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RfC: Clarification of OUTING

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

TLDR

This RfC presents a disagreement on whether it should be a violation of our harassment and outing policy when User A posts personal information about User B when User B has previously voluntarily publicly shared that personal information on another Wikimedia wiki. Supporters of Option #1 believe that policy should not prohibit User A from doing so. Supporters of Option #2 believe that doing so is still outing and should constitute a violation of policy. An alternative proposal made after the beginning of the RfC tries to strike a middle ground, and would permit users to refer to information voluntarily shared on the English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Meta-Wiki or Wikidata.

The current policy, many participants assert, is ambiguous, and there is disagreement as to what it currently allows; some participants believe that the plain language of the policy currently allows references to information shared on other-language Wikipedias (such as the French Wikipedia), while others believe it only applies to the English Wikipedia. Still others believe that SUL projects are already functionally "Wikipedia" for the purpose of this policy and the policy as currently applied does not prohibit references to information voluntarily posted on other public Wikimedia projects.

24 users supported Option #1, including one user who would also prefer no change and one user who only commented in the alternative proposal area but clearly meant to support #1, and excluding one additional user noting that they would "trend" towards Option #1 if Wikipedia were starting from a blank slate. 22 users supported Option #2, including one supporting it "weakly", one advocating a prohibition on all links/references to personal information, and one preferring no change.

Of the users commenting on the alternative proposal, 14 supported, including four second-choice preferences to Option #1, six second-choice preferences to Option #2, two additional supporters of Option #1 (including one who "weakly support[s] at best"), and one additional supporter of Option #2. 14 opposed, including six users who support Option #1 and six users who support Option #2.

In short, this was a close RfC. Normally, in such a close policy RfC, the default is to close as "no consensus" and let the current policy remain. In this case, there is a lot of disagreement as to what the current policy means, so even if none of the words of the policy change as a result of this RfC, it would be ideal to have a definitive statement on what the community will allow and what it will sanction at a noticeboard as a matter of practice. Of course, this does not 100% rule out a "straight" no consensus close, but it makes such an outcome less favorable as I begin my analysis.

At the outset, I should note that it was clear to me that supporters of Option #1 and Option #2 were generally looking at the policy from different lenses, with some potential misunderstandings between the two: Option #1 supporters seemed to be thinking substantially from the perspective of someone who might run afoul of a strict policy here (e.g. someone who’s worked with a user on multiple wikis and usually uses a real name on other wikis and mentions the user’s real name on enwiki by accident, or someone who is cleaning up spam/PAID violations and sees a Commons "own work" declaration for a company-produced photo and wants to use that as evidence for TOU enforcement on enwiki). Option #2 supporters seemed to empathize more with the perspective of victims of harassment and outing, who might find their edits on other wikis "researched" and pored over for personal information. One exchange toward highlighted this difference in perspective: one editor worried that "If some good-faith editor fails to read the policy change and violates the new policy, he/she will get indeffed, although he/she meant no harm. E.g. outing someone who disclosed his/her own identity at de.wiki." An administrator disagreed in reply, noting that in her experience, administrators have much more discretion and may choose shorter blocks, or no block, for good faith violations. This flexibility is how outing enforcement works in practice and guides the outcome of this RfC, as where there is no clear consensus to change it, our policies are meant to reflect our accepted practices.

The arguments behind Option #1 are pretty simple to boil down: All the Wikimedia sites are linked, and if someone has voluntarily disclosed information about themselves on another Wikimedia site, we should be allowed to reference it for the same reasons that we should be allowed to reference information voluntarily disclosed on the English Wikipedia. It’s a unified login, after all, and many Wikimedians interact with each other on multiple wikis, all of which have the same visibility and access as the English Wikipedia. Supporters note that there are legitimate reasons that editors might reference personal information voluntarily posted on other wikis, including to help enforce policies like PAID or copyright; to paraphrase, users should not be able to immunize voluntary public statements simply by posting them on another Wikimedia wiki.

Supporters of Option #2 had a number of objections to Option #1. Supporters note that different projects have different policies, cultures, norms, and protections surrounding disclosure of information, and it’s possible that posting information about others on one project might be treated very differently than on another. Supporters argue that editors might expect that the projects are separate entities and that some might not want to apply the same standards to all wikis; that it might be very easy to make a mistake and accidentally reveal one’s identity on another wiki; that adopting Option #1 would encourage harassers to fish through other Wikimedia sites for personal information; that they wouldn’t want information disclosed on enwiki discussed on other Wikimedia wikis and thus we should adopt the inverse rule to protect those who work on other Wikimedia projects; that some Wikipedians would prefer to go back to a time before SUL. Supporters argue that Option #2 is easier to administer and enforce. And in any event, some supporters argue that even if some of these individual problems are addressable, our dedication to user privacy means that it would be safer to err on the side of privacy (the precautionary principle, as one editor referred to it) when in doubt in drafting our policies.

Supporters of Option #1 noted, in response to some Option #2 supports, that Option #1 refers only to information that was voluntarily publicly disclosed by the user in question. Further comments clarified an understanding that Option #1 refers only to non-enwiki accounts that have been voluntarily, publicly disclosed to be the same user as the enwiki user (typically through linking on SUL), and at least one Option #2 supporter said they would "be amenable to a version of #1 that clarified that only publicly connected accounts are included".

The alternate proposal was supported by some users from both sides. Its supporters note that it addresses the problem of users who consider different cultural contexts and share information (e.g. their name) in the context of a different linguistic community that they would be opposed to sharing here. It was few users’ first choice, though, and many participants on both sides opposed the alternate proposal. Overall, it was clear that the alternate proposal did not receive consensus and was not seen as a good compromise between the two options because it failed to address many of the concerns each side had with the other proposal.

Stepping back from the specific wording of the proposals, there was a lot of common ground which helps define what the community wants to allow and prohibit, even though at the surface appears substantial disagreement. Many participants on both sides agreed (implicitly or explicitly) that editors should not be digging through ("researching") old contributions to try to find outing or harassing material; many participants (except those who oppose any links or references to personal material, from enwp or not) also seemed to agree (implicitly or explicitly) that editors should not be penalized for information posted on a global/meta user page, or places of similar prominence.

I found it noteworthy that very few participants chose to disagree with the current rule that if someone posts "their own personal information, or links to such information" (emphasis added), at least on the English Wikipedia, then referencing that information is not outing. If the provision about links to information remains policy, interesting results may ensue: What counts as a link? If I say See my meta talk page for a relevant discussion, does that count as a link? What if I use one of those charts with my accounts across SUL? How about a {{User admin somewhere since}} userbox? Or an essay in my userspace on another wiki? Link to a grant proposal that clearly says my Meta account is the author? If links to other wikis don’t count, that also has interesting consequences: if I link my Twitter handle and my Meta userpage, is it fair game to mention things I put on Twitter, but not Meta? That result seems inconsistent with the intent of our policy. And just as importantly, isn’t the point of SUL that all the accounts are linked? By voluntarily using the same SUL account on multiple wikis, by voluntarily merging them, isn’t that voluntarily posting links to the other accounts? I’m aware of no policy that says you can’t use one username on the English Wikipedia and another on Wikidata. This isn’t just a discussion about the technicalities of policy; this exception reflects the purpose of the outing policy in the first place, and the broader community’s intention that voluntarily publicly connecting one’s English Wikipedia account with another link or identity makes it much less categorically unacceptable to refer to that other identity.

Ultimately, when determining the outcome of this RfC, because our policies should reflect our community’s actual practices, I have envisioned some scenarios and imagined the outcome of a noticeboard thread had the participants at this RfC responded to it, based on the arguments and positions presented at this RfC:

• It’s likely there would be consensus to sanction for harassment a user who has searched through ("researched") the contributions of someone on another project, especially in the context of a dispute or apparent retaliation, or any other factor that would make it seem like the personal information is revealed with the intent to harass. A revert-revdel would likely have consensus too.
• It’s likely there would be no consensus to sanction a user who revealed personal information voluntarily posted on another project in good faith (e.g. forgot where they learned it, or thought it was public on the English Wikipedia) or used it in order to enforce policies and norms (e.g. Commons author information for PAID enforcement). In some circumstances, a courtesy revert-revdel may be appropriate. In some cases, depending on circumstances, the community would trout for bad judgment in posting personal information.
• It’s likely there would be no consensus to sanction a user who posted personal information first voluntarily disclosed on another project in a prominent location, or with the clear intent of dissemination, or which was later linked to on the English Wikipedia.

A number of Option #2 supporters argued that the precautionary principle should apply in privacy matters, which can be taken as an argument against a more equivocal, circumstances-determine-the-outcome policy approach. This argument is real and reasonable. However, that’s not how most of Wikipedia works; because, as I’ve set out above, there are circumstances that the community probably tolerates or even accepts sharing personal information voluntarily revealed on other projects, a bright-line rule against such sharing either would be inconsistent with practice or would result in acceptable/tolerable actions being now viewed as outing. We do have bright-line rules on Wikipedia, but only when all (or nearly all) of the underlying conduct is considered harmful, such as 3RR. And even then, there are a litany of codified exceptions from which arise somewhat frequent disputes (such as 3RRBLP). All in all, there is no consensus for a bright-line rule that posting personal information about an editor is outing, even if it was voluntarily publicly disclosed on another Wikimedia project.

Having considered all of the above, the result of this RfC is:

• It remains a bright-line violation of OUTING to post personal information that has not been voluntarily disclosed on a public Wikimedia project. It is also a bright-line violation to post personal information if it has only been disclosed on accounts that are not publicly connected to the English Wikipedia account in question (i.e. by SUL).
• Circumstances will determine whether a particular edit referencing or revealing personal information that was not previously posted on the English Wikipedia is harassment in all other cases. It is generally more acceptable to reference information if it is clear the user does not mind wider dissemination (e.g. posted on a user’s public userpage) and less acceptable if it requires much "research" to find (particularly information later removed by the user in question). There was no consensus that referring to such information is always or usually a violation.
• Editors are urged to take care to err on the side of privacy, and to ask users before posting their personal information if there is any doubt. This RfC does not constitute a green-light to snoop around, and in fact demonstrates the community’s continued emphasis on the importance of privacy. One sentiment that arose was that posting information which might not constitute outing per se, such as information shared on another project, can still be very unwise and reflect poorly on the poster’s judgment.
• Administrators continue to be entrusted with the discretion to act with judgment, including e.g. revision-deleting personal information without finding that the user who had posted it had intentionally engaged in outing and blocking them as a result.

I will be making some changes to the harassment policy to implement these results, but the consensus was for the principles as established above, not for any specific wording that I will be adding to the policy. I’d like to take this chance to thank everyone who participated in this RfC; it’s a difficult, personal topic, and I’m grateful for everyone who contributed so thoughtfully. Also, I’d like to apologize for the delay in closure; I revised and rewrote this closure a few times. If anyone has any questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 01:25, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

---

Current wording of WP:OUTING:

• Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person has voluntarily posted their own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia.

Should this be revised to instead say one of the following:

1. unless that person has voluntarily posted their own information, or links to such information, on the English Wikipedia or another public Wikimedia project.
2. unless that person has voluntarily posted their own information, or links to such information, on the English Wikipedia.

(See also previous discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Question about outing) GMG^talk 19:04, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Survey

• #1 (as proposer) - The current language is ambiguous and seems to imply that posting information on the German Wikipedia is fine, since it's "a Wikipedia", but posting on Commons or Wikidata would not be, which is absurd on its face. Having a local only policy is not technically feasible, since a number of pages, such as file descriptions from Commons and user pages from Meta are already automatically transcluded here locally, meaning that this would still be "outing", even though the information is here locally, because it was transcluded rather than posted here directly.
  Cross-wiki self identification is already used regularly in a number of ways. Maybe most prominently is the use of OTRS verified accounts and "own work" files for means of validating licenses, in addition to using cross-wiki activity to identify and dispose of cross-wiki spammers, who are want to post G11 autobiographical type pages here on the English Wikipedia and elsewhere, as well as spamming out-of-scope files on Commons, and pages on Wikidata, etc.
  At the end of the day, these are all interconnected sister projects, none of which truly operate as an island unto themselves, and posting personal identifiable information anywhere is fundamentally identifying your SUL, which is inherently cross-wiki in nature, and where everything you do under your SUL is decidedly "on wiki" in nature. GMG^talk 19:04, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
• #1 - There is precedent for this interpretation and so we could have perhaps made this change without an RfC but I think it's clearly the correct meaning of the idea. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:57, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
• #1 – this seems fairly straightforward, and reflects the current practice. The main reason we can't consider off-wiki information is that we have no means of confirming that our user X is the same as X on another website, but we can for Wikimedia projects. – bradv🍁 20:12, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
• #2 The above is a different answer than I seemed to get at the discussion at WP:AN - that GMG links to above. My question there was whether it is OK for someone to publicly identify another editor who has never given out personal information on the English Wikipedia, but did so on another language Wikipedia. That discussion was non-committal but it seemed to be leaning toward, no, it isn't OK to do that. Now you just changed the wording to say if a person gives out their identity or personal information on any wiki, it is fair game to repeat that on any other wiki. Is that really consensus? -- MelanieN (talk) 20:25, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  That's generally the way we do business in my experience, yes. If someone for example, has an OTRS verified account on Commons for uploading corporate photos, there's nothing stopping someone from combing through potential COI contributions here or on other projects based on the verification. That doesn't just verify the account on Commons; it verified the SUL. GMG^talk 20:30, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  @MelanieN: this request for arbitration was declined based on evidence of off-wiki information posted on Meta. I would suggest that this supports the view that #1 is already the position held by the community, even if the policy doesn't state this explicitly. – bradv🍁 20:35, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  There's also this ongoing discussion on Meta which in part involved the identity of an az.wiki admin because they were OUT on their home project. That's not to say that we shouldn't conduct ourselves in good taste. There are a handful of people who have met me personally, and could find images of me on Commons without too much trouble. But that doesn't mean they have leave to start posting them on random talk pages, because that would be disruptive without serving any legitimate purpose. GMG^talk 20:59, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

• Caution: Wikipedia is referenced twelve times in the paragraph and over seventy times in the whole policy. In looking at the context of how "Wikipedia" is being colloquially used throughout the whole policy, I would argue it is being used consistently to refer to the English Wikipedia. If we're going to introduce a distinction by adding "English", then you are potentially also introducing a new aspect where "Wikipedia" refers to all Wikipedia projects and not just the English Wikipedia. The policy can only apply to the English Wikipedia and its editors. I do not have a strong opinion one way or the other, but as with any document or policy, you have to ensure usage is consistent throughout. In fact, if you read most of our policies, "Wikipedia" is frequently and fairly consistently to refer to this Wikipedia and not generally about all Wikipedias. Mkdw ^talk 20:38, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  Mkdw, part of the confusion here and at AN stems from exactly that - what does "Wikipedia" refer to? Does it include other languages? What about Commons? For most policies the answer is fairly self-evident, but this one requires reviewing how this has been interpreted in the past, as in my comment above. – bradv🍁 20:51, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  @Bradv: I understand the original issue and why a clarification was sought; the AN link is included as part of the proposal. The question you ask, "what does "Wikipedia" refer to?", raises my point. The question is general and not specific to one sentence in one policy. I do not think it is entirely clear if you read other policies if you automatically interpret "Wikipedia" to mean all Wikipedia projects. There are other implications and changes might very well be worth considering. This RFC is not just a clarification request. That could easily be accomplished by a proper policy RFC to obtain a consensus. The proposal to amend the policy does not list a no change option. Both options include "English Wikipedia", which I believe is not necessarily the convention used in most other policies. The fact that it is being introduced by RFC with this larger question above it may prove to be a cited precedent for interpreting other uses of Wikipedia as well.

  The policy amendment proposal, whether it intends to or not, introduces a convention where "English Wikipedia" refers to the local project and "Wikipedia" refers to all Wikipedia projects. The most common practice in determining the exact meaning of wording is to look at other examples of how it is used. For example, if you change the definition of a word used in many places for one specific issue, the change must be considered with respect to how it is used in all places.

  Again, all I am cautioning is that changing this proposal may have greater consequences than just one sentence. Mkdw ^talk 23:39, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  I've always perceived this "Wikipedia" to mean all public Wikimedia projects, which as you can see, is conflicting with your viewpoint. --qedk (t 桜 c) 22:09, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

• #2 or no change. First, I'm happy to see a proposal for a change, that didn't come from me. I think there can be unintended consequences of opening this up to information posted at other projects. Under the proposed #1, Phabricator (or whatever they call the place where software bugs are addressed) would be included as a "public" project. But they have much less stringent safeguards for user identity than what we have here. (I once considered registering there, but then decided that it wasn't secure enough for me to be comfortable with.) And I think we should err on the side of respecting any editor's right to open an account here at en-wiki, without worrying about anything anywhere else. An editor might register here without revealing personal information here, and we have no way to know a priori whether they intended to keep their identity private here or assumed that anyone could find it at another wiki. What if someone who has long been active at another project, with their identity made public there, decides to delete it there (but not have it oversighted) and then shortly after starts editing here? Should the presumption be "tough luck, you once posted it there and it's in the edit history", or "maybe they deleted it there because they no longer want it to be public"? And why should anyone be "researching" another editor at another WMF project, anyway? Now that said, I read the AN discussion and I think that MelanieN's decision was a good one. Posting information found at another WMF project is clearly less malicious than posting information found somewhere else. Editors often assume wrongly that the Outing policy must be written so that any infraction must result in harsh repercussions. I think it's quite reasonable to take the position that personal information can only be posted here if it was made public here, but that if it was public at another wiki, its posting probably wasn't intended as maliciously as it would be if it was found elsewhere. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:05, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  Phabricator is not a Wikimedia project. And I regularly research users across projects for a variety of reasons. GMG^talk 21:15, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  I'm surprised that it isn't. But right there is an opening for all manner of confusion about how to enforce the policy with the proposed change. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:17, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  Uh, I think Tryptofish is referring to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/ . It is hard to say that is not at least a Wikimedia space if not an outright Wikimedia project... --Izno (talk) 21:20, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, that's it, thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:21, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  As I was. Apparently there is a listing at m:Complete list of Wikimedia projects. GMG^talk 21:22, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

• #1 seems to be the common sense application that any reasonable person would currently implement. Due to SUL, what's posted on enwiki and what's posted on, say, meta is essentially the same in terms of visibility and intentionally releasing some bit of information about oneself. If something were to come to my attention as an Oversighter that had been publicly stated on meta but not enwiki, I would not suppress that information on enwiki. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:23, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
  • BU Rob13, quick query: so you would need them to go to meta and get it suppressed first. And what if meta oversighters were to say that as the mention is already there on enwiki, they would not suppress it either? Lourdes 03:11, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
    • @Lourdes: Nothing an editor posts themselves is covered by the outing/suppression projects on either project. If it qualified for suppression on meta (e.g. it was outing by another editor there), I would obviously also suppress here, whether or not it was still public on meta at the time. If it were still public on meta, I'd also try to find a meta oversighter to handle that bit if possible. But if the editor posted their full name on meta themselves, for instance, and then years later asked for it to be suppressed here, I would decline as not covered by our suppression criteria. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 03:22, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

      If a minor posts their personal identifying information on meta, I would suppress it on the English Wikipedia. There are a few other areas of discretion as well such as individuals with varying intellectual abilities and individuals with mental health considerations. It is probably not worth discussing further per WP:BEANS. I will admit I have reservations about making a change to solve a problem that seems to have occurred once, recently, and could have been resolved quickly by simply seeking consent from the individual. The OUTING policy has been around for a considerable amount of time so I wonder whether this change is even required. Mkdw ^talk 04:41, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

• #2 An editor's contributions on one project should not count towards their assessment on other projects. One may have common sense presumptions, but there is much a slip between the cup and the lip, especially when it is about one's identity. Keep it clear and simple as this is policy – if it has not been disclosed on the English Wikipedia, then that's about it, you should not refer to it. Lourdes 03:17, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
• Option #2 at a bare minimum, but no change should have been offered as one of the options in the 'survey'. We have no idea the consequences of introducing this change retroactively with respect to people's desired privacy, nor would have many people who value their privacy necessarily considered being forthcoming on one project could be construed as consent on another years later. Editors have different relationships with each project. There are very few occasions when consent could not be verified with the individual before publicly posting their private information. Mkdw ^talk 04:29, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
• Either. #2 is simpler to understand and administrate (per Lourdes). The change is needed as the original is open to argument, as can be seen here. However I would quite happily accept #1 · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:29, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
• #1 I support either but I prefer to keep the definition of public to public Wikimedia projects, restricting it seems unnecessary since you place information on a public wiki knowing it is public. --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:53, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
• #2. WMF-hosted projects are all independent of each other, with widely variant rules. One's roles, reasons for participating, usernames, and revealed details may vary widely from site to site. People seeking version #1 are mistaking WP:MULTIACCOUNT and related policies and guidelines for global cross-WMF rules; they are not, but are particular to en.WP only.

  I was recently a target of hounding across multiple WMF sites by someone for pointed political reasons, using my full name at one project (where I had not disclosed it – I'm simply SMcCandlish on almost every site of any kind; my full name is only used at Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and some social networking and blogging and other content sites; for sites at which I'm performing some kind of function other than primarily a writer of content, I don't use my full name). The intent of this harassment was to get me "fired" from a specific volunteer role and to ensure that employers, etc., Googling for my full name would pull up this person's nasty and demonstrably false accusations there. Different WMF projects have different civility/attacks/aspersions rules; going with option #1 would make it trivially easy to WP:GAME the entire WMF system, by seeking out the most lax venue in which to attack people, using all their information you can dox from all WMF sites combined. Nothing like that should ever happen again. If you are going around trying to tie en.WP user IDs to real-world identities or to userIDs at another website (even one hosted on the same server farm as en.WP), you are engaged in WP:OUTING, period.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:03, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

• #2 per SMcCandlish and Lourdes, or no change per Mkdw. For a long while my name was fully public at Commons for attribution of my photos, but it wasn't here as I wanted to keep my text contributions distinct from any real-world associations. That desire faded and now I don't distinguish, but we should not presume that a user wants to apply the same standards to all wikis. As one example an editor may be much more comfortable sharing information among the community of speakers of a small language than they are about making the same information clearly accessible to English speakers. Thryduulf (talk) 13:42, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
• #1 If someones post the handle of his twitter account on Commons or the German Wikipedia it should be fair game to discuss, say, their canvassing on twitter. The moment one identifies on one Wikimedia project, it makes no sense maintain separate compartments for each sub-project they may be active in. In terms of wording - it may make sense to define "Wikipedia" throughout Wikipedia policy in a more precise manner - but that's a wider scope than the question here. Icewhiz (talk) 05:24, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
• #2 As raised above, not all projects have the same rules and/or technical protections. Also, people may wish to be more open on one project than another about their identity. I think it would be reasonable to say "on English Wikipedia or Meta". StudiesWorld (talk) 10:05, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
• #2 Each wiki is a separate wiki entity and should be treated as such. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 14:56, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
• #1 A Wikimedia account is a unified identity, by nature, and policy should recognize this. Benjamin (talk) 23:35, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
  • If that were the case, then I should get admin rights on all projects; and a person blocked on one project should be blocked across projects... and so on so forth. Lourdes 02:38, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
    • The username is the same, and publicly linked. That's the significant part. Benjamin (talk) 05:31, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• #2 Seems the spirit of the original. Plus I also worry that the "on other public wikimedia projects" is a case of WP:BEANS where we'll be giving bad actors the green light to go snooping on other wikis or game policies per SMcCandlish. In cases where #2 may cause weird stuff like someone potentially getting sanctioned for posting on enwiki info from an editor's global user page, see WP:COMMONSENSE. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 03:33, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
• #1 But change "his or her" to "their". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:50, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
• #1 seems pretty obvious. SUL exists if I reveal my identity on my meta global user page it is absurd to think that I have some right to have no one mention it on en.wiki. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
  • #1 does not distinguish between something posted on a global user page (where your argument isn't completely unreasonable) and something posted on a much smaller project (say hr.wikibooks) which might be a very different environment to en.wp and so your argument is unreasonable. Thryduulf (talk) 11:03, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
    • Thryduulf, I typically agree with you on everything OUTING/OS related, but I disagree here. The risk is people using this policy as a weapon to silence their political opponents based on something reasonable people would not consider outing. For example, if I post my Facebook and Twitter all over Commons and encourage people to contact me on my WhatsApp there, and then someone points out here that they’ve been canvassed via a Facebook post from me, that’s not reasonably construed as outing in my view. There’s substantially more risk of that happening than someone going to hr.wikibooks and trying to dig up dirt on my RL stuff. So while your counterpoint about #1 is correct, #2 doesn’t distinguish between the two either, and that is also a flaw. I’d be fine finding some compromise wording that would leave room for judgement in both your example and mine, however. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:59, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
      • I agree #2 doesn't distinguish either, but it offers a much greater protection against outing than #1 does while we work out the details of any compromise. That degree of protection is much more important than possible canvassing (and canvassing can be dealt without necessarily tieing it to a specific person anyway). Thryduulf (talk) 15:29, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
        • I agree that #2 offers more protection, but I also think the odds of us having someone who is public with their identity on a small language project are much lower than us having someone who is extremely public about their identity on meta or commons using our stricter outing rules to bludgeon opponents. I don’t at all want to make our outing rules less strict, but I don’t think someone who is running for a WMF board seat and has linked to their real life ID on meta should be able to request suppression of mention of that on en.wiki, and the wording of #2 currently would make that the case. As a compromise, I’d be fine to limiting it to meta, commons, and other English language Wikimedia projects (or even just meta and Commons.) TonyBallioni (talk) 18:10, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
• I tend toward #1, but I wonder if we shouldn't also protect persons who are somehow OUTED by others on those other Wikimedia projects by blocking/banning the offending editor. --Izno (talk) 18:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Izno, if xwiki outing is going on (and this has happened recently) stewards will lock the account and we'll coordinate with them or local oversighters to deal with the cleanup. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:52, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
• #1. Regarding outing on another project — that's completely different from what this is talking about, since it only affects self-posted information. If we can't refer to voluntarily provided information, how will we define what's prohibited? Imagine that you post your identity on your Commons userpage but not here. Can I provide a link to the Commons diff where you added the name (or even your Commons userpage where that name appears) in a relevant discussion, or are we suddenly no longer allowed to provide links to Commons in certain circumstances? Moreover, I'm a Commons admin. Imagine that someone at Commons says "My name is John Smith" and claims a self-uploaded image here, as an own work, with a different name, e.g. "source={{own}}, author=John Jones". We have a copyright problem here: either one of them isn't an own work, or we're in a shared-account situation, but if #2 be the policy, I'm risking a siteban if I refer to this fact when nominating the en:wp image for deletion. Or maybe I just delete the image at Commons with a rationale of "COM:PCP — uploader claims this file and en:file:whatever as own works under different names, John Smith and John Jones". If someone else nominates the image for deletion here and quotes my Commons deletion rationale, #2 would make that person liable to sanctions: that's simply absurd. The point is harassment, not personal information: if you posted your information in a random conversation at the Azerbaijani Wikivoyage, and I then dump the diff in a dozen places here for no good reason, I need to be sanctioned for harassment, but if your posted-on-another-wiki identity is relevant to a discussion (e.g. Essjay controversy), there's no way we should sanction someone for referring to your posting in that discussion. Nyttend (talk) 21:56, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
• #2 or no change. Particularly for those of us who go back to when they were entirely separate logins. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:11, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• #2 Completely and entirely. People should have the right to stay anonymous on the English Wikipedia (Which seems to already be the community interpretation in some cases but we should clarify this) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elitematterman (talk • contribs) 12:38, May 20, 2019 (UTC)
• Not to be permitted at all. We are not here to "out" anyone. Even if an editor posts up personal information about themselves, no matter where they post it or to what extent is the information detailed, we are not here to amplify or facilitate the dissemination of such information in any shape, way, or form. Even if the individual posts up personal information with an explicit permission (or even a request) to use that information any way we want, we should strictly avoid using it: We're not here to promote anyone, either.

Unless an individual has chosen to work in Wikipedia only under their real name, the correct way to address that individual is by their chosen Wkipedia-pseudonym.

We are here to improve the encyclopaedic content of Wikipedia. That's it. The social interaction encouraged by the existence of user pages and talk pages, as well as the existence of community projects, often confuse people. Well, Wikipedia is not a message board. -The Gnome (talk) 09:20, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

• My sentiments are wholly with The Gnome on this issue, but as a matter of written policy, I would err on the side of #2, per Lourdes and  SMcCandlish. Also amenable to no change whatsoever. —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 16:42, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• #1 is the only workable option, per Nyttend. That is not to say that it isn't harassment, just that it shouldn't automatically be considered as such. As usual, common sense applies. ansh666 19:28, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• Not to be permitted at all. "Posting another editor's personal information is harassment." No matter where or when they may have posted it previously. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:23, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Lol what? Posting personal information that a user has disclosed willingly on-wiki is definitely not harassment. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 18:46, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
    • They put it on their userpage once. Or they revealed their birthday in an innocuous post once. Now removed. You keep reposting it. Yes, that’s harassment. Why else would you keep reposting their personal information? Many early Wikipedians have vanished. Many new new admins quietly U1 their userpage before re-creating it. I don’t think this is a mere laughing matter at all. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:16, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

      That particular scenario is already covered by policy though. Posting personal information that has been removed is already considered outing. Obviously the situation you describe is egregious harassment that would be treated with zero tolerance. You're currently only allowed to post personal information if it presently exists and has not been removed. Obviously I'm not harassing someone if I refer to a piece of information they're willingly hosting on their userpage. That's the only thing your proposed brightline stance would change. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 06:56, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

• #2The project is generally best served by being extremely conservative in protecting users' privacy. Situations in which personal information from off-(en)wiki is actually essential to a decision would be vanishingly rare, and in those circumstances we have systems in place to take sensitive evidence into account while preserving privacy. I can appreciate the philosophy behind arguing against ever republishing anyone's personal information, ever, but it would be very easy to breach such a strict policy by accident and incur heavy sanctions, or at least strongly worded warnings, despite acting in good faith and causing no real harm. —Rutebega (talk) 02:44, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
• I don't know. I'd lean towards #1 if we were starting the project all over again, but I worry that there might be some unforeseen consequences for editors if we were to apply it retroactively. --Rschen7754 05:52, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
• Solidly #2. If I've never edited on a project, I don't consent to sharing my information there, even if I've shared it here. Recent incidents on the Azerbaijani and Amharic Wikipedias (detailed on Meta) make me wonder about the status of some of the sister projects. Having been outed and attacked on a sister project back in the day (when I wasn't "out" the way I am here), and having had to ask a Steward for help (because the local admins 'crats refused to do anything about the issue), I am very leery of anything like proposal 1. Guettarda (talk) 15:07, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
• Support #2 -- this is further removed from the apparent intent of the current wording, but there is currently no policy forbidding anyone (even, AFAIAA, admins) from using different accounts with different levels of privacy regarding their own personal information on different Wikimedia projects. Unified login was pretty sloppy when it was introduced, and to the best of my knowledge there has never been any rule that says if I operate a different account on a different Wikimedia project with more personal information disclosed than my English Wikipedia account, that qualifies as justification for trying to link my English Wikipedia account to the other account; the proposed wording of #1 could very easily be interpreted that way. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:27, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

  I would, however, be amenable to a version of #1 that clarified that only publicly connected accounts are included; having used more than one undisclosed account on a sister project is not a violation of en.wiki's sockpuppetry policy (or even, necessarily, the policies of our sister projects) and cannot, of course, be used as a justification for attempting to connect such accounts. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

• #1 I support this change as outing can occur on any Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects, not just the English version. However, I propose shortening the addition "on the English Wikipedia or another public Wikimedia project" to instead simply "on any public Wikimedia project" as it is more concise and more accurate. —TheSameGuy (talk) 12:41, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

  @TheSameGuy: You seem to be reading the proposed changes the opposite way to me and the first few !votes up top (I haven't read everything); it is assumed that outing an en.wiki user on another Wikimedia project is forbidden, but the difference between the proposals is whether it is "okay" to repeat personal information that someone has disclosed on a sister project. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

• #1 is the better and cmorecomprehensive rule, and will provide for most special cases. DGG ( talk ) 02:02, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
• #2 is the tighter and therefore (especially when it comes to matters of actual people [rather than just accounts] and privacy) the better rule. Happy days, Lindsay^Hello 06:35, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
• My preference order is: #1, no change, alternate (below), #2. With all WMF public wikis linked under one set of common log-ins (CentralAuth / SUL), we should allow the scope of "not outing" to include all WMF public wikis. Deryck C. 13:34, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
• #1 - I don't use my first name on here, but I have published it on Commons. So if anyone was to use my first name on en-Wiki, I would not consider it to be a violation of WP:OUTING. "Wikipedia" should be taken to mean any language Wikipedia and associate projects. Mjroots (talk) 10:06, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
• Each projects are indeed independent but it's still inter-connected. #1 if you dare wonder. — regards, Revi 11:26, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
• I'm not quite sure how to interpret this change if the outing info is posted to a different language that many struggle to find an online translation of the evidence (e.g. African or North American aboriginal languages). OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:09, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
• #1, but (and its a very big but)... (changing to #2, see below) - As a general principle, I think the most feasible principle ought to be that if you share your private/identifying information on Wikimedia, that is considered a fairplay topic in any Wikimedia space. However, I do believe the exact wording of the section is going to need some additional nuance with regard to at least one additional issue: the personal information discovered with regard to one account on a Wikimedia project should be linked to another account only if the connection of both accounts to a single individual is already known--whether because those accounts are part of a universal log-in or because the individual made it affirmatively known that they were the same person behind both accounts. Otherwise this rule could become a loophole under which harassers could out/dox someone who is operating multiple identities (under good faith allowances) across different projects, and would thus become an exception that swallows the rules--rules which exist for very serious reasons regarding anonymity and privacy, as a person's involvement with a given project can be harmful or indeed, in some instances, even dangerous for them.

I understand the argument that someone using a unified log-in account and declares their identity on one project should be considered to have waived their interest in keeping that info secret on all projects, and should not be able to rely on a bureaucratic technicality to call out someone else who references that information in good faith. However, if we adopt option 1 without further caveats, we are clearly opening the door to doxxing. I almost !voted for option 2 as a consequence, just to pursue the precautionary principle on this issue and avoid creating the possibility of people using the technical wording to avoid sanction for clearly inappropriate disclosures of another's private information. But I think with some effort, we can come up with wording that clearly expresses a rule that people with expressly linked accounts are deemed to have disclosed their own identities on en.Wikipedia if they have disclosed it on any Wikimedia project, but only where the accounts in question were clearly meant to be expressed as a common identity by the person operating them. It is a clear principal of the broader Wikimedia community that people should have the right to operate different identities across multiple projects if they feel this is essential for their privacy and well-being--provided of course that they are not abusing multiple accounts for any disallowed purpose on a given project, of course. its essentially that we safeguard this broader Wikimedia community right against any inadvertent eroding as result of rule creep here that is meant to clarify one of our local policies, even one as important as our harassment policy. Snow ^{let's rap} 22:01, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Changing my !vote to #2. You know, with the benefit of a little more time to think about this, I've decided that the safest course of action to preserving the privacy and safety principles embraced by the broader Wikimedia community (and indeed, the local en.Wikipedia community) is to just utilize a simpler standard here. I do believe there is a way to approach option 1 in such a way that those interests are protected, but A) I don't want to endorse an option which may not receive that additional protective language, and B) writing that language such that the standard couldn't be abused would be difficult. So I'm shifting my preferred approach to be in line with the KISS principle. Snow ^{let's rap} 22:21, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

• #1 The outing policy should be strict, but if you post something about yourself in Commons or whichever other project, it's really not a private matter here. I feel like this would be used as a "gotcha" in a dispute, to claim someone was harassing you if they simply used some cross-wiki information. If it's really something private, tell them to stop talking about it, remove it from the other project and request revdel. --Pudeo (talk) 00:42, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

  @Pudeo: Yeah, but who is the "you" in if you post something about yourself in Commons or whichever other project? If you have an alternate account for use on English Wikisource, which you never use to edit English Wikipedia and which you have never publicly connected to you English Wikipedia account, isn't it beyond the purview of HARASS -- and indeed of all en.wiki policies -- to insist that that counts as "outing" oneself? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:25, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

  I'm inclined to agree: all of this project's policies regarding privacy and outing make it clear that any willing disclosures that limit a person's ability to complain about invasions of their privacy have to have been made on this project; if a person reveals the connection between themselves and their Wikipedia account while on Twitter, you are still not allowed to mention that fact here, unless you have their full and express opinion. I believe that other Wikimedia projects ought to be treated similarly to all other social media/websites in this regard, because they all, as Hijiri correctly points out, have their own standards and policies, and on this project, we have always treated such rules as discrete to this narrow platform.

  If someone has a universal log-in or otherwuise clearly identifies the connection between their account here and other accounts on other Wikimedia projects, and that disclosure is made here on en.Wikipedia, then yes, then they have disclosed that connection in a manner that it is acceptable for this project's policies to regulate (i.e., they can't bitch too much if someone else references a connection they have already disclosed here). But if someone makes the mistake at some point in time of disclosing their identity/a connection between accounts on another project, I think its problematic for us to decide that its justification to WP:OUT them here, on this project. And when you factor in the fact that some editors will be working on versions of Wikipedia that are subject to substantial state surveillance, the concerns become even more pronounced. The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that this a case where we ought to be applying the precautionary principle. Snow ^{let's rap} 00:36, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

• #1, Stop making it hard for crosswiki patroller, please.--AldNon^Ucallin?☎ 01:39, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
• #2—outing and other forms of harassment should be given as few loopholes as possible. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:45, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - can the eventual closer post a note on my talk page about the eventual result of this RfC. Thank you. starship.paint (talk) 02:42, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
• #2 Tend to agree there should be no loopholes for harassment. Also one question, could a person be wrong about the two ID's being in fact the same person?Slatersteven (talk) 17:12, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
• #1. If the owner of the account has publicly disclosed via-that-account their identity or linkage to an account elsewhere then it is silly to pretend otherwise, and it would be even worse to come down like a ton of bricks with "harassment" charges on an editor who makes a good-faith observation of that fact. Furthermore I would like to note that the Foundation created a feature where a Userpage posted on Meta will appear here (and every other wiki) if there is no local userpage. That creates a rather ugly ambiguity whether that counts as "On English Wikipedia". I'm pretty sure that the Foundations (now dead) Gather feature also raised effectively the same issue. One of the Foundation's intended design features of Flow was that discussions could appear on multiple wikis, which would have demolished any sane definitions of "where" the discussion happened. I fully expect that future Foundation projects will continue to raise this issue in various forms. It's a unified account, and trying to deny that fact will only tie us in socio-technological knots. If the owner of the account has publicly disclosed then it's not outing. Alsee (talk) 00:00, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
• #1 If someone posts a Twitter account on their Global Userpage, one should be able to reference it in a talk discussion with that person. Right now, by strict definition, that would be classified as outing. Furthermore, discussing the WMF CEO's controversial Tweets on en-wiki could be construed as a violation of WP:OUTING because they may not have disclosed that Twitter account specifically on en-wiki. Promethean (talk) 13:28, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
• No change (preferred) or #1 while I can understand the concerns over obscure stuff like Tweets and Twitter acounts and real names, I don't believe 2 would be the correct way to handle this. Someone already brought up PAID editing concerns. While it's true there are ways to deal with these privately, IMO such things are likely to lead to duplication of efforts and less effective response. If there are good privacy reasons to do so, then it's an acceptable compromise and in cases where the info can reasonably considered private I would agree. But consider this recent example [1]. A bunch of different editors created an article in different language wikipedias most likely in violation of WP:PAID. The other editors hadn't edited here but it was possible they had. If they had and the wording was 2, I could not bring up their contributions here without violating our outing policy. While looking in to this, I also noticed the same editor here said they translated an article from the Italian wikipedia. A look at the article on the Italian wikipedia shows that coincidentally it was created very recently by yet another editor. As it turns out, this editor has edited here. Again, I could not raise public concerns about this editor if 2 had passed even though I'm just relying on an article they created on a different language wikipedia. I suspect more investigation of the different editors may find more suspicious editors here. Some of this may be uncovered by a simple SPI but who knows? Still as I said I can understand concerns of active discussion of details publicly disclosed in other wikis perhaps keeping it ambiguous is the best option unless we find a better solution. Nil Einne (talk) 07:32, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
• #1 per proposer. The alternative, that someone's details might be "public" on one Wiki but "private" on another, just seems bizarre. Adoring nanny (talk) 03:58, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
• #1 i have faith in our admins and crats to understand the spirit of the rule, and harassment is harassment, otherwise the issue would be easily solved by talking to each other and having the information revdeled as needed. This change simply clarifies -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 21:57, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Alternate proposal

Per discussion above and below, I'm proposing an alternate compromise wording:

unless that person has voluntarily posted his or her own information, or links to such information, on the English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Meta-Wiki or Wikidata.

• Support per discussions above and below. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:06, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
• Ping of those who have already commented@Risker, Thryduulf, Bradv, Mkdw, GreenMeansGo, SMcCandlish, Xaosflux, MarginalCost, Wugapodes, Doc James, Benjaminikuta, Sir Joseph, Icewhiz, StudiesWorld, Izno, Pbsouthwood, QEDK, Lourdes, BU Rob13, Tryptofish, MelanieN, and Barkeep49: I think that got everyone. If I missed someone, please feel free to let them know. Also noting that I do not see this as affecting en.wiki's policy of suppressing information regarding children, which to their shame other projects do not follow. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:14, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
• Support I like that. It would avoid the situation I had (which precipitated this whole discussion) in which a user who had revealed his real name on another language Wikipedia was strongly opposed to having it given out here. I gather there was a similar situation involving a person who was "out" as an admin on another language Wiki, but did not wish to be "out" here. People may very well be more comfortable giving personal information among what they feel to be their peers, their co-linguists, without wanting it broadcast to the world. -- MelanieN (talk) 21:21, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
• I'm more-or-less neutral about this. I think that it is better than #1 above, and slightly inferior to #2, and I'm also not entirely convinced that it is needed. I remain uncomfortable with my previously stated concern that someone should be able to have an account here without having to worry about what they might have posted elsewhere, so I guess one could consider that a mild oppose, but it's not something that I would fight over. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
  • After reading subsequent comments by other editors, I'm coming back to move from neutral to Oppose. I see no good in making fair game out of personal information posted anywhere else. So to summarize my views, I Support #2 above as well as no change, and I Oppose #1 above and this alternate. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:24, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
• 2nd choice to 1. I mean it's a unified account so the idea that we only count disclosures in English spaces is better than nothing but strikes me as overly cautious. I again am not sure that this whole RfC was needed (see Mkdw) but not now that it's out there rather than what I had felt to be acceptable status quo I am on board with this compromise. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:46, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
• Nah. A unified account means, quite literally, that your accounts are automatically linked together. It's a bit nuts to consider information posted in another language Wikipedia from the same exact account to be outing. It would be like restricting personal information posted in one namespace on enwiki from being discussed on other namespaces. Just doesn't make much sense. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:56, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
• 2nd choice to 2. I still think it is best to allow silos, but this would be acceptable.StudiesWorld (talk) 21:57, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
• No idea how to feel about this. I agree with Rob, it is a bit weird to draw information posted to a public wiki and consider that as outing, but then again, a lot of the information we post off-wiki is public as well, just not connected and that is quite obviously, considered OUTing. There is an obvious grey area, with how we are connecting accounts and which wikis' information become considered as OUTing. I'd say I weakly support this proposal, at best. My take is as simple as I commented on the thread before, it is useless to waste your time OUTing anyone, there's just no point in it — just don't do it. --qedk (t 桜 c) 22:07, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
• Support as compromise, though I still prefer 2 above. I don't find the unified login arguments very convincing; someone blocked on dewiki isn't automatically blocked here so we already ignore "unified" accounts when blocking. I don't understand why we would be reluctant to extend privacy for users across projects because of a silly technological feature. Of course there will be exceptions that obviously aren't outing, but we generally shouldn't be creating a loophole for bad faith actors to go snooping around other projects for harassment material. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 22:31, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
• 2nd Choice to 2 above Sir Joseph ^(talk) 23:40, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose – in almost every case it would be considered unwise to bring information cross-wiki without the subject's permission, but it should not be a violation of OUTING to do so. I'm particularly concerned by the idea that investigations into issues such as paid editing or conflict of interest might be hampered with restrictions on cross-wiki evidence. For this reason I still prefer #1 above, and my second choice would be to leave the text ambiguous. – bradv🍁 00:10, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Paid editing and COI allegations are not reasons to dismiss outing concerns, and they are not exceptions to the outing policy (either before or after these proposals) which is why there is a specific email address to forward such evidence to so that you don't need to make non-public information public. Thryduulf (talk) 00:21, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

    Sure it is - forcing such information to get sent to functionaries by email rather than posted in an ANI thread, COIN thread, or arbitration case definitely could have a chilling effect on such investigations. And if a user has linked to their twitter account on one wiki, and then on another claims they weren't off-wiki canvassing and whoever is accusing them should be blocked for outing, this policy change would also hamper that investigation. – bradv🍁 00:31, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

• 2nd choice to #2 above, mostly per Wugapodes. Thryduulf (talk) 00:21, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• 2nd choice to #2 above as above. Lourdes 02:36, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• 2nd choice to #1 above. If someone revealed info on a language-Wikipedia they use once in a blue moon - I can see why this makes sense. However for users whose primary language-wiki is something other than enwiki (e.g. an account with 100k edits on dewiki, and 1k edits on enwiki) - looking at their userpage on their primary language wiki should be allowed.Icewhiz (talk) 03:30, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• 2nd choice to #1 above. If someone revealed they are a paid editor in Hebrew yes we can use those details in discussions on EN WP. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:32, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Bradv. Cross wiki info is not outing. Benjamin (talk) 05:33, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• meh. More complicated than one and no improvement on the other. On the other hand, no strong feelings about it either. Will go with the flow. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:08, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

*2nd Choice to #2 above.. Mostly support though. Tbh I feel like this is probably going to be the best choice in the end. (Also I didn't forget to sign this time c:) --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 13:56, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

• • Like tryptofish I also am actually going to completely Oppose #1 and the Alternate Proposal in favor of Supporting #2. As I really don't like the idea of "Cherrypicking" Information on other people by going as far out as they can in attempt to out someone. The Gnome has some really good points however I think that perhaps in some cases it may be the only option. --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 13:49, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
• Not to be permitted at all. We are not here to "out" anyone. Even if an editor posts up personal information about themselves, no matter where they post it or to what extent is the information detailed, we are not here to amplify or facilitate the dissemination of such information in any shape, way, or form. Even if the individual posts up personal information with an explicit permission (or even a request) to use that information any way we want, we should strictly avoid using it: We're not here to promote anyone, either.

Unless an individual has chosen to work in Wikipedia only under their real name, the correct way to address that individual is by their chosen Wkipedia-pseudonym.

We are here to improve the encyclopaedic content of Wikipedia. That's it. The social interaction encouraged by the existence of user pages and talk pages, as well as the existence of community projects, often confuse people. Well, Wikipedia is not a message board. -The Gnome (talk) 09:20, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

The Gnome Let's play that out. Say someone has identified who they are on a different Wikimedia project. They come here, and, bypassing AfC, write an article about themselves. This would be promoting themselves but we would be banned from pointing this out because to do so would be OUTING by your standard. How do you reconcile this? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:27, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Exposing a violation of policy should never be inhibited. Therefore, that would be the sole exception to the rule I support, since, by creating an article about themselves, the editor has violated Wikipedia policy. Thanks for this very valuable comment, Barkeep49. -The Gnome (talk) 09:02, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

• 2nd choice to #2 above: per above arguments, especially those by Wugapodes. —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 16:45, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Because good-faith editors would get indeffed because they did not read the policy change. Changing policy too much makes it unpredictable. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:43, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

  How would good-faith editors get blocked that way exactly? I don't really see it. --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 21:04, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

  The consensus is that outing deserves indeffing. If some good-faith editor fails to read the policy change and violates the new policy, he/she will get indeffed, although he/she meant no harm. E.g. outing someone who disclosed his/her own identity at de.wiki. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:54, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

  I see your point and it is definitely valid but imo I think the change is worth it. --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 00:51, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

  Indef blocking for outing is not mandatory; it is an admin decision. In the discussion at the other page, several people said that revealing an identity that was disclosed on another wiki should be reverted and probably revdel'ed, but the person who did it would not necessarily be blocked. Admins are capable of recognizing good faith vs. bad faith - malicious harassment vs. innocent mistake - and adjusting their response accordingly. -- MelanieN (talk) 01:17, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose, I don't see a point to cherrypicking projects (or whatever they're called) to allow or disallow; either all or nothing makes more sense. All of the different projects are interconnected, not just these four. ansh666 06:26, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
• Nope. Doesn't address any of the concerns I raised at all. Maybe this is a compromise for someone(s), but it's just an "I'm not hearing you" to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:00, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
• I haven't come to a decision on the original proposal, but I would have to Oppose as I don't see why there would be a difference here. --Rschen7754 05:49, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
• Strong oppose per my comment in the section above. Guettarda (talk) 15:08, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
• Strong Support per discussions above and below.   —  Hei Liebrecht 22:06, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose as I mentioned in the above discussion, outing can occur on any public projects, so I don't see the point in limiting it to just the English Wikipedia and a few other projects. —TheSameGuy (talk) 12:46, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose This provides too many opportunities for gaming. #1 is the better rule. DGG ( talk ) 02:01, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
• Prefer #1 above. I understand the rationale that some people don't want personal information to cross language boundaries, but I disagree with this rationale both in principle (something written publicly in a different language ought not to be treated as less public) and in practice (why are Commons and Wikidata singled out, but not English Wiktionary, English Wikibooks, etc?). Deryck C. 13:39, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
• 1 If you put content into Wikimedia projects, I don't see how using that information could be outing. As Mkdw mentions, most references to Wikipedia should be changed to Wikimedia projects. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:03, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose this still creates problems in dealing with COI problems as I highlighted above. Nil Einne (talk) 07:33, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

• What does "publicly" mean in this context, and why are we proposing to add this word? – bradv🍁 19:33, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  @Bradv: - This is to disqualify private Wikimedia projects, such as otrs.wiki and possibly also office.wiki. GMG^talk 19:37, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  GreenMeansGo, okay that makes sense. In that case I would propose a slight rewording, to "on the English Wikipedia or another public Wikimedia project." – bradv🍁 19:39, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

   Done GMG^talk 19:42, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

• "#1" above wouldn't really need the "or", since enwiki is a member of the later group. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:23, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  Either one is fine with me. The meaning is unchanged. GMG^talk 20:33, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

• It should probably also clarify that accounts must be publicly linked, such as with a unified login. If someone has an account name that is different and not publicly linked on another project, then none of their personal information may be cross-posted despite the fact that they publicly disclosed their information on another Wikimedia project. Mkdw ^talk 23:52, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

  Honest question @Mkdw: Do these still exists? I thought we rectified the old system with the new SUL some time ago. GMG^talk 00:25, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

  And yes, I understand that this would cascade through the rest of the section, but would establish a principle none-the-less, in the interest of putting together a succinct and intelligible RfC. GMG^talk 00:36, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, we even allow alternate accounts here on Wikipedia. While SUL may unify that name across all projects, it would not prevent an individual from having multiple accounts. Mkdw ^talk 04:23, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

  And it only unifies in cases where the same user ID actually belongs to the same person, which is not always the case.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:04, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

  I'm not sure I see the relevance. If someone registers an alternate account for privacy reasons, as is allowed by policy, and they have not publicly disclosed a connection between those accounts, I don't know that there's any interpretation of policy that would not consider that a form of outing. Per policy and standard practice, if there are reasons that the connection between the two accounts or the individual person need to be examined, they should be emailed to ArbCom or a functionary. There is no sense that I see where this would change that arrangement one way or the other.

  As to the other comments, as I indicated above, any policy on outing, including the current one, is not leave to be disruptive, or to post personal information, even information which has already been disclosed, in settings where that information serves no legitimate purpose. But neither does it make sense that, given a consistent application of an "en.wiki-only interpretation", if you disclose on Commons, Meta or it.wiki that you are the public relations officer for X Pharma Inc, I now need to email that to ArbCom because we have to act like Commons doesn't exist, even though it's the same account editing cross-wiki. GMG^talk 12:26, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

• I think it's also worth mentioning that the example used for the proposal was a case where the person in question was "strongly objecting to having their identity revealed here". Mkdw ^talk 07:02, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
• I would prefer some language like unless subsequently rescinded be included as well. If someone admitted their real name 10 years ago (possibly even on another project), and has since made clear they wish to avoid drawing further attention to that indiscretion, their wish should be respected. MarginalCost (talk) 12:21, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
• I would prefer a third way, similar to what TonyBallioni suggested: if the user has published their information on English Wikipedia, or one of the three "global" projects (Meta, Commons and/or Wikidata). Otherwise, #1 with the inclusion of "any software operated by Wikimedia". Thus, mailing lists, phabricator, github, Discourse and a few other locations. Risker (talk) 02:34, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
  • If we're going down that way (which I think is probably generally good) I'd rather be more specific than "mailing lists" as there are many lists with differing degrees of privacy expectation. For example posting using your real name on Wikipedia-l is different to doing so on the Functionaries list for example. Thryduulf (talk) 10:21, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
    • That's fair. I'd suggest "mailing lists hosted by the WMF that are publicly accessible" instead, although we might want to limit that even further. There are a huge number of non-private lists at m:Mailing_lists/Overview, and I'd suggest eliminating those that are chapter-based, related to another project, or non-English. (I'd leave in the technical ones, though.) I once had to persuade an administrator to unblock someone who got blocked for referring to me by my first name (which I commonly use on mailing lists); I can't claim "privacy" when my full name is there (including photos!) on Meta, and I'm really hesitant to grant it to someone who tries to do so when the information is easily accessible via SUL on another Wikimedia project. I've been writing about this for more than 10 years, and I'm still stunned at how unaware people are about their personal responsibility with respect to their privacy. Risker (talk) 01:32, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• Query. A number of us have been here since long before the global logins. Should details have to be posted on other Mediawiki sites after the change to global logins? Espresso Addict (talk) 05:58, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

  @Espresso Addict: What do you mean by that? --qedk (t 桜 c) 06:10, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

  @QEDK: A justification for this being an obvious change is that with global login, every editor has only a single Mediawiki account. When I joined, this was not the case. For years, I had more than one account with different passwords, to which I gave somewhat different information. Global login only came along much later, and somewhat against my will, my accounts were automatically associated. I personally strongly do not wish any information I gave to other sites to be publicised on en-Wikipedia. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:16, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

  If you want to keep your accounts separate, you could always just use separate accounts. Benjamin (talk) 06:28, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

  I'm not sure whether that's permitted. But I certainly can't now untangle accounts that were separate, and were inextricably linked to one another by no action of mine, years after I created them. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:49, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

  Privacy is a legitimate reason to have multiple accounts, as long as they're not used illegitimately, of course. Benjamin (talk) 06:59, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

  You can have infinite alts as long as you don't use them illegimately. Disclosure is necessary sometimes, because you cannot have your alt edit different topic areas with 100% unquestionable behaviour. Accounts were globalized because SUL could not work with different passwords for each wiki, thus single user login. It was a good step towards tracking cross-wiki behaviour and questionable behaviour across wikis meant that it was now associated with that SUL account, instead of separate accounts. --qedk (t 桜 c) 07:39, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

• Just a question but.. If A large portion of us prefer the alternate proposal as a second choice (Both #1 and #2 supporters) would that mean the alternate proposal is considered the "better" choice as it can appeal to both sides? (In some way) --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 15:26, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• I realized, in discussion at another board, that part of the problem here is that OUTING is treated as a subset of this article, WP:Harassment. But IMO they are kind of different issues. Harassment sounds like it should be about actions done with malice - actions that deserve punishment. But personal private information should be protected, to whatever extent that we decide here, regardless of the motive of the person who reveals it. For that matter, once it has been revealed, blocking the person who revealed it does not solve the problem; the genie is out of the bottle. Maybe this question - whether personal information/outing should be treated as a subset of harassment - should be reconsidered in a separate thread. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:31, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• I firmly believe that editors should be allowed to edit pseudonymously here without fear of being revealed, and that our OUTING policy is an important protection for this. However, I have increasingly encountered situations in which an editor is not trying to hide their identity (e.g. they edit under their real and uncommon first name in a specialized area in which they are a leading expert, or reveal their identity publicly but off-wiki) and I am unable to give them public credit on off-wiki forums for the good editing work they are doing, because they did not bother to explicitly and on-wiki write their full names. In exercises like this where we try to parse more carefully what has already been revealed and what should be considered still private, we should think about whether we are setting up barriers that will prevent good editors from being publicly recognized as good editors, something that I think is important in encouraging more contributors to join the project. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:39, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
• Status quo for first choice, #2 for second choice. I'm uncomfortable with anything that encourages is to turn into amateur detectives. Even hunting through edit histories ON en.wikipedia for IRL information feels creepy. I don't like any change that encourages such nonsense.--Jayron32 10:18, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
• Comments: Not to be permitted at all. We are not here to "out" anyone. --- Per The Gnome. While I support registration we allow anonymous users and we have "Wkipedia-pseudonyms". While I can understand the idea of giving accolades to "the real person" this is a "no-brainer" if that person has not opted to "connect the dots" to themselves. If ANYONE cares to have real names connected they would, or should, let this be known themselves otherwise we should stick to no outing. Also, this form of "exploring" is confusing with all the supports and opposes (and others) all mixed. I think they should have been listed separately like I normally see. Otr500 (talk) 01:00, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Note concerning comments on Unified login above: Should I remove my email account, cancel my global account, and place a disclaimer on my user page? I only have one user name. I suppose the "User committed identity" is also not a good idea? I started the Wikipedia:Unified login ("allows users to use a single global login on all public Wikimedia Foundation projects. This allows users to maintain a consistent identity throughout Wikimedia and work on different projects without having to sign up and log in to each project individually.") for ease of navigation. It now seems this could have been a bad idea. I HAD NO IDEA that by linking accounts there would be the remote thought I would be subjected to possible privacy infringement or that somehow I have given some proxy agreement that it might be alright just because I linked accounts. I sort of had the apparently mistaken idea, mentioned by user:David Eppstein "I firmly believe that editors should be allowed to edit pseudonymously here without fear of being revealed", and I thought this was a given but apparently not. I would have though there was a concrete expectation that personal private information ALWAYS BE PROTECTED ---EVERYWHERE on Wikipedia or connected Wikimedia Foundation projects to the best of our ability. If any editor chooses to use a real name, or otherwise reveal their real identity, that would be their prerogative but it still boils down to my above comments that outing should not occur. Since there are possible legal implications here should we seek a WMF opinion? Otr500 (talk) 04:10, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

• Question Above in my support for 1 or no change I mentioned the problem of dealing with COI concerns. Thinking about it more, if 2 passes I assume this means someone could not even mention here publicly that different editors have suspiciously created articles on some obscure subject in different language wikipedias at all? Even without naming the editors on the other wikipedias. Since by mentioning the other articles and their creation, I'm effectively revealing the possible link between the editor here and these other unnamed editors. Likewise you could no longer reveal that editor X was blocked on other language wikipedias for COI editing (or anything else e.g. vandalism etc). So cross language editor problems could not be discussed here at all except with the explicit permission of or mention here by the editor concerned. Nil Einne (talk) 08:19, 8 July 2019 (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.

Implementing the RfC outcome

Hello all, I recently closed the OUTING RfC above. It's getting fairly late here and I'm having trouble translating what I wrote into actual edits to the policy, so if anyone wants to take a crack at implementing the RfC closure, I'd be grateful. (Alternatively, perhaps it doesn't need to be really integrated into the text of the policy; a footnote quoting an excerpt from the close might do just fine.) Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 04:42, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

I have added a footnote with some of the conclusions of the RfC, but would appreciate anyone who has time to integrate it into the text or at least make the note more elegant. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 22:23, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

"Overriding reason" vs. "constructive reason" in WP:HOUND

In June, Tryptofish changed "overriding reason" to "constructive reason." I think the long-standing "overriding reason" is better because it's saying "for no essential reason/unnecessarily." In other words, going by the definition of "overriding," it's saying for a reason that is not about adhering to a policy or guideline. By contrast, saying "for no constructive reason" is subjective because an editor may feel that they are being constructive by following the other editor around. It's been made clear countless times before that an editor following another around because that editor thinks they are being constructive is not enough of a reason to keep following the editor around if it's annoying the other editor/causing the other editor distress and the following isn't actually necessary/helping at all. Besides, disruption to the project is usually considered unconstructive.

We could also change "for no constructive reason" to "for no policy or guideline-based reason." But following an editor around to enforce a guideline has also been criticized. Following an editor around to enforce a policy, especially one like the BLP policy, has more support. Maybe change "for no constructive reason" to "when it is not necessary for improving the encyclopedia"? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:23, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

You could argue that what is and isn't constructive could be based on community consensus :P, but no I do agree we should do something about this. --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 16:42, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

It would have been nice to ping or notify me, if you were going to refer to me by name. It seems to me that "overriding" is a very strange locution, because the word usually refers to a situation where something is being overridden. What is being overridden here? I'm not very persuaded by the argument that if someone who is hounding someone else thinks that they are doing it for constructive reasons they could use that to wikilawyer. It should be obvious that "constructive" means "considered to be constructive by consensus". To say otherwise is to say that someone could only be violating the harassment policy if they believe themselves to be violating it: "I thought I was doing something good, so how could it be harassment?" In any case, I find the timing of this proposal rather strange, coming a day after the Fram ArbCom case was closed. There, much of the controversy was over whether or not Fram was hounding someone who was repeatedly violating policy by repeatedly telling that person that they were doing so. To incorporate the nonsense that came out of T&S into en-wiki policy is a horrible idea. In any case, ArbCom has just announced that there will be a community RfC about how hounding (and private information) will be defined at en-wiki, and that seems to me to be the proper venue for proposing such changes. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:15, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

I didn't ping you because you commonly edit this page and clearly watch it. I personally don't like being pinged to pages I am obviously watching. But since you'd rather be pinged, I'll keep that in mind in the future.

As for your reasoning for changing the text, I still feel the same way I did when I made the above post. I explained why "overriding" is better and what seems to have been meant by it. It's my opinion that the text should either be changed back to the long-standing "overriding" text or to something else, like "when it is not necessary for improving the encyclopedia." I'm not going to point to a recent example of an editor arguing the "constructive" angle in the way I described, since it will only give that editor an actual reason to show up to this section after I made the above post (although I'd use their showing up in this section as further evidence of hounding). The timing of this post has to do with that. It has nothing to do with WP:FRAMGATE, which I haven't been involved with at all. I noticed that the wording was changed, and apparently not for the better, and I made the above post. This is the proper venue for suggesting that the wording you changed be changed backed to the wording that was there for years. It is the appropriate place to propose any change to this policy. By suggesting that "overriding" be restored, I'm not suggesting we incorporate anything that wasn't there before....for years. By suggesting that the subjective "constructive" be replaced, I'm not suggesting anything that would enable "the nonsense that came out of T&S."

Elitematterman (NikkeKatski [Elite]), since you agree with me, would you rather "overriding" be restored, that we use "when it is not necessary for improving the encyclopedia", or do you have some other suggestion? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:05, 23 September 2019 (UTC) Updated post. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:13, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Just about the ping thing (I'll reply about the other issues below), I take stuff on and off my watchlist all the time. Given that you were disagreeing with me about something, and referring to me by name, a single ping would have been appropriate. Once I'm aware of a talk page section discussion, there's no need for repeat pings. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:41, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

I prefer the word "constructive" because I believe that word is much easier to understand, and to debate if necessary, than "overriding" which I perceive to be vague, legalistic and almost impossible to define or debate in context. Our purpose here is to build and improve an encylopedia. Anything that contributes to that goal is "constructive", a word and concept we frequently use to evaluate whether specific behaviors or long term patterns of behavior either improve or do not improve the encylopedia. If asked to evaluate whether a pattern of behavior is "overriding", I would be bewildered and would have no reasonable metric for separating "overriding" from "not overriding". What do those things even mean? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:25, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Cullen328, I'm not necessarily suggesting that "overriding" be restored (although "overriding" was there in the policy for many years without any problem), but I am suggesting that "constructive" be replaced. You and I both know of what case I'm referring to where "constructive" is already being invoked. Like I stated, anyone can believe that their following another is constructive; it's been argued times before by those who have hounded. And now it's in the policy for people to use, and I don't think that's beneficial. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:37, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

We should not be writing the language of policies and guidelines based on one specific case where an editor may have misunderstood or misused the plain meaning of a word. Instead, we should use language that is easy to understand and commonly used and properly understood on this encylopedia every day. Trying to confuse or complicate the language to foil people who are not acting in good faith is a fool's errand. Clarity comes first and and should always be the top priority. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:57, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

We write and change policies and guidelines based on specific cases of misunderstandings all the time. We do this for clarity, and that includes limiting or stopping the misuse of a policy or a guideline. It's why after this recent discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch, we changed the wording of that guideline. I am never about "trying to confuse or complicate the language to foil people who are not acting in good faith." I am about having clear language so that editors can't wikilawyer in any way. I don't find the subjective "constructive" -- the exact word that has been used by hounding people to excuse their abuse and to actually confuse and complicate situations with debates about what is or isn't constructive following -- to be clear language. Why state "constructive" and not be clear what we mean by it? Assuming that "it should be clear" what we mean has failed countless times with regard to our policies and guidelines. That is why we tweak, tweak, and tweak them. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:12, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

On the contrary, as an administrator, I find the word "constructive" to be easy to understand and a useful tool for evaluating editor behavior. "Overriding" is a word that I simply cannot understand in the context of evaluating editor behavior and any policy language that uses that term in a general sense is a policy that I will be unable to implement because of the baffling and unclear language. If you do not like "constructive" then please propose another word or words that increases clarity rather than radically reducing it. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:41, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

In my first post above, I proposed two different wordings. I stated, "We could also change 'for no constructive reason' to 'for no policy or guideline-based reason.' But following an editor around to enforce a guideline has also been criticized. Following an editor around to enforce a policy, especially one like the BLP policy, has more support. Maybe change 'for no constructive reason' to 'when it is not necessary for improving the encyclopedia'?" And when replying to you, I stated, "I'm not necessarily suggesting that 'overriding' be restored (although 'overriding' was there in the policy for many years without any problem), but I am suggesting that 'constructive' be replaced." I'm open to different wording. Per my arguments above, I just don't agree with "constructive" replacing the long-standing "overriding." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:48, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

• "Overriding" seems to me far more appropriate than "constructive". Suppose I do something which has large and extensive aspects of "disruption to another user's own enjoyment of editing, or disruption to the project generally", but which also has a very small element of doing something constructive. What I am doing is not done "for no constructive reason", so according to the wording that Tryptofish introduced what I am doing is OK, but I would venture to suggest that it isn't OK. Suppose, however, we asses the situation according to the previously existing wording. The small constructive element is not sufficient to override the much larger disruptive element, so according to that wording what I did was not OK. It seems to me so obvious that "for no overriding reason" is reasonable in the context and "for no constructive reason" isn't that I am, frankly, bewildered as to why anyone might think otherwise. Isn't it insufficient that there is just some constructive reason, as opposed to a sufficiently constructive reason to override the negative aspects of the behaviour?
• I have read, but don't understand, various objections raised above to "overriding". For example, why is "constructive" easier to understand than "overriding"? I understand both. Why is "overriding" vague and legalistic? I have no idea. Indeed, I can't figure out how it can be both, since one of the primary characteristics of legalistic language is that it aims to define things with absolute precision, in contrast to common usage, which is often imprecise and ambiguous. I am also puzzled by "... the word usually refers to a situation where something is being overridden. What is being overridden here?" Surely what is (or isn't) being overridden is the negative effects which may be regarded as harassment. In the context that seems perfectly obvious to me, but evidently not to everyone.
• In my opinion the original "for no overriding reason" was absolutely fine, and better than anything else which anyone has suggested, but since a couple of editors don't like it perhaps we could compromise on Flyer22 Reborn's suggestion of "when it is not necessary for improving the encyclopedia". JBW (talk) Formerly known as JamesBWatson 14:30, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks everyone for the comments, and I've read and thought about all of them. For starters, I decided to do some, um, archaeology, and look into the edit history of the passage in question. Here is the edit, from October 28, 2008, that put the word "overriding" into the policy: [2]. Here is the talk page section from around that time: Wikipedia talk:Harassment/Archive 1#Wikihounding. At that time, editors were changing the term from "stalking" to "hounding". There was never any discussion that I can find about the word "overriding". It's worth noting, I think, that the wording just after it was, and continues to be now, wording that places hounding at the level of "tendentiousness, personal attacks, or other disruptive behavior". I feel that there is a significant difference between that, and following someone who is violating policy, in order to enforce policy.

Regardless of whether the discussion was intentionally started just as the Fram ArbCom case ended, we must inescapably take into account what is happening at en-wiki right at this time. Look, for example, at comments just today at WT:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fram – including [3] and [4]. These issues are about to be discussed at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fram#Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment, where the discussion will be community-wide.

Where JBW says it's obvious that what gets "overridden" are "the negative effects which may be regarded as harassment", that's not obvious to me. Are those "negative effects" the harm to the project, or are they the harm to the happiness of the person making the complaint? Is it possible to make that person unhappy, while also advancing the good of the project? Yes, and that was very much at the heart of the Fram case. Someone who was repeatedly violating policy and guidelines, and was not hearing complaints about it, considered Fram's repeated pointing out of those violations to be hounding. Do editors have a "right" to violate policies and guidelines without having to respond to editors who have concerns, or to administrators who keep trying to enforce our norms? No. Are those administrators acting "constructively"? Yes. (At ArbCom, they decided to almost no one's satisfaction that it was "borderline hounding" because of the way in which Fram did it, as opposed to the fact that he did it. And the issue is sufficiently murky that ArbCom have decided to have that RfC.) In any case, if some of us find "overriding" unclear, and some of us do, it's worth rethinking it.

But JBW's comments about a small constructive element were very helpful to me in understanding the potential shortcomings of "constructive". So that got me thinking. Just being "constructive" might not, in itself, be sufficient. It has to be, sort of, very constructive. And "overriding" is clearest when we know exactly what has to be overridden.

And that gave me this idea: Each of those two words actually corrects the other word's limitations. I'd like to suggest that we change it to: "overridingly constructive". --Tryptofish (talk) 19:02, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

A very good suggestion, Tryptofish, and better, I think, than anything else that has been suggested. I support that. JBW (talk) Formerly known as JamesBWatson 20:03, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm glad. Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:34, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

I've read this entire discussion, and have come to agree that "overridingly constructive" is the best option here. -Crossroads- (talk) 22:12, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

JBW (especially JBW) and Crossroads, thanks for giving your thoughts. Tryptofish, thanks for thinking this over. Where JBW says "Suppose I do something which has large and extensive aspects of 'disruption to another user's own enjoyment of editing, or disruption to the project generally', but which also has a very small element of doing something constructive." is what I referring to when I said "But following an editor around to enforce a guideline has also been criticized. Following an editor around to enforce a policy, especially one like the BLP policy, has more support." I mean, an editor could be following another to make sure that the other is adhering to MOS:BADHEAD. But is it really necessary for that editor to do so, especially if the one doing the following has a bad history with the other editor? In that case, bringing MOS:BADHEAD to the offending editor's attention once on the editor's talk page and bringing in others to assess the matter if it continues is enough. With regard to "Is it possible to make that person unhappy, while also advancing the good of the project?", my point has been that the "at the expense of the editor's happiness" aspect should be necessary, such as stopping BLP violations. But even in those cases, the community feels better about uninvolved admins continuing to address a specific editor, such as with warnings, rather than an editor with a bad history with the other taking on the task. I'll go with "overridingly constructive" as a compromise. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:32, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

I have to hand it to trypto, thats probably the best thing we can do here. --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 13:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks everyone; I'm genuinely flattered. About the points that Flyer22 makes, I agree that these are things that the community needs to come to a consensus about, whatever one's personal opinion. If I understand correctly, the planned RfC is going to be the start-off point for such a community discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

I want to reiterate that, for me, this discussion had nothing to do with Fram/FRAMGATE. I haven't been keeping up with that case. With it mentioned in this discussion, however, I wondered if "overriding" was replaced with "constructive" because of it. But I see that it was changed days before FRAMGATE. Still, as seen by the provided links above, the "constructive" wording has affected the Fram case. So I understand why you brought it up. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:40, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Are you going to implement the agreed-upon wording, or would you rather someone else implement it? Or are you waiting for the RfC you mentioned? I don't see that we need to wait for that. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:53, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Just so you know exactly how I came to make that edit, if you go a few edits back in the edit history, someone else made some changes to that section following a discussion that I had not (to my memory) been involved in, and I made a series of copyedits to clean up after that, and I made that edit along with those. At the time, I truly thought that the change was just a minor change that didn't alter any meaning. Go figure. Had I realized that there would be any issues about it, I would not have made that edit without prior discussion, and I would not have made it after the Fram thing had begun.

I didn't make the edit yesterday, because I figured I would give it one more day in case of any late objections. But I'm happy that JBW took care of it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:10, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, Tryptofish, I'd examined the series of edits leading up to the change from "overriding." And, again, you made that change before FRAMGATE happened. I know that the disputes regarding Fram happened before FRAMGATE, meaning they are what led up to FRAMGATE, but your "overriding" change wasn't in response to FRAMGATE. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:44, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I am the editor who is being discussed here who has been accused of hounding. [5]. I've read this discussion, and I feel like what's being missed is the word "reason". Either the reason to follow an editor is constructive or it's not; it's not acceptable to follow an editor with the intention of causing them distress while also making constructive edits which override their bad faith reasons. What I also find problematic about the language is the focus on appearances and the perceptions of the effected editor: "an apparent aim of creating irritation.". I believe hounding is when the aim is to cause distress, and regardless of whether that behavior is accompanied by constructive edits. Administrators can decide whether apparently hounding behavior is hounding behavior. So then the question is, if the "reason" is purely constructive, but the followed editor feels distressed, is that simply not hounding, or must the constructiveness outweigh the distress felt by the other editor? I would say that's an impossible thing to measure, and that harassment is actually defined by intentions.
In summary, I would change the language to "for anything other than constructive reasons" and remove the word "apparent". Kolya Butternut (talk) 03:24, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Administrators, including JBW and Johnuniq, were clear on your talk page. And you unnecessarily showing up here for more confrontation, just like you unnecessarily watch my talk page to keep tabs on me (and drop in at talk pages I'm at) and try to justify that (watching my talk page) with some claim that I'm focused on/after you, is further proof that you have an issue when it comes to understanding WP:HOUNDING. Stating "I'm not going to point to a recent example of an editor arguing the 'constructive' angle in the way I described, since it will only give that editor an actual reason to show up to this section after I made the above post (although I'd use their showing up in this section as further evidence of hounding)." and "You and I both know of what case I'm referring to where 'constructive' is already being invoked." is not truly discussing you. In fact, it is a clear effort to have you stay away, as I do not want to interact with you at all. But, alas, you couldn't resist. The only reason I even noted that I was not "going to point to a recent example" (you) is because Tryptofish stated, "I'm not very persuaded by the argument that if someone who is hounding someone else thinks that they are doing it for constructive reasons they could use that to wikilawyer." Otherwise, I wouldn't have alluded to you at all. But even if I hadn't, we both know that you would have showed up here anyway. I'm not stating anything else in this section to you, except that I oppose any proposed wording you suggest. Compromise wording has already been worked out, and for valid reasons (which JBW couldn't have been clearer about). Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:49, 25 September 2019 (UTC) Updated post. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:58, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

• Since there is unambiguous consensus for "overridingly constructive" I have made the change. JBW (talk) Formerly known as JamesBWatson 13:50, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
  • JBW, I understand the unambiguous agreement you're referring to, but my understanding is that a "consensus decision takes into account all of the proper concerns raised". My concern hasn't been discussed. I may be failing to understand the concept and my comment may be quickly dismissed, but it has not yet been taken into account. I might understand what "overridingly constructive reason" is intended to mean, but I still find the overall language of the policy to be extremely unclear. If my previous proposal is dismissed, can we then just use Tryptofish's explanation of the language in place of the more vague "overridingly constructive reason" itself? Kolya Butternut (talk) 15:01, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm having an issue seeing where someone contributing in a truly constructive manner can cause warranted distress. It may very well be possible but it seems like an odd situation to me. Would anyone be so kind to point me towards an example case so that I may understand better perhaps? Or am I missing the point entirely? --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 21:15, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I hope that I don't sound like a broken record, but those are exactly the kinds of questions that came up in the Fram case and they are likely to be discussed more systemically than we can do here in the forthcoming RfC. I don't want to get drawn into the dispute just above, and so for that reason I don't want to parse what I see as the differences between the Fram example and this one. But they do need to be parsed eventually. For now, I hope that we can close the discussion here. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:23, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Elitematterman (who signs as "NikkeKatski [Elite]"): It happens all the time. I can assure you that in my administrative work I have come across that situation thousands of times. Here is one example. An editor with strong antisemitic views goes round posting Jew-hating statements in many articles. Other editors follow their editing history and revert their edits. Editors post warnings to the editor, which escalate into very strong warnings. Eventually the editor is blocked from editing. The editor who did it in the first place, who sincerely believes that Jews are evil and that he or she is doing a good job by publicising their wickedness, is genuinely distressed to find his or her good faith work destroyed, and to be subjected to what he or she perceives as personal attacks, but the actions which cause that distress are fully warranted, and the fact that they cause distress is an unfortunate downside that we have to accept. That is a fairly extreme example, rather than a typical one, but I have chosen it because that very fact makes the point clearer. However, every day there are situations where one person's actions are totally unacceptable, so that steps have to be taken against them, even if those steps run the risk of causing upset for that person. JBW (talk) Formerly known as JamesBWatson 10:27, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I support the compromise language that Tryptofish came up with. Thanks. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 22:55, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the insight. Its quite clear to me now that this can be a very complex matter. --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 15:19, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

question about outing

If someone has posted on their Twitter account their Wikipedia information, and also post hate speech there against someone whose article they then try to get deleted, can that information be used against them in an ANI? Is every single thing said off of Wikipedia simply blocked out no matter what? Dream Focus 17:53, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

They would need to post their twitter account on Wikipedia, otherwise linking a twitter account and a Wikipedia account on Wikipedia is outing. That being said you can email the information to ARBCOM if you think it needs to be dealt with. --Kyohyi (talk) 18:00, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Seconding what Kyohyi said. The connection needs to be made on Wikipedia* by the owner of the Wikipedia account - in part this is to protect against Joe jobs, but you believe the account is controlled by a Wikipedian then you can email the information to arbitration committee. You can, and should, also report the account to Twitter as hate speech is against their terms of service. *It's less clear whether it is outing if the connection is made on another WMF project - if it's linked to prominently from en.wp (e.g. their userpage here says "see my userpage at Commons" and the link is made there) then it's almost always going to be fine though; where it is less clear cut (e.g. the connection is on a subpage on the Esperanto Wiktionary and they don't make a big thing here about contributing to that project) it's better to err on the side of caution and send the info to arbcom privately. They can post the information publicly if they determine the connection is public and they feel there is benefit to doing so. Thryduulf (talk) 19:23, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

The above replies are correct. I would just add that if the editor has, on Wikipedia, given any clue that they control or otherwise approve of the Twitter account, that should be included in an email to Arbcom (see User:Arbitration Committee). Make the email brief with the point in the first sentence: should editor X be sanctioned due to Y? Unfortunately Arbcom is snowed under and an email might not be answered for a long time, but it is best. Johnuniq (talk) 22:21, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Does anyone recall a detailed discussion clarifying the boundary between hounding and disruptive editing?

Just putting this out there as I wonder if more clarification is needed (and whether we have discussed it before...?) - We have under Wikipedia:Harassment#Hounding "Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles." - hence clarifies when we can review edits for copyvios etc. and then at the other end of the spectrum we have stalking/hounding of editors (i.e. harassment). How about the grey area in the middle? Has this been looked at before and discussed?

e.g. possible scenario - left-leaning editor A edits an political article and the source and text are (let's say) a little bit open where the text in the wikipedia article is a bit more "left" (positive/whatever) than the source. Not grossly wrong but possibly a little. Now, right-leaning editor B comes along and they have a discussion and afterwards the article is reworded so that the text better matches the source. Now both editors edit political articles. Is editor B justified in looking at other edits of editor A on political articles to check and possibly reword text? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:50, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't recall anything exactly like that, but there have been two recent discussions about that boundary: #Addition to WP:HOUND and #"Overriding reason" vs. "constructive reason" in WP:HOUND, both above. I think there has been sentiment that the exact boundary is something best left to administrator judgement, rather than being something that can really be spelled out, and that the boundary is based on whether the following of an editor is about advancing polices and guidelines, or about causing unpleasantness for the person being followed, and that it needs to be clearly the former. I think if editor B in your example is just making corrections based on what editors A and B agreed upon, that would be fine. But if editor B is focusing on editor A in a single-minded and nitpicking way, that could potentially be hounding. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:07, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Also, I'm under the impression that ArbCom is working on having a community RfC that will, in part, touch on that issue. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:08, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

My eyes went square looking at the walls of text. I think some sort of RfC to get more of a quantitative feel would be good. Yeah....about that community RfC...... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:19, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support defining misconduct types I do not recall that particular discussion but these kinds of discussions are common enough to sort them into their own pages. I started Wikipedia:Misconduct to try to collect the various categories of these things. If wiki-patrol is able to put labels on behavior then we become better able to group cases, identify patterns of misconduct, and make changes to promote fairness. There are discussions in various places and eventually we need to combine those talk pages discussions on central pages too for the various categories of misconduct. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:31, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
• Regardless of the merits of the idea, it is impossible to define complex behavior as good or bad. The rich still rort the tax system despite it having enough verbage to drown an office of lawyers. Regarding the question, the answer is it depends. The whole picture has to be considered including the percentage of effort involved in pursuing each other and the benefits of their edits. Johnuniq (talk) 00:57, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
• I think the general rule is "would a typical user, looking at this, see a clear pattern of problems that require systematic correction?" If the user's edit history came up on WP:ANI, WP:AE, or some other board, would there be a general consensus that something is wrong here? To some extent it's always going to have to rely on editorial judgment, but here's some points I'd make (apologies for the wall-of-text, but if we're talking definitions and guidelines, I think it's important to break things down into categories):

• The question of "could I reasonably get ANI to reach a consensus that the user's edits are a problem, taken as a whole" is a good start. Another possible way of looking at it - suppose, after user B makes a bunch of changes to user A's edits, user A takes objection to the changes and goes back to revert all of them. If this then ended up at WP:ANI, would there be a general consensus that A was in the wrong and B was in the right? Or would they call it a bunch of content disputes? If it's the former, B is probably in the clear; if it's the latter then what B did has to be stopped, because otherwise we'd see content disputes spill out over the entire wiki in ways that make WP:BATTLEGROUND problems even worse.
• I think it is almost always acceptable to check closely related articles for the same extremely specific problem or dispute, as a one-time thing - eg. if there's a content dispute about one specific quote, or the coverage of one specific event, or some other very narrow thing that you've realized one editor just added to a bunch of articles, I think it's always reasonable to check their edit history and go over what's essentially the same edit made on multiple pages, since that still falls under the general locus of one dispute and discourages things like WP:COATRACK or people trying to push something through by editing a bunch of articles all at once (generally I feel mass edits without a clear consensus behind them are questionable due to the difficulty of dealing with them - of course that also applies to mass-reverts, but eg. putting together a list of every place the discussions touch on and placing notices to centralize discussions is reasonable.) Particularly when an editor makes a bunch of very similar edits on related articles, it's reasonable to object on all of them or to try and centralize discussions. But that requires that everything fall reasonably under one core reasonably-narrow dispute that B could articulate - it doesn't extend to eg. obsessively double-checking everything A does in an entire topic area. As a general guideline, you shouldn't even need to check their edit history most of the time for this because the related articles will be obvious anyway.
• Perhaps related to the above, the length of time you do something for matters as well. Which isn't to say it's the only thing that matters - checking every single edit an editor made just because you're in a dispute with them is not OK, even if you only do it once - but the most serious types of WP:HOUNDING continue for extended periods of time. And, conversely, it's hard to justify continuously following a user's edits like that - if there's a constant problem that requires correction, it should be brought up on an appropriate editor-conduct board, and if there isn't then the "fix one specific problem" and "catch all instances of one specific narrow dispute" justifications rapidly disappear when you're following someone's edits for an extended period. So "repeatedly seems to follow the user over an extended period of time" would be a major alarm.

Also of course sometimes you'll bump into another editor all over the place because you edit the same topic area. --Aquillion (talk) 04:51, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm generally of the mind that this is the kind of thing that cannot be quantified. And a caution that comes to mind about the ANI test is that ANI is sometimes a lousy measure because warring camps often show up to yell at each other. But, that said, I do like the idea of trying to list some of the things that can distinguish acceptable from unacceptable behavior. If nothing else, I think it's useful to find out whether there are things editors tend to agree on, or things that turn out to lack consensus. Just throwing out some thoughts that I haven't really worked on as they pop into my mind:

Things that tend to be acceptable:

1. The editor being followed is violating policies and guidelines, and the editor doing the following is simply seeking to uphold those norms.
2. The editor doing the following has previously been a frequent contributor in the topic area where there is overlap.
3. The following is done in a polite and friendly way.
4. The interactions take place only briefly, and are not a chronic pattern.
5. The editor doing the following is also directing attention to a lot of related edits by editors other than the editor being followed, rather than focusing narrowly.

Things that tend to be associated with hounding:

1. There is no obvious and overriding policy reason to be monitoring the other editor's work.
2. The editor doing the following suddenly takes an interest in an area they never edited in before, in order to follow the other editor.
3. There is an unfriendly or menacing tone to the way the following is done.
4. The following of the other editor is a chronic pattern over time.
5. The editor doing the following is conspicuously focused on the editor they are following.

None of these criteria, taken alone, proves much of anything. Rather, it's the preponderance of the pattern. To be acceptable, there should be a clear preponderance of the acceptable criteria. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:48, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Automated detection of Wikipedia misconduct!, 15-minute video presentation of the research paper!

• AI can do this Wikiconference:2019 is happening right now. In wikiconference:Submissions:2019/Machine learning for wiki by university students I am presenting a talk including an overview of meta:Automatic Detection of Online Abuse, which is an attempt to make predictions of misconduct on Wikipedia. The more examples we have of users getting blocked for a particular cause, the easier it is to use automated support to report their behavior and identify patterns of abuse. Humans alone cannot review and analyze lots of patterns in every case, but bots can point out suspicious patterns and ask humans to review just those. This research product had one result. There will be countless other attempts to do this from now on.

@Tryptofish and Aquillion: If you converted your ideas of what hounding is to a human readable policy, then humans could apply that in a few cases to stage the field for bots to supplement human review in the future. If we had labeled cases which were specifically hounding then that would help make the automation more precise. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:32, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

What happens if a bot starts hounding me? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:59, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Got you covered - we are already making bots to seek out and punish earlier designed bots gone rogue. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:14, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Hehehe. Will have a read. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:23, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Is suggesting harassment (outing) an indef ban offence or less?

In relation to the incident discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Unblock_request_now_at_two+_weeks,_editor_apologized,_seems_simple_enough?, where an editor suggested that another editor's identity should be revealed, how seriously do we wish to reprimand them? In this particular case, the editor was indef banned for making such a suggestion (to be clear, no outing has occurred, but a suggestion was made, effectively saying that "a newspaper that mentioned editor X should have revealed his identity... revealing it would be informative".). Should such a suggestion, made on wiki, merit 1) indef ban 2) shorter duration ban 3) warning 4) no action 5) something else? There is no consensus in the thread about this (so far only two admins have commented on this issue). I think it might be helpful to discuss this here and formulate a policy for future incidents. Personally I think that anyone who suggests some form or harassment should be sternly warned, and repeated offenders might merit an interaction ban, but I wouldn't go as far as a full editing ban for merely making a tactless suggestion. Thoughts? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:51, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• Per not bureaucracy, policies don't cover all possible situations. It all depends. Johnuniq (talk) 03:01, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• You keep saying it depends. On what? On who editor X's friends are? On what has been rumoured to have happened off-wiki in BADPLACES you can't link to, only summarize (as one does)? What does it depend on JohnuniQ? 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 03:46, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• The context. Johnuniq (talk) 05:50, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• whose context? yours? mine? the deleted one? the banner-bot's blocker-bot's?

& the suprasegmental data, where is it stored? As I recall, the case Piotrus speaks about is complicated. Bots (simply the best at go & chess) like rules. 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 14:35, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• Nobody has been banned. Do you not understand the distinction between WP:BAN and WP:BLOCK? There is an unblock appeal pending. El_C 03:49, 10 November 2019 (UTC)