User talk:WMFOffice/Archives/2022

How we will see unregistered users

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Regarding Zh.WP checkuser re-introduction

Hello, there are some questions regarding Chinese Wikipedia Checkuser re-introduction:

1. In the announcement"voting-eligible users can safely register their voice in case they have lost confidence in a CU in-between elections." What is detailed procedure of it?
2. All successful Zh.WP CU candidates to be trained in CU community How can training? Training in where? How much time to train a Checkuser?
3. There was an incident occurred in 2017 that a local Checkuser revealed CU data publicly. I understand T&S cannot publish detail because of the privacy and legal reason. But the incident has been resolved already?
4. There was a proposal in the local discussion that allow asking for Stewards CU investigation if there are complicated cases while even there are local Checkusers. Is this proposal can allowable?
5. There is the concern of hardly appealing local CU result in the local discussion. Because of the language gap. Some local users may not be fluent in English. Is there any method that can help local community members appealing easily?

FYI: the local discussion zh:Wikipedia:互助客栈/方针#Zh.WP_checkuser_re-introduction／重新引入中文維基百科用戶查核權限

Thank you. SCP-2000 15:18, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

cc @Mdennis (WMF): Thanks. SCP-2000 15:37, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

1. The community needs to decide what defines an eligible voter. The safe elections are SecurePoll elections. Communities have devised different ways to indicate a loss of confidence in-between regular elections. For example, German language Wikipedia uses this system mandatorily.
2. The global volunteer community and the Foundation would need to develop a training module together. It could be hosted on learn.wiki and probably take around 2-4h total.
3. By default, the Foundation does not publicly discuss details or the status of cases it investigates.
4. That’s a conversation for the local community to have with the stewards directly. The Foundation requires the relevant policies and standards to be respected but the question of whether a local CU or a steward explores a case depends on local and global community issues, not the Foundation’s view alone.
5. The first layer of control against Checkuser abuse are other Checkusers. That is why the global CheckUser policy always requires to have a local team of two people. So that there are always other people who can see the CU data and checks and balances exist. If there are still reasons for concern and abuse of CU tools suspected, such concerns can always be brought to the Ombuds Commission, where problems can be filed in any language.

Hope the above helps clarify the community's questions. We have also posted this response to the Zh.WP's thread that you linked above. Thanks. --WMFOffice (talk) 03:49, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello, thanks for your response. Here is the follow-up question. Is there any another method and measure can avoid CUer leaking CU data?

In the local community, there is concern about CUer may leak CU data. A community member mentioned the 2017 incident. Previous CUers had sufficient knowledge of privacy policy definitely and then they still violated the policy. Also, WNF has not any Office Action that targets a particular CUer(s). They doubted if training and monitoring are enough to prevent the same kind of incident happened again and only can do is revoking all CUers permission. Thanks. cc@Mdennis (WMF) and JEissfeldt (WMF): SCP-2000 12:12, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@SCP-2000 obviously I'm not T&S, but I would note that there's no way that anyone could prevent any wilful release of CU data. It can be deterred, by sanctioning wilful releases - and though T&S could probably do that, so could zh-wiki. If you really wanted you could have a project decision to sanction anyone who had their confidential data access revoked for cause (revocation for issues outside a user's control is always marked by the WMF, in my experience). I don't know if enough information is, or could, be given to make it clear if someone released information deliberately or just accidentally. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:15, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello @SCP-2000: Thanks for the follow-up question. As you are aware that the Foundation has taken a number of steps to mitigate that risk including the 2021 adjustment of its Confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information. The Foundation also takes into account the risk factor both coming from internally and externally before accepting the signature from those who are exposed to private information and assesses that risk factor regularly to determine whether a risk actually exists or not. We can’t discuss a particular case for obvious legal and privacy reasons but when an incident happens, the relevant Foundation team in collaboration with the Legal team assesses the situation and builds a mitigation plan. Said that our collaborative works and the use of these types of sensitive access are built on trust. And we believe, the local community has the most important role to play in building that trust. Hope this helps. Thanks. WMFOffice (talk) 08:55, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

"CCP"?

What does CCP mean? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 23:01, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

A “petition”

Hello, I am a user of the Chinese Wikipedia, and in view of the fact that Baidu has copied the lines of the Chinese Wikipedia entry without following the relevant license agreement, this is strictly speaking a copyright infringement. Therefore, our user proposes that the WMF Foundation initiate a copyright infringement lawsuit against Baidu on its behalf. I would like to ask this account representing the Foundation whether such a proposal and related actions are feasible？

I sincerely hope to get your reply, thanks——WMLO (talk) 15:55, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Why?

Hello, Could you please explain the reason for blocking many accounts at Arabic Wikipedia, including many Admins? Dr-Taher (talk) 16:14, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello, Dr-Taher. We apologise that we were not able to provide advance notice of this action, which I’m sure came as a shock to you and other users in the region. Implementing Trust and Safety actions remains a time consuming process, as they are fortunately still rather rare, and we needed to secure the accounts before posting. Under our legal frameworks, we are not able to share more information than was posted here, but in short the issue relates to violations of our Terms of Use such that the Foundation and its attorneys have determined that we need to terminate access to those individuals. We know that it would be better to be able to provide details to other users, who will undoubtedly find such actions alarming without that information, but unfortunately we are not able to say more. –WMFOffice (talk) 17:18, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. But our society is confused, because those 7 admins are very trusted, and the lack of information increases this confusion. Dr-Taher (talk) 17:55, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

• Hello, what do you expected us to do? Not asking about further information or any explanation? 7 admins of our main project are blocked how do you want us to deal with this without knowing the reasons? Thanks for your efforts. NANöR (talk) 17:56, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

  We completely understand the confusion, and we understand why you would inquire. I wish that we were able to share more information with you. The Foundation has a responsibility to enforce the Terms of Use when we become aware of serious issues. An action of this scope is unprecedented and would not have been taken unless we had believed it essential. WMFOffice (talk) 13:53, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

  The reason for the ban is briefly explained here * Pppery * _{it has begun} 23:23, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

  @Pppery, We have a copy of that "ambiguous" text. It doesn't explain anything! Dr-Taher (talk) 05:55, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I believe that the global community would want an explanation for this as some of these users are trusted in wikis they edit. Do hope to see a bluelink for Office actions/December 2022 statement (in-line with zhwiki ban and Office actions/September 2021 statement). --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 14:18, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello @Minorax, thank you for sharing your suggestion to create an on-wiki page with information around the December 6 Office Actions. We can certainly do that if you think this would be helpful, although we should note that we would not be able to share any additional information than already shared in the Wikimedia-l announcement about this set of Office Actions, due to privacy reasons. WMFOffice (talk) 16:04, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

As Wikimedia-l is not readily available and is only in English, it'll definitely be a plus if it is created on-wiki for translation. --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 10:40, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello @Minorax, thank you for getting back to us and pointing out the access challenges of content shared on mailing lists due to lack of translation options there. We hear you and the statement is available on Meta in the now-blue link that you previously shared, so that it can be translated to other languages.WMFOffice (talk) 14:48, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I understand the legal and safety reasons. But I do hope WMF can provide little bit more information, for example when this incident has started from, which Wikimedia Projects were mainly affected by these banned users 's behaviour, what they were do (e.g. Harassment, canvassing, sockpuppet). Also, could these banned users submit appeal to Case Review Committee? Thanks. --SCP-2000 17:52, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

@SCP-2000's suggestion looks helpful. The global community should get to know the explicit background of this incident and as such WMF should provide more information to keep the things transparent, of course, while taking care of legal and safety reasons. For example, the famous orangemoody case. ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 10:06, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello @SCP-2000  Thank you for reaching out. We know that it appears that this action came from nowhere. We want to assure you that we take such actions reluctantly and only after extensive research.  Unfortunately, we can’t share more information beyond what we’ve already shared in the Wikimedia-l announcement out of respect for user privacy. WMFOffice (talk) 15:51, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Access to nonpublic personal data policy/Noticeboard

You may want to update this page (removing banned users). GZWDer (talk) 15:44, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing it out. We have now also removed them from public noticeboard. --WMFOffice (talk) 06:13, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

@WMFOffice You may want to update that page again for removing Waggie. Lemonaka (talk) 20:01, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for catching this, Lemonaka. We have removed the user from the NDA Noticeboard. WMFOffice (talk) 09:23, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

User:4nn1l2test

Dear Wikimedia Foundation Office, This account is an alt of globally banned User:4nn1l2, this account needs a ban? Thanks! AlPaD (talk) 17:45, 18 December 2022 (UTC)