Wikimedia Foundation/Legal/Update to banner and logo policies
This page documents the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department's initiative to review and make recommendations on updates to policies and procedures governing decisions to run project banners or make temporary logo changes.
The initiative is primarily concerned with actions that commemorate, advocate for, or comment on events or positions that are “external” to the Wikimedia movement. External topics are ones that are not confined to Wikimedia projects and spaces, in contrast to “internal” topics that are specifically about the Wikimedia projects.
Examples of internal topics that may lead to a special banner or temporary logo change include project content milestones, photo contests, and community events (such as conferences and edit-a-thons). Examples of external topics include current events in the news, proposed legislation, and non-Wikimedia events and anniversaries.
Purpose and goals
This initiative seeks to establish global policies and procedures to ensure that individual projects are applying a shared movement-wide set of values, expectations, and processes when making decisions about running banners and temporarily changing logos. These policies will be informed by community practices on projects, primarily aiming to encode existing community expectations about when and how to comment on external events, and the process for doing so.
Currently, each Wikimedia project has autonomy in determining when to run banners (or other special notices and pages, including blackouts) or temporarily change logos. While this autonomy is generally valued, decisions involving Wikimedia’s shared brands have broader implications. These decisions may require documentation and potentially Wikimedia Foundation involvement.
Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia brands are a shared resource that represent our movement and values to the world. The meaning of these brands is built from the accumulation of all community (and Foundation) decisions. Decisions to associate Wikipedia with an external cause or position are particularly impactful, and affect the entirety of the Wikimedia movement. For that reason, it is crucial that these decisions are aligned with a common set of movement-wide values.
Additionally, there may be legal considerations to running banners or changing logos in order to take a position on an external topic. Under United States law, the Wikimedia Foundation has obligations to track and report activity that relates to particular legislation (“lobbying”), and is prohibited from supporting or opposing political candidates (“political campaign activity”). Therefore, it is essential to ensure that project community decisions about banners and logos do not violate these legal restrictions.
This initiative is being led by Chuck Roslof, Principal Legal Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, with support from others in the Advancement, Communications, and Legal departments.
Timeline and overview
This initiative will have three phases:
- Phase 1: December 2024 – February 2025
- Collecting examples of past community discussions about banners and logo changes (including examples when the proposed project actions were not approved)
- Community submission of examples
- Phase 2: March – April 2025
- Internal review of phase 1 discovery
- Community discussion around findings and possible recommendations
- Phase 3: April – July 2025
- Foundation adoption and rollout of finalized recommendations
Phase 1: Collecting precedents (Research and discovery)
In order to develop policy proposals, we need to know how communities have previously made decisions about running banners or temporarily changing project logos. There is a brief list of some significant examples on the Project-wide protests page, but having more examples, from as many different projects as possible, will improve the resulting policies. If you know of an example, please add it to the table below, mention it on the initiative's talk page, or email it to croslof
wikimedia.org.
| Topic (with link to discussion) | Project | Approved (locally) | Start Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Media law in Italy | Italian Wikipedia | Yes | October 4, 2011 | October 6, 2011 |
| Copyright law in the United States (SOPA) | English Wikipedia | Yes | January 18, 2012 | January 18, 2012 |
| Internet censorship law in Russia | Russian Wikipedia | Yes | July 10, 2012 | July 10, 2012 |
| Cybercrime law in the Philippines | Tagalog Wikipedia | No | ||
| Freedom of Panorama in the European Union | Multiple Wikipedias | Yes | 2015 | 2015 |
| Block of Wikipedia in Turkey | Italian Wikipedia | Yes | May 1, 2017 | May 31, 2017 |
| Copyright law in Australia | English Wikipedia | Yes | May 22, 2017 | June 19, 2017 |
| Upload filter campaign: Thanks, but no thanks | German Wikipedia | No | May 2, 2018 | May 4, 2018 |
| Copyright in the European Union 1 | Multiple Wikipedias | Yes | June 29, 2018 | July 4, 2018 |
| European Election | Multiple Wikipedias | Yes | May 23, 2019 | May 26, 2019 |
| Copyright in the European Union 2 | Multiple Wikipedias | Yes | March 21, 2019 | March 25, 2019 |
| Public money, public good | German Wikipedia | No | April 20, 2020 | April 30, 2020 |
| Black Lives Matter | English Wikipedia | No | June 2020 | |
| Russian invasion of Ukraine | Ukrainian Wikipedia | Yes | 2022 | ongoing |
| Russian invasion of Ukraine | Georgian Wikipedia | Yes | March 6, 2022 | ??? |
| Israel–Hamas war | Arabic Wikipedia | Yes | December 23, 2023 | January 19, 2025 |
| Defamation law in Ukraine | Ukrainian Wikipedia | Yes | October 1, 2012 | October 2, 2012 |
| Anti-protest laws in Ukraine | Ukrainian Wikipedia | Yes | January 21, 2014 | January 21, 2014 |
| Russian invasion of Ukraine | Ukrainian Wikisource | Yes | March 2, 2022 | ??? |
| Detention of Bassel Khartabil | Multiple Wikipedias | No |
Relevant existing policies and procedures
The policies and procedures listed below are relevant to this initiative. Not all of them will necessarily require updates, and new policies may need to be written, but they provide an outline of the existing structures and guidelines.