Wikipedia is a social machine in which people and software tools interact to build an encyclopedia. In considering the court case Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation, here are some of the technologies which affect this case.

The "black lock" is a tool which the Wikimedia Foundation applies to completely disallow anyone from editing a given Wikipedia article. Right now, the only English Wikipedia article with a block lock on it is Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation. In other language Wikipedia versions, articles with black locks include (x y z).

"Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia which anyone can edit", and the Wikipedia community wants to encourage discussion and development for all Wikipedia articles. Applying a black lock to an article immediately maximizes attention to that topic. There is no discrete way to use this feature, and attempts to use the black lock to gain privacy will only trigger the Streisand effect.

The black lock is part of Wikipedia:Protection policy, which are other article locking mechanisms for other purpose. The other locks are in the control of Wikipedia volunteer administrators, not the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia administrators almost always use locks as a way to halt unproductive conflict within Wikipedia articles, and to instead direct editorial disputes to the associated Wikipedia talk page where editors can permanently and publicly log their article critiques while also seeking editorial consensus with their colleagues.

The Wikipedia community places high value on global access to Wikipedia for both readers and editors. Everyone has the right to read Wikipedia, and everyone has the right to edit Wikipedia. Regarding readers, Wikipedia is the rare website which seeks to avoid spying on and tracking its readers. In the context of the Asian News International case, the more relevant right is safety and privacy for Wikipedia editors.

The safety and privacy protection extends to editors of who are here to build an encyclopedia. The usual activity for that is identifying reliable sources, then summarizing and citing those sources in Wikipedia articles as an editor. Based on information which the Wikipedia community has, the editors in the Asian News International case are good editors doing good editing in the Wikipedia way.

Editors have a right to privacy as described in the Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy. One way that Wikipedia offers privacy is by allowing editors to register user accounts then edit through a username, rather than their offline legal identity. Information which might be associated with a user account includes an email address and the IP addresses from which that user edits. IP addresses are private, and the Wikimedia Foundation resists sharing them.

In the case of Asian News International, that organization asked the Delhi High Court to order the Wikimedia Foundation to reveal the IP addresses of three editors who had edited the article about the organization. Editors who have edited this article have reported distress at this news. The Wikipedia community strongly objects to revealing the IP address of users, as this privacy protection is one of the foundations of trust between Wikimedia users and the Wikimedia Foundation. For more reactions, check the public community discussion forums on the subject.

English Wikipedia intensely and continuously discusses editor privacy, including in the context of moderation and a class of volunteers who investigate misconduct in the Wikipedia:CheckUser role. It is also common knowledge that Wikimedia projects generally disallow editing through Virtual private networks or Tor according to the meta:No open proxies rule. Right now in October 2024, the big news in this domain is that the Wikimedia Foundation is rolling out a new type of account called "Temporary Accounts" which permit users to edit for a limited time, then have certain private account information deleted. All of this features and tools include a complex interplay of Wikipedia editors governing the project with a mix of social consensus and technological tools to manifest community design and wishes.

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