above the RfCs for context). The other RfC is specifically about paid editing, which (as someone who doesnt participate at WP:COIN) I assume would usually require the disclosing of personal information when posting a link. This RfC was meant to be about more general exceptions to outing policy where real life personal details are not relevant. I meant this to be a parallel proposal to the one above." Nonetheless, there is lots of discussion in this RfC about paid editing and what Arbcom will or will not do. I am very unhappy - the exact confusion I was afraid of is happening. Bosstopher I ask you again to withdraw this RfC for now, while the other runs. Jytdog (talk) 17:33, 6 March 2015 (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.

WP:FRIENDLY

I've posted a new essay, Wikipedia:Maintaining a friendly space, which is based off of the WMF IdeaLab's friendly space policy. I would consider it a supplement to this policy. I would in time like to see Wikipedia adopt a friendly space policy resembling this, but for now we have the essay. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Harej (talk) 05:43, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

You fail to include "age" as one of the protected classes. I think the essay is PC drivel, mind you, just wanted to make sure your laundry list is complete since the Friendly Spacers have omitted it from the start. Carrite (talk) 19:23, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

... Herostratus (talk) 00:39, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

• Perhaps the biggest problem with that essay, I think, is... "Harassment includes: Offensive comments related to gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, physical appearance, race, ethnicity, political affiliation, or religion;" for two reasons. 1) It does not and can not objectively define what is and what is not offensive. 2) In no functioning heterogeneous society can there be an effective right not to be offended. Squinge (talk) 03:51, 8 March 2015 (UTC)