Goalposts; Oy vexit

Your Traffic Reports for the weeks of June 12-18 and June 19-25, 2016.

Goalposts (June 12-18, 2016): It is football time in Europe, with UEFA Euro 2016 rising to #1 this week, and also in the New World, with Copa América Centenario (#6) being hosted in the United States. The killing of Christina Grimmie continued near the top of the chart for another week, this time at #2, and the theme of death continued with the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (#6) (though the weapon used was not an AR-15 (#8)), as well as Jo Cox (#7). Well outside the Top 10, the new movie Finding Dory is a blockbuster in movie theatres, but only #19 on our chart, because young kids don't visit Wikipedia about movies as much as adults do. Their older siblings do, however, putting The Conjuring 2 at #3, and two other topics related to the film in the WP:TOP25 this week.

For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED. For the most popular articles that ORES models predict are low quality, see WP:POPULARLOWQUALITY.

For the week of June 12 to 19, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	UEFA Euro 2016		2,332,785		Up from #4 last week, with almost 900,000 more views. For the latest go-round, held in France, the European international football tournament has been expanded from 16 to 24 teams, which means that most of the British Isles (bar Scotland) are competing together for the first time in decades. Of course, England's fans marked the occasion with a bit of hooliganism, as if the "Brexit" referendum weren't enough of a snub to Europe.
2	Christina Grimmie		2,264,084		Up 700,000 views from last week. Some things are difficult to talk about. It is a sad fact of American life that, just as people's lives can rise on a dime, so too can they end. That a minor singing celebrity who had built her entire career on her relationship with her fans could be brought down by a single, random member of her fandom who happened to have a gun is both tragic and infuriating. That it happened in Orlando, Florida, now feels like a strange prelude to the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting.
3	The Conjuring 2		1,474,929		Up from #7 last week with twice as many views. Fans of the supernatural may take some issue with the veracity of demonologist ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren (#13), but there's no denying that The Conjuring (#22), the first film based on their case files, was a highly effective (and highly successful) spookfest. The sequel, which reunites stars Vera Farmiga (pictured) and Patrick Wilson, has proven just as popular, with a solid 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and $91 million worldwide grossed in just three days—and $186 million through June 19.
4	Karl Landsteiner		1,310,447		A Google Doodle celebrated the 148th birthday of the biologist and physician who discovered the ABO blood group system in 1901. For this discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930.
5	2016 Orlando nightclub shooting		1,216,345		On June 12, 29-year-old Omar Mateen went to the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and killed 49 people. It was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman and the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in U.S. history. It seems pretty apparent these mass killings will continue occur unless the United States takes strong action of some sort, but no unified solution seems possible in the current political climate.
6	Copa América Centenario		1,175,857		The exhibition tournament between all ten members of CONMEBOL (the South American football federation) and six members of CONCACAF (the North American football federation) to celebrate 100 years of the South American international cup, the Copa America, kicked off on June 3.
7	Jo Cox		1,065,668		Cox was a British Labour Party politician, a rising star in British politics, and Member of Parliament (MP). On June 16, Cox was shot and stabbed to death in Birstall by a 52-year-old man who self-identified as a British nationalist. So much hate.
8	AR-15		921,319		Apparently this was not the weapon used in the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (#5), though it was initially reported to be. That weapon was actually a SIG Sauer MCX. The use of AR-15s in mass shootings used to have a section at AR-15, but at the moment it appears to have been removed—is its effectiveness in mass shootings not notable?[1].
9	O. J. Simpson		909,514		At first I assumed that American Crime Story, which put Simpson on this chart a few months ago, had restarted. Apparently not. Instead it was the network debut of O.J.: Made in America, a five part miniseries. It seems O.J. Simpson stories could soon rival the status World War II movies once had as a television time-filler.
10	Game of Thrones (season 6)		861,883		The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April. With only a few episodes left in this season, we can expect it stay up on the chart.

Oy vexit* (June 19-25, 2016): I would get this week. I have been told many times that I should be more politically impartial. Well if you want that from me this week, tough. I am a British citizen and a Londoner, and as such have borne witness to the venomous campaign that the EU referendum has created. I voted to remain, and I still believe that was the right choice. But the British people saw differently, and now we must live with the consequences. Already the politicians, like Boris Johnson, who spearheaded this vile spectacle and fed off the fumes, are now backtracking much of the grandiose promises and claims that they made, so it will be interesting to see if any of the hate they dredged up gets thrown back on them.

For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED. For the most popular articles that ORES models predict are low quality, see WP:POPULARLOWQUALITY.

For the week of June 19 to 26, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the TopViews, were:

(*"Oy vey" is a Yiddish expression of dismay and Milo apologizes in advance to anyone who wants to rightfully kvetch at his adding this title to Serendipodous's fine commentary.)

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	UEFA Euro 2016		3,406,686		Holding steady for a second week, with a jump of 700,000 views. This has been a wild week, with all the laws of the sport seemingly upended. Tiny Wales beat giant Russia 3-0, while Ireland beat former World Cup winners Italy. Iceland, a country with a population smaller than Coventry, England, beat Austria 2-1, while Hungary held imploding former giants Portugal to a 3-3 draw, and Croatia beat cup holders Spain.
2	Anton Yelchin		1,997,309		As if the list of tragic deaths this year wasn't long enough, 2016 had to take yet another talent before his time. Perhaps best known for playing Pavel Chekov in the revamped Star Trek film series, Anton Yelchin was a fixture in the independent film scene before a car accident ended what stood to be a stellar career.
3	European Union		1,974,203		The world's largest trading bloc got hit with an axe this week when the UK decided to leave in a referendum. No one knows where we go from here; perhaps the EU will be able to contain the damage, or it may lead to ever more referendums, and the Union's ultimate disintegration. Some may cheer this, Vladimir Putin in particular. But the potential undermining of the post-World War II global order has put many on edge.
4	LeBron James		1,764,059		LeBron, as everyone calls him, led the Cleveland Cavaliers to their first ever NBA championship on June 20, scoring 27 of his team's 93 points and securing the MVP.
5	United Kingdom withdrawal from the European Union		1,193,830		To be clear, this hasn't actually happened yet; the Referendum was only advisory and Parliament could still overturn it, though that is admittedly unlikely. Even if it does pass, however, it is unlikely to accomplish what those who voted for it wanted: immigrants are still likely to come in, and most of the EU's rules will still apply, since the UK wants to trade with Europe. But the shockwave its mere suggestion has sent through the markets has had many Brexiteers rethinking their vote.
6	Game of Thrones (season 6)		1,038,832		Numbers are up by over 100,000 this week, and it's not hard to see why. Silly title aside, this week's episode, The Battle of the Bastards, was a full-on Braveheart-style mediaeval war epic with cinematic production values.
7	Finding Dory		970,801		When it was released in 2003, Finding Nemo quickly became Pixar's most financially successful film up to that time, launching the cinemagoing careers of millions of children. 13 years later, most of those kids are in college, and they are rushing back to relive their childhoods with this long-awaited sequel which, with the help of a new generation of children, will likely soon be Pixar's most financially successful film ever.
8	United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016		906,451		What's fascinating about that map is how little overlap it reveals: Scotland voted to stay; England and Wales (outside the London commuter belt) voted to leave. Catholic Northern Ireland voted to stay; Protestant Northern Ireland voted to leave. This referendum wasn't about politics; it was about identity. It was about who you were, where you were and which society you belonged to. Which is why I don't think the wounds will easily heal.
9	Money in the Bank (2016)		855,492		WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was held at the T-Mobile Arena (pictured) on 19 June.
10	The Conjuring 2		833,756		Fans of the supernatural may take some issue with the veracity of demonologist ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren, but there's no denying that The Conjuring, the first film based on their case files, was a highly effective (and highly successful) spookfest. The sequel, which reunites stars Vera Farmiga (pictured) and Patrick Wilson, has proven just as popular, with a solid 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and $242 million grossed worldwide through June 25.

Professor Taner Akçam, falsely branded a terrorist in Wikipedia ten years ago

All Blacks coach Steve Hansen doesn't think much of Wikipedia's reliability, and for a good reason. Wikipedia has tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of biographies of sportspeople, and they are both prone to vandalism (see the 1 July article in Fansided for another example illustrating the problem) and often not very diligently watched. Caveat lector.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-07-04/Technology report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-07-04/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-07-04/Opinion

2016-07-04

Board unanimously appoints Katherine Maher as new WMF executive director; Wikimedia lawsuits in France and Germany

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By Tony1 and Andreas Kolbe

Board unanimously appoints Katherine Maher as new WMF executive director

In his opening address to Wikimania 2016, co-founder Jimmy Wales announced that Katherine Maher will be the new executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation:

Jimmy Wales announces the Board's decision to appoint Katherine Maher as the WMF's third executive director (23 min 20 s).

“

Katherine has been a steady force of leadership and joy and commitment to Wikimedia values since joining the Foundation in 2014. She's been a long-time advocate, even before joining us, of global open communities. As you probably are aware, she's been our head of communications before she took on the executive director role. ... Katherine has something that many in the tech world find easy to lose—what I call "intuitive empathy". She truly understands that our community is about people, and that people come before technology. She fosters the human connections through communication and astute governance ... I have a big, big announcement. Yesterday in our Board meeting, in a unanimous vote, we appointed Katherine as ED of the Wikimedia Foundation [rapturous applause, asks Katherine to come forward]. This ended her time as interim, it ended our search for an executive director. This is not just a surprise decision to all of you; it was a surprise decision to those of us on the Board. We came into the meeting, we heard a report from the staff engagement survey, we had all been talking to staff, ... the level of engagement, excitement, positive feelings about coming to work every day, has been absolutely astonishing since Katherine took the reins, and we all looked at each other in the Board meeting [to] discuss the executive search, and we [said to each other] what are we looking for? Here we are! This is what we wanted all along. So, here's Katherine.

”

Luis Villa, lawyer, programmer, and former C-level at the Foundation directs his main advice to the Board.

The Foundation published a press release on 24 June announcing the appointment, which has come after the tumultuous events surrounding the early departure of the previous ED, Lila Tretikov, after less than 18 months in the job. Maher was appointed interim ED starting 14 March, largely on the basis of advice from the WMF's "C-level" executive team, and shortly after was interviewed by the Signpost. A search to fill the post in a permanent capacity began in May.

Soon after Maher's permanent appointment, the Signpost asked seven prominent Wikimedians what, in their view, are the most urgent priorities for her to pursue over the next 12–18 months. Luis Villa (LuisVilla) is a lawyer and programmer who worked as deputy general counsel and then senior director of community engagement at the WMF for three years until his departure in early 2016. We approached him explicitly because of his close experience within the organisation, from which he now has a little distance:

Josh Lim suggests more responsiveness to the changing needs of communities in developing countries

“

Katherine will be an excellent ED, but her job is very difficult: the movement faces many challenges, and WMF has relatively limited resources. So I won't second-guess her by picking any immediate priorities. The board, however, has clear urgent priorities: Strategy: The board shares blame for the Knowledge Engine fiasco, because they did not effectively help set strategy. It must work with Katherine to define strategy, and lead editors to make it a movement strategy, not just a WMF strategy. Board effectiveness: The board must do a post-mortem of their work of the past two years (staff/exec/ED turnover, situation with James H., Knowledge Engine, etc.), and implement solutions for the problems they identify (for example, by improving their HR capacity or improving board member recruitment).

”

Vassia Atanassova prioritises community trust, transparency, and engagement.

In the same address at Wikimania, Jimmy Wales announced Emily Temple-Woods (Keilana) as joint Wikipedian of the Year, along with Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (Rosiestep) (separately covered in this edition). Their concerns were shared by a number of the respondents. Temple-Woods told us: "I think the most important thing Katherine will need to do at the beginning of her tenure is to rebuild trust between the WMF and the community. Everything else can come from that." Stephenson-Goodknight believes "Katherine's most urgent priority is assuring there's a healthy workplace environment for staff and movement environment for the community."

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor) is the president of Wikimedia Philippines: "I feel that her main priority at this time should be to rebuild trust in the WMF and reaffirming that it is on the community's side. We've seen what happens when change comes from above and is "dictated" to communities; let's hope Katherine's leadership will see more empowering leadership coming from the ground up, and will in turn lead to meaningful outcomes that will allow the WMF to be more responsive to the changing needs of our movement, especially as it pertains to communities in developing countries where the WMF continues to do poorly."

The two runners-up for Wikipedian of the Year were Vassia Atanassova (Spiritia), a member of the Wikimedians of Bulgaria user group, and Mardetanha, a long-time steward and Farsi-speaker. Atanassova said: "one of the urgent priorities should be returning the community's trust in the capability of the Board and the ED to be transparent and engaging the community in the process of decision and policy making." Mardetanha told us: "I think the ED has to work on lost trust [between the] WMF and community, and to have better connection with local groups. The ED needs to pay a lot of attention to the communities from weaker countries—to be reachable to community members, to have better oversight on WMF expenses, and to make the hiring process more transparent."

Risker stresses executive hiring, stabilisation, and then progressive change.

Risker currently serves on the Wikimedia Foundation's Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), which scrutinises and recommends funding for large bids by eligible WMF affiliates. She is a former member of the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee:

“

In the first 12–18 months, I'd say a very early priority is for Katherine to fill in the gaps at the executive level, especially the CTO role. The newly constituted Board has already made it clear in public comments that the development of a strategy and some longer range planning is a significant priority—one that other communities can depend on in order to establish their plans. From my own perspective, I think the full appointment will allow for stabilization and then progressive, considered changes as movement priorities are re-examined and modified.

”

T

Wikimedia lawsuits in France and Germany

There were important developments in two Wikimedia lawsuits in June: a victory in France, and a defeat in Germany.

As reported on the Wikimedia blog, the Paris Court of Appeals has ruled in favour of the Wikimedia Foundation in a right-of-response suit, defending the Foundation’s status as a hosting provider:

The Court acknowledged that the Foundation merely hosts user-uploaded content and does not have knowledge or control over the data stored as it merely provides, free of charge, “the infrastructures and the organization framework allowing internet users wishing to do so, to build projects by contributing and editing content themselves” without playing any active role.

As a result, the Foundation does not have an obligation to allow the complainant, Élizabeth Teissier, a French astrologer, to make her own posting on Wikipedia in response to an article about her.

The defeat in the German case does not seem to have been reported on the Wikimedia Foundation blog. As described in a WMF blog post last November, the suit brought by the Reiss Engelhorn Museum against both the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland “concerned copyright claims related to 17 images of the museum’s public-domain works of art, which have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.”

The Reiss Engelhorn Museum pointed out that the images were created by its in-house photographer and demanded the removal of the images from Wikimedia Commons, as their presence on the site—where they were marked as being in the public domain—had led to multiple cases of unapproved re-use, including commercial re-use.

The Wikimedia Foundation argued that as the works photographed were in the public domain, the resulting photographs, aimed merely at creating a faithful reproduction of the underlying work, should also be in the public domain. The court disagreed, ruling that the work of the museum's photographer is protected regardless of the public-domain status of the photographed work, and justified its decision by pointing out that creating faithful reproductions of art is a far from trivial task, requiring special effort and expertise to set up and light the shot in order to arrive at an image that correctly represents the colour hues and details of the original, and that freedom of information does not include the right to appropriate and profit from the skilled work of others without asking permission.

In a statement posted on the Wikimedia Deutschland blog, the Wikimedia Foundation expresses the view that the German court’s decision is erroneous, that even if the photographs were subject to copyright, they would not be subject to copyright in the United States, and that the decision whether the images—presently housed in a special category on Commons—should or should not remain on Wikimedia Commons thus lies with the volunteer community. While the Wikimedia Foundation was found liable as a contributor to copyright infringement (“Störer”), the suit against Wikimedia Deutschland was dismissed, as Wikimedia Deutschland does not manage the Wikimedia Commons site.

Reiss Engelhorn Museum general director Alfried Wieczorek welcomed the court's decision and explained that the suit was not motivated by any ill-will towards Wikipedia:

As far as we are concerned this case is not about harming Wikipedia, or of us fundamentally disagreeing with this project. On the contrary: we have great sympathy for the Wikipedia project, and share with Wikipedia the object of spreading knowledge. But in this case, the question for us is who should decide whether and especially how our holdings should be made available. Even if one supports the free public accessibility of cultural items on Wikipedia, it is difficult for us to comprehend that a single Wikipedia author claims the right to decide on their own to release to everybody the results of work created with public funds on Wikipedia for free and thus also for commercial use.

The Wikimedia Deutschland blog post asserts that the museum forbids visitors from taking pictures of the artworks in question; German press reports say that while photography in the museum's public display areas is forbidden, permissions to photograph artwork are granted upon request.

The Wikimedia Foundation has said that it will appeal; judging by comments from the media, it seems likely that the case will eventually end up at the German Federal Court of Justice.

• Reiss Engelhorn Museum press release
• Wikimedia Deutschland blog post
• Court judgement
• German-language report in Heise
• English-language report in Ars Technica
• English-language report in Techdirt

AK

Brief notes

The Signpost is moving to a fortnightly publication schedule.

• Fortnightly Signpost: Given the present shortage of contributors, the Signpost is moving to a fortnightly publication schedule.
• Wikimedia UK: Wikimedia UK has released its annual report 2015–16 and announced that Chris Keating has stepped down from the board after five years of service.
• Wikistudies: Announced on Wiki-Research-L: “Wiki Studies is an interdisciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed journal focusing on the intersection of Wikipedia and higher education. We are interested in most all of the same topics hosted on the research listserv and the newsletter, including articles about pedagogical practices, epistemology, bias, mission, and reliability. We will not charge for submission or publication, and will offer open access to readers. We will host on Open Journal Systems. We are just getting started. We are recruiting editors, and plan to have a presence at the upcoming Wiki Conference North America in San Diego 7-10 October 2016. We hope to publish our first volume in March of 2017, consisting of submissions received by 31 December 2016.” The website is: Wikistudies.org.
• Archive.is removed from spam blacklist: Following a recent Request for comment, archiving site archive.is has been removed from the English Wikipedia's spam blacklist.

Minister Bussemaker posts her first article and opens the Writing Week on Cultural Heritage.

• Dutch minister starts article to open Writing week on Cultural Heritage: On 29 June Dutch minister Jet Bussemaker of Education, Culture and Science opened the Writing week on Cultural Heritage by posting the Dutch version of the article whose English version is Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels. Flemish minister Sven Gatz of Culture and Brussels minister-president Rudi Vervoort are participating as well and will send a certificate of participation to a Wikipedian who writes about Cultural Heritage in their respective regions. See Commons:Category:Writing weeks cultural heritage 2016.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-07-04/Serendipity

2016-07-04

Two policies in conflict?

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By James Heilman

Both English Wikipedia policy and the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use require any paid editors to disclose on Wikipedia who is paying them, who the client is, and any other relevant role or relationship. It's a rule often broken, and enforcing it is fraught with practical difficulties.

Over the past week the English Wikipedia has seen a reactivation of the controversy surrounding the intersection of two key policies: those for paid-contribution disclosure and outing. It began on 27 June 2016 with the blocking by arbitrator GorillaWarfare of Jytdog, with “outing” being the justification. Jytdog is a long-standing editor on medical topics who also works in the area of conflict of interest. The aftermath has raised a number of issues that the community is struggling to address including: who gets to decide policy, what is and is not “outing”, and whether it is permissible for Wikipedia volunteers to discuss and link to publicly posted job offers for Wikipedia PR work and the public professional profiles of writers undertaking such work.

Who gets to decide?

The first issue raised is who gets to decide policy. Many editors view the decision of GorillaWarfare to indefinitely block Jytdog and ArbCom not unblocking as of publication as a misapplication of our outing policy, or borderline at best. The discussion of what the policy actually is and where we draw the line between "outing" and "not outing" has been closed by Mike V, a checkuser, with claims that these discussions are outside the community's remit.

The functionaries have gained a head start in the discussion through their use of private channels. Two of them—DoRD and Thryduulf—tried to remove important wording from the harassment policy: "posting links to other accounts on other websites is allowable on a case-by-case basis", apparently with the intention to leave the impression that posting links to other accounts is never allowed. The clause in question has been in the policy in one form or another since early 2015.

The removal was without community consensus, and it appears that the majority of the functionaries have decided that their interpretation of WP:OUTING trumps that of everyone else.

On the question of who gets to decide, my objective is to stand up for the community. When I was on the board of the WMF, I pushed hard for broad community involvement in determining our long-term strategy; I saw it as inappropriate for a small group of individuals to make decisions behind closed doors. The same applies in this case: I believe transparency and community involvement is vital in determining policy as it is in determining strategy.

Legal perspective

Wikimedia Foundation Legal Counsel Stephen LaPorte: “It is not a violation of the Wikimedia privacy policy for editors to post links to public information about other editors ... It's up to community consensus here to decide when the harassment policy should allow editors to reasonably link to public information on other sites.”

Some editors have argued that a very strict interpretation of WP:OUTING is a requirement coming from the WMF. However, the Foundation's legal department has published a statement on this question, indicating that this is not the case:

I've been asked to clarify how this discussion fits with the Wikimedia privacy policy. It is not a violation of the Wikimedia privacy policy for editors to post links to public information about other editors. The privacy policy applies to how the Foundation collects and handles personal information, as well as users who have access to nonpublic information. The underlying principle in our privacy policy is that respecting and protecting anonymity and pseudonymity is essential for encouraging free expression. Posting links to public information on other sites is a question of balancing this underlying principle, not a direct violation of the privacy policy. It's up to community consensus here to decide when the harassment policy should allow editors to reasonably link to public information on other sites. Thanks, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) 20:50, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

It appears people are taking a policy that applies to non-public information and attempting to force it onto all information contained in personal and corporate accounts outside Wikipedia.

Our purpose: stating the obvious

Jimmy Wales summarized the purpose of our efforts well: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."

Our purpose is not to create an anonymous online utopia but to create sources of knowledge, and our rules need to be created and maintained to achieve this end. To the degree that anonymity achieves our goals, it should be supported—but this does not mean it should be supported absolutely and in all situations.

Just address content and ignore the terms of use

Dealing with undisclosed paid editors is a Sisyphean and often invidious task for Wikipedia volunteers.

The Wikimedia Foundation’s terms of use, and the English Wikipedia's paid-contribution disclosure policy derived from them, disallow undisclosed paid editing. Some wish that we exclusively concentrate on content and in essence ignore the terms of use. While this might seem perfectly reasonable in theory, we simply don't have the volunteers interested in following around obviously paid editors and addressing the concerns they create.

Our readers expect our content to be written by people independent of the topic in question. By making it exceedingly hard to address undisclosed paid editing we put our shared brand at significant risk. By allowing promotional or unbalanced material to persist in Wikipedia, we put our readers at risk. This is evidenced for example by the Wifione arbitration case, as reported by Newsweek. The promotional editing in that case negatively affected thousands of students' lives. There is no point in having terms of use if we do not enforce them. They need to be more than simply a public relations measure.

Others have stated that we should never need to use links to justify concerns of undisclosed paid editing. They feel that we can simply express the concerns on a person's talk page without providing evidence; but what we end up with is the casting of aspersions. Our essay on the topic in fact states, “An editor must not accuse another of misbehavior without evidence ... If accusations must be made, they should be raised, with evidence, on the user-talk page.” Those accused also deserve the right to defend or justify themselves openly and transparently.

Specific cases

We currently have an open RfC regarding a statement I posted to WP:COIN in September 2015, and whether we feel this type of comment should be allowed or disallowed. In part, it concerns a job offer for Wikipedia editing publicly posted on Elance, a website frequented by those intending to commission and those willing to undertake paid online PR work:

Checking Elance

[...] Here, we have someone who is buying an article on Anthony LaPine. They have already bought an article on HipLink, created by a sock account, User:Juliecameo3, that is already blocked. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:36, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Most of the functionaries who have weighed in appear to believe that posting a link to a public Wikipedia-related Elance job offer should not be allowed and is a potentially blockable offense. This is despite the fact that the company behind Elance is willing to collaborate with us and doing this sort of work is an effective method of enforcing our terms of use with respect to undisclosed paid promotional editing.

By extension are we going to say that linking to pubmed, a well-known database of biomedical abstracts, is disallowed because such links could have the real names, employment, or location of Wikipedia editors which those editors may not have disclosed previously on our sites? This link, for example, contains comments from Wikipedians with personal details. Not only will such an extreme stance of “no linking to any accounts outside of Wikipedia” make enforcement of our terms of use nearly impossible, it will interfere with our policy on verifiability.

Public and private domains

The privacy of volunteer contributors is a vitally important value. But public-relations work is, as the very name implies, public, not private. The LinkedIn profiles of marketing managers as well as the job and service advertisements on freelance PR writers' sites like Elance are posted there with the explicit intent to catch the eyes of the world.

Many editors may conclude that it is wrong that the entire world should be free to review, discuss and use that information, except for the unpaid volunteers whose work is directly affected and not infrequently compromised by the efforts of PR writers—people whose primary allegiance is not to the Wikimedia project but to those who pay them.

James Heilman

MD, CCFP(EM), Wikipedian

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