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Request for Comment on Cloudflare Controversies section

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Is the current version of the Cloudflare#Controversies section disproportionately long?

A. Yes, the section needs to be condensed

B. No, it’s fine as-is.

Ryanknight24 (talk) 20:34, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So I am unclear about the rules and cultural norms around RfCs, but the Ryanknight24 user account that has initiated this proposal very much appears to be a single-purpose account, based on looking at their contribs; a vast majority of the 51 total contributions from the past several years with this account are all in relation to Cloudflare.

It's cool that a conflict of interest has been acknowledged, but I'm not sure about the precedents that have been set in relation to SPA accounts exerting influence in this manner. What do more experienced editors know about this? Thanks everyone. Cheers! 98.155.8.5 (talk) 06:02, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ryanknight24: I also have a related question for you. Is monitoring the Cloudflare page here on Wikipedia a part of your job duties there at the company, either officially or unofficially? Or is this just something that you do "for fun" in your free time while away from the office etc? Thanks for any clarification. Cheers! 98.155.8.5 (talk) 06:13, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Condense. Please note I am an employee of Cloudflare who has been tracking this page for several years, abiding by WP: COI policy. Cloudflare is a publicly traded NYSE company founded in 2010 that provides proxy and reverse proxy servers to cache content and applications hosted elsewhere. As of 3 October 2022, it protects approximately 19% of the entire internet.^[1]

The Controversies has been disproportionately long for several years, suffering from WP:RECENTISM, WP:NOTNEWS, and WP:UNDUE. While the content in Controversies is based on press coverage, a tendency toward sensationalism has overwhelmed its prominence and tone on the page, and it’s been getting progressively worse. On November 7, 2017, for example [1], the Controversies section took up 34% of the text of the article. On January 25, 2020, the Controversies section took up about 41%. [2] As of Nov. 7, 2022, Controversies took up more than 57% of the body of the article. dif

What’s more, almost all the controversies are variations of the same theme. Critics ask Cloudflare to cease providing services to specific clients engaged in hate speech. Cloudflare defends its policies of providing its services to controversial clients based on free speech and because it says its services are an internet utility, akin to phone service or electricity. This debate and criticism can be fully represented on Wikipedia, with many specific examples, but without the excessive detail that is coming close to turning this into an attack page.

Also, it is not true that the page is simply reflecting the press coverage. As the market leader in its field, Cloudflare has generated many hundreds if not thousands of WP:RS articles unrelated to controversies, as can be seen in the results of a simple Google search], Cloudflare publishes links to stories concerning non-controversial press coverage, which can be found here: https://www.cloudflare.com/press/. In the past three months alone, over a hundred such stories were published.

As a discussion starter only, to show the criticism can be detailed in full while still reducing the percentage of the article to about 21% of the body, I have posted a condensed draft revision here: User:Ryanknight24/Sandbox.

Ryanknight24 (talk) 20:34, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Condense - I agree that multiple instances of a very similar story can and should be handled in a summary fashion. This stuff just builds up incrementally in the raw over time and should be processed by editors. The question I have is, who is willing to do it? ~Kvng (talk) 22:01, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Condense – Also, the Banning of Switter subsection should probably be removed outright – I tried discussing it here. Ptrnext (talk) 05:09, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Mixed/Oppose - I agree that we should condense the section somewhat, since it has redundancies, but I think there should otherwise be no loss of information. In particular, the draft at User:Ryanknight24/Sandbox is unsatisfactory since it loses crucial information.

For example, it mentions the Electronic Frontier Foundation defending Cloudflare in one controversy, but does not mention GLAAD (one of the most notable LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in existence) criticizing Cloudflare in another controversy. As another example, the draft does not mention that the CEO of Cloudflare defended hosting 8chan even after the second mass shooting, before switching course.

The draft's subsection title is also inaccurate for two reasons. First, Cloudflare's controversies extend beyond just hate speech content. Second, I changed "free speech debate" to "far-right content" a few months ago, because the latter is a factual description of the controversies at hand, while the former puts undue weight on the supposed existence of an equal debate rather than the controversies themselves.

Because of all this, I think the Controversies section should still have at least three sub-sections at the very least. PBZE (talk) 07:19, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Condense – Yes needs to be condensed. At the moment this article is acting as a WP:coatrack. Best way to begin the process is to either propose one whole draft change and then see if someone will make the change. Or provide draft changes for each subsection and see if someone will make the change, and then when finished perhaps remove the subsection headers. --Guest2625 (talk) 11:47, 9 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Expand – The editor who works at Cloudflare and proposed this RfC stated: "Also, it is not true that the page is simply reflecting the press coverage. As the market leader in its field, Cloudflare has generated many hundreds if not thousands of WP:RS articles unrelated to controversies ..." If this is the case, then please work to expand the article rather than purging relevant historical information and background. I understand that removing information is a lot easier than doing the hard work of researching sources, and proposing specific additions with citations, but this is the more appropriate path to take if we want the article to be balanced and informative. Let's please include more information in the article (not less!), rather than doing the lazy thing of simply removing content. Cheers! 98.155.8.5 (talk) 09:47, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Condense, or split off to another article. It's too long.--Ortizesp (talk) 04:04, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Splitting the content into a companion article seems like a good compromise as well. Cheers! 98.155.8.5 (talk) 19:12, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Condense and create a separate article for the controversies. Don't agree with removing the part about Switter. Alaexis_¿question? 10:09, 13 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
~~I support this proposal Aaron Liu (talk) 15:27, 2 January 2023 (UTC)~~Actually, I agree with Firefangledfeathers below. There are way too many issues this premature RfC tries to address that can't be funneled down into two simple options. Plus the condense option isn't very clear either, this might quickly turn into a battleground. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:04, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(Summoned by bot)Mu what the article really needs is a rewrite that provides information chronologically rather than having 4 sections that say everything good about the company followed by 2 that say all the bad. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 05:44, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. That would also be good solution. Cheers! 98.155.8.5 (talk) 05:50, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I am new to RfCs. What does Mu mean? Aaron Liu (talk) 13:22, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I was also wondering! :) Hehe. 98.155.8.5 (talk) 18:55, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

According to the User:Pythoncoder/Scripts/voteSymbols script, Mu may stand for Moot which means Unnecessary or something. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:25, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not the original commenter, but I read it as a non-dualistic "no" challenging the frame of the question. DefaultFree (talk) 17:00, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I agree with @PBZE: that there should be no loss of information. Moreover, I think it's inappropriate for a Cloudflare marketing employee to be driving these changes for fairly obvious WP:COI reasons. DefaultFree (talk) 16:55, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, this is the exact way a COI editor should be doing things, based on WP:COI. Cessaune (talk) 19:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Condense Wikipedia is not a repository of every controversy that's been talked about in a reliable source. That violates the due weight policy, the NPOV policy, WP:VNOT, and others. The Controversy section should be an encyclopedic synthesis of the neutral carrier vs deplatforming debate surrounding Cloudflare, which has been extensively covered in the published literature. So we should base that section on published scholarly sources; they covered the topic with far more intelligence and depth than the tech news sites. DFlhb (talk) 20:08, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Let's start over. This RfC has a very low likelihood of leading to any actionable consensus. Even if a closer finds consensus to condense, there's no specific removal or shortening that couldn't be reverted with "Yes, there was consensus to condense, but we shouldn't remove this bit." Some participants have proposed to split out a sub-article, but this is not the correct process for such a proposal (it's explicitly included in WP:RFCNOT). There was no WP:RFCBEFORE-style thorough discussion, which likely would have identified areas that can be removed/condensed uncontroversially and others that need further discussion or dispute resolution. We should close this RfC, or just let it die out, and start some issue-by-issue discussion. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:50, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's also problematic that the person who posted this RfC hasn't been engaging in the conversation at all, and hasn't responded to a single one of my questions that were posted above, even though I attempted to ping them. Cheers! 98.155.8.5 (talk) 03:34, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Hello all - want to thank everyone for their input and discussion. It seems the initial answer to my response is A - yes, the section needs to be condensed, though a bit more complicated.

To answer the various questions in this thread - as previously stated, I am an employee of Cloudflare who has tracked the page for a long time out of interest. To 98.155.8.5 specifically - I don't think I need to specify anything else about my identity, as my conflict of interest is clearly expressed. Additionally, staying out of the discussion is exactly what I am supposed to do after requesting comment and consensus, based on my understanding of the guidelines.

There seems to be a general consensus the section is not feasible as-is; all commenters have agreed the content is due for a full review, and possible condensation where it makes sense (as DFlhb explained). Of the votes, 6 voted to condense, two opposed, and 98.155.8.5 proposed expanding the page.

As Firefangledfeathers suggested, should we begin with an issue by issue discussion of each controversy sub-section? Or should it be moved to its own page (as proposed by Alaexis) and then a separate discussion started?

As stated multiple times, I will continue to abide by WP:COI and not edit the page myself, and am here to work with the community towards a resolution of a page more consistent with Wikipedia's guidelines. Thank you! Ryanknight24 (talk) 02:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Keary, Tim (3 October 2022). "Cloudflare's post-quantum cryptography protects almost a fifth of the internet". VentureBeat. Retrieved 4 October 2022.

[1] Keary, Tim (3 October 2022). "Cloudflare's post-quantum cryptography protects almost a fifth of the internet". VentureBeat. Retrieved 4 October 2022.

[1]

@@ Line 74: / Line 74: @@
 * {{strong|Let's start over}}. This RfC has a very low likelihood of leading to any actionable consensus. Even if a closer finds consensus to condense, there's no specific removal or shortening that couldn't be reverted with "Yes, there was consensus to condense, but we shouldn't remove {{em|this bit}}." Some participants have proposed to split out a sub-article, but this is not the correct process for such a proposal (it's explicitly included in [[WP:RFCNOT]]). There was no [[WP:RFCBEFORE]]-style thorough discussion, which likely would have identified areas that can be removed/condensed uncontroversially and others that need further discussion or dispute resolution. We should close this RfC, or just let it die out, and start some issue-by-issue discussion. [[User:Firefangledfeathers|Firefangledfeathers]] ([[User talk:Firefangledfeathers|talk]] / [[Special:Contributions/Firefangledfeathers|contribs]]) 20:50, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
 *:It's also problematic that the person who posted this RfC hasn't been engaging in the conversation at all, and hasn't responded to a single one of my questions that were posted above, even though I attempted to ping them. Cheers! [[Special:Contributions/98.155.8.5|98.155.8.5]] ([[User talk:98.155.8.5|talk]]) 03:34, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
+'''Comment''' Hello all - want to thank everyone for their input and discussion. It seems the initial answer to my response is A - yes, the section needs to be condensed, though a bit more complicated.
+To answer the various questions in this thread - as previously stated, I am an employee of Cloudflare who has tracked the page for a long time out of interest. To [[Special:Contributions/98.155.8.5|98.155.8.5]] specifically - I don't think I need to specify anything else about my identity, as my conflict of interest is clearly expressed. Additionally, staying out of the discussion is exactly what I am supposed to do after requesting comment and consensus, based on my understanding of the guidelines.
+There seems to be a general consensus the section is not feasible as-is; all commenters have agreed the content is due for a full review, and possible condensation where it makes sense (as [[User:DFlhb|DFlhb]] explained). Of the votes, 6 voted to condense, two opposed, and [[Special:Contributions/98.155.8.5|98.155.8.5]] proposed expanding the page.
+As [[User:Firefangledfeathers|Firefangledfeathers]] suggested, should we begin with an issue by issue discussion of each controversy sub-section? Or should it be moved to its own page (as proposed by [[User:Alaexis|Alaexis]]) and then a separate discussion started?
+As stated multiple times, I will continue to abide by [[WP:COI]] and not edit the page myself, and am here to work with the community towards a resolution of a page more consistent with Wikipedia's guidelines. Thank you! [[User:Ryanknight24|Ryanknight24]] ([[User talk:Ryanknight24|talk]]) 02:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
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