Our proposal in a nutshell: Temporary accounts offer improved privacy for users editing without an account and improved ways to communicate with them. They have been successfully rolled out on 1046 wikis, including most large Wikipedias. English Wikipedia has defined the criteria for Temporary Accounts IP Viewer (TAIV) right and granted it to 100+ users. We plan to launch temporary accounts on enwiki onOctober 7th 21stNovember 4th. If you know of any tools, bots, gadgets, etc. using data about IP addresses or being available for logged-out users, please help test that they work as expected and/or help update these.

Hello, from theProduct Safety and Integrity team! We would like to continue the discussions about launchingtemporary accounts on English Wikipedia. Temporary accounts are relevant to logged-out editors, whom this feature is designed to protect, but they are also very relevant to the community. Anyone who reverts edits, blocks users, or otherwise interacts with logged-out editors as part of keeping the wikis safe and accurate will feel the impact of this change.

Temporary accounts have been successfully deployed on almost all wikis now (1046 to be precise!), including most large Wikipedias. In collaboration with stewards and other users with extended rights, we have been able to address a lot of use cases to make sure that community members experience minimal disruption to their workflows. We have built a host of supporting features likeIP Info,Autoreveal,IPContributions,Global Contributions,User Info etc. to ensure adequate support.

With the above information in mind, we think everything is in good shape fordeploying temporary accounts to English Wikipedia in about a month, preferably October 7th. We see that your community hasdecided on the threshold for non-admins to access temporary accounts IP addresses, and there are currentlyover 100 non-admin temporary account IP viewers (TAIVs).

The wikis should be safe to edit for all editors irrespective of whether they are logged in or not. Temporary accounts allow people to continue editing the wikis without creating an account, while avoiding publicly tying their edits to their IP address. We believe this is in the best interest of logged-out editors, who make valuable contributions to the wikis and who may later create accounts and grow the community of editors, admins, and other roles. Even though the wikis do warn logged-out editors that their IP address will be associated with their edit, many people may not understand what an IP address is, or that it could be used to connect them to other information about them in ways they might not expect.

Additionally, our moderation software and tools rely too heavily on network origin (IP addresses) to identify users and patterns of activity, especially as IP addresses themselves are becoming less stable as identifiers. Temporary accounts allow for more precise interactions with logged-out editors, including more precise blocks, and can help limit how often we unintentionally end up blocking good-faith users who use the same IP addresses as bad-faith users. Another benefit of temporary accounts is the ability to talk to these logged out editors even if their IP address changes. They will be able to receive notifications such as mentions.

How do temporary accounts work?

When a logged-out user completes an edit or a logged action for the first time, a cookie will be set in this user's browser and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created for them. This account's name will follow the pattern:~2025-12345-67 (a tilde, year of creation, a number split into units of 5). All subsequent actions by the temporary account user will be attributed to this username. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser. A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. Users with Temporary Accounts IP viewer right (TAIV) will be able to see the underlying IP addresses.

• This increases privacy: currently, if you do not use a registered account to edit, then everybody can see the IP address for the edits you made, even after 90 days. That will no longer be possible on this wiki.
• If you use a temporary account to edit from different locations in the last 90 days (for example at home and at a coffee shop), the edit history and the IP addresses for all those locations will now be recorded together, for the same temporary account. Users whomeet the relevant requirements will be able to view this data. If this creates any personal security concerns for you, please contacttalktohumanrightswikimedia.org for advice.

• A temporary account is uniquely linked to a device. In comparison, an IP address can be shared with different devices and people (for example, different people at school or at work might have the same IP address).
• Compared to the current situation, it will be safer to assume that a temporary user's talk page belongs to only one person, and messages left there will be read by them. As you can see in the screenshot, temporary account users will receive notifications. It will also be possible to thank them for their edits, ping them in discussions, and invite them to get more involved in the community.

• 

  We have recently released theUser Info card feature on all wikis. It displays data related to a user account when you tap or click on the "user avatar" icon button next to a username. We want it to help community members get information about other users. The feature also works with temporary accounts. It's possible to enable it inGlobal Preferences. Look for the heading "Advanced options".

• For patrollers who track persistent abusers, investigate violations of policies, etc.: Users whomeet the requirements will be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range (Special:IPContributions). They will also have access to useful information about the IP addresses thanks to theIP Info feature. Many other pieces of software have been built or adjusted to work with temporary accounts, including AbuseFilter, global blocks, Global Contributions, User Info, and more.
• For admins blocking logged-out editors:
  • It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects theautoblock option.
  • It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
• Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should use Special:IPContributions for this.
• See our pageAccess to IP for more information about the related policies, features, and recommended practices.

• If you know of any tools, bots, gadgets etc. using data about IP addresses or being available for logged-out users, you may want to test if they work ontestwiki ortest2wiki. If you are a volunteer developer,read the documentation for developers, and in particular, the section onhow your code might need to be updated. If you know of tools, bots or gadgets that have not yet been updated and you don’t know of anyone who can update these, please reach out to us.
• If you want to test the temporary account experience, for example just to check what it feels like, go to testwiki or test2wiki and edit without logging in.
• Tell us if you know of any difficulties that need to be addressed. We will try to help, and if we are not able, we will consider the available options.

To learn more about the project, check outour FAQ – you will find many useful answers there. You may alsolook at the updates andsubscribe to our new newsletter. If you'd like to talk to us off-wiki, you will find me on Discord and Telegram.

We would like to thank stewards, checkusers, global sysops, technical community members, enwiki functionaries and everybody else who has contributed their time and effort to this project. Thank you for helping us get here.NKohli (WMF) andSGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)11:38, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's still not clear to me what would be allowed to discuss publicly.

• Temp account X seems the same as Temp account Y
• Temp account X seems the same as older IP editor Y
• We should rangeblock IP adresses X to stop temp account A, B and C
• Temp account X is a school account for school X / a government account for department Y / ...
• ...

Should all these only be had "behind closed doors" somewhere, or are these allowed in the same circumstances as we would discuss them now (SPI, ANI, ...)?Fram (talk)11:53, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Fram, first we wanted to emphasize, to make it just clear to everybody around, that temp accounts are just a different paradigm; they don't match 1:1 with IPs, and in some cases it doesn't make sense or there's no need to link them with IPs 1:1.

These restrictions only apply when you (1) use data from the IP reveal tool to make the link and (2) discuss publicly. All of the above can be discussed in a private venue where only TAIV users can see the information. Also if the link is only behavioral, then any user, including those who have TAIV, can make the link publicly. But if you do have TAIV and talk publicly, there may be an implication that you used the tool to make the link. CUs often get around this by declining to comment about IPs if they have run CU on a user, so they can avoid the implication that they linked the IP and user together using CU data.

Now to your questions:

1. This is OKif necessary for anti-abuse purposes, and you can even say "Temporary account X is using the same IP address as temporary account Y" as long as you don't mention the specific IP.
2. Not publicly, unless the link is made purely through behavioral evidence (i.e. edits).
3. Not publicly. You can, however, say "Please block the common IP ranges used by temporary accounts A, B, and C" publicly where the admin could use IP reveal to find which range you were talking about. Another option for non-admin TAIVs is to say "Please block this IP due to abuse from temp accounts" (without naming the accounts).
4. If you are using access to IP addresses to get this information, then probably not okay. If using edits, then okay.

Finally, a very important note just for context: on other projects, including large Wikipedias, we have seen a significant decline in IP blocks, indicating that temporary account blocks are often effective remedies for one-off abuse. Even if we agree that English Wikipedia is unique and whatnot, there is a pattern and hopefully discussions about blocking IPs won't be that frequent (phab:T395134#11120266).

Special kudos to @WBrown (WMF) for helping with drafting the answer.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)14:24, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. So access to IP adresses is treated as CU access basically? That seems like a severe step backwards in dealing with vandalism, sockpuppetry, LTAs, ... Curs both ways of course, we now also exonerate people with things like "the IPs used by that vandal located all in country X, but this new IP comes from country Y, making it unlikely to be a sock. This happens in standard ANI discussions and the like, not requiring any CU access, but will no longer be possible for most editors.

Your "Finally, a very important note just for context: on other projects, including large Wikipedias, we have seen a significant decline in IP blocks, indicating that temporary account blocks are often effective" seems like a non-existent advantage. We had many "single" IP blocks, these will be changed to "single" TA blocksn this is not an advantage or disadvantage of TAs. The issues are rarely with the simple straightforward cases.

A very simple example: when I look at the revision history of[1] I immediately see that the last three IP edits are made by the same person, using two IP adresses. If we are lucky, in the future, this would be one temp account. If we aren't lucky, then these would be two completely unrelated temp accounts.

Or takethis edit history for a school. Since March, I see different IPs in the 120.22 range; it seems likely that this is either the school or the village or city, so no socking, unless these 4 were all from an IP provider in, say, France, in which case it's much more likely to be the same person in each case. From now on, no more means to raise such issues or notice them if you are not of the few (and if you are, you can't raise it publicly).

Or to make it more concrete still: we havethis current ANI discussion where a non-admin raises an issue related to completely disparate IP adresses: "a certain editor who has been editing over several months from various IPs, all geolocating first to South Korea, then more recently to Japan. " If said IP disables or removes cookies, there isno way that most of our editors would be able to adequately see or raise such issues, they would just have to say "there is a range of temp accounts, no idea if there is any connection between them".

This all seems highly impractical for very little benefit.Fram (talk)14:55, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram With respect toYour "Finally, a very important note just for context: on other projects, including large Wikipedias, we have seen a significant decline in IP blocks, indicating that temporary account blocks are often effective" seems like a non-existent advantage. We had many "single" IP blocks, these will be changed to "single" TA blocksn this is not an advantage or disadvantage of TAs. [sic] The point being made here is that even in larger wikis there has not a significant requirement to resort to IP blocks (which are still going to be allowed). It appears that based on the trends WMF is monitoring, there is evidence that most typical vandals are not shifting across temporary accounts by disabling or removing cookies.Sohom (talk)15:08, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the point being made, and I don't see the importance of it. Most IP blocks that are now being made also don't require CU, SPI, ANI discussions, ... Basically, for the "easy" IP problems nothing changes, but the more complicated ones get harder to spot, discuss, ... "Most typical vandals" are not the ones I am talking about.

A report likethis one from this month could no longer be publicly posted. In the future, the editor who posted it has temp IP rights, so he could notice that a group of temp accounts is from "This large IP range in Australia ", but wouldn't be allowed to post this fact. They link to an IP range edit log[2] which would no longer be possible in such a discussion, as that would disclose the IPs of the temp accounts. It would lead to such discussions being had in back chambers, out of view of most editors, and more importantly still impossible to be initiated by most editors.That kind of stuff is the issue, not the "one-off vandals will get a 31h block on the temp account instead of on the IP".Fram (talk)15:19, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's also a lot of "appears to be a one-off-vandals" that with a quick check of some small ranges turns out to be someone vandalizing for months or years. That visibility will be gone, too.ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)15:21, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ScottishFinnishRadish, @Fram You will still be able list temp-account edits by IPs and ranges at [[Special:IPContributions/<insert IP address here>]]. I don't understand how we suddenly be unable to make the requests that you are pointing to.Sohom (talk)15:49, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I will not request the temp IP viewer right under the above rules. I have had one ridiculous outing block for coupring someone's handle to someone's real name, even though they were listed as such on their Wikidata page and they used both in combination elsewhere as well: I will not risk getting another block because I somehow "outed" and IP address I learned through that right but was not allowed to share with the masses no matter how useful that might be. And no admin c.s. will be allowed to show such IPcontributions list when they may not reveal the IP address behind the temp account name.Fram (talk)15:54, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's on you, the above directive is pretty explicit that you can report "heySpecial:IPContributions/192.168.0.0/16 (not exactly that, but you get the drift) is a bunch of school kids, can a admin block it" or "heySpecial:IPContributions/192.168.0.0/24 appears to a bunch of temporary accounts with very similar disruptive edits to game engines". It's a change of vocabulary yes, but the kinds of reports you are talking about are definitely doable and not being explicitly disallowed.Sohom (talk)16:05, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

""hey Special:IPContributions/192.168.0.0/24 appears to a bunch of temporary accounts with very similar disruptive edits to game engines". " That makes no sense. IPs are not temporary accounts. And in any case you restrict such reportsand the checking of such reports!), now made by regular editors (see my link to such a report in the current ANI) to a much smaller group of people. By the way, the people with the right can see the IP address belonging to a temp account: but can they easily do the reverse?Fram (talk)16:14, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

appears tobe a bunch of temporary accounts sorry for the typo. (A IP range can map to multiple temporary accounts since a TA corresponds to a machine). Also, you do realize that almost anyone with rollback or NPR will be able to make the same report with no problems. The persons who will be able to take action (i.e. block, revert) is already limited and almost all of the folks who can respond will already have TAIV (or will be handed TAIV at PERM with zero questions).Sohom (talk)16:28, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and when they state "Special:IPContributions/192.168.0.0/24 includes temp accounts X, Y and Z, two of which have been blocked already" or some such, they should get blocked for outing as making that claim publicly (linking IP to temp account name) will be disallowed. If we follow the WMF rules on this, people will need to be very, very careful not to accidentally break them. Even claiming "temp accounts X, Y and Z all locate to Perth, Australia, so are likely socks" is not allowed, as one can only know that through the IP adresses, and publicly stating anything learned by seeing the IP addresses is, again, not allowed.Fram (talk)16:49, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So that'll add how many seconds to the average task that is done 10,000 times a month by a few dozen people? A ten second increase adds dozens of hours per month to an already overwhelmed workflow. Or this extra stuff doesn't get checked anymore, which is more likely, andeveryone wasteseven more time dealing with unmitigated vandals.ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)16:44, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ScottishFinnishRadish, If your gripe here is "this adds 10 seconds to a existing workflow", I see that as a okay tradeoff to the other alternative, which is "WMF (and Wikipedia) gets sued out of existence by frivolous GDPR lawsuits" or "we lose legitimately a significant chunk of good contributions from IP addresses by blocking all IP editing".Sohom (talk)18:10, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You forgot "there's not enough labor available to keep up with the increased workload and trying to keep up leads to administrator burnout and even less labor available for the increased workload which leads to increased burnout..."ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)18:14, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ScottishFinnishRadish Admin burnout and not electing enough admins is a "us" problem. The fix is nominating folks atWP:AELECT,WP:RFA (the very same processes you are defending as set in stone) and fighting to make it easier for the community member to elect worthy candidates to adminship, not arguing against the implementation of a system that has been brought on to prevent us from being sued from existence and where WMF has put in significant effort into reducing the friction down to 10 seconds.Sohom (talk)18:22, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Uh,the very same processes you are defending as set in stone, what?

We don't actually know what the additional time required will be, and having worked with the interface to place over 13,000 blocks, I think 10 seconds is on the low end of the scale. Editor and administration time is not cheap and putting a system in place that will result in a huge increase in labor cost without looking at the available labor is probably going to be worse than what we've seen at ptwiki.

We're routinely dealing with bot attacks that will require an IP block as well as a temporary account block that use multiple IPs a minute. The end result of increasing the workload of defending against these attacks is no one actually doing the work.ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)18:34, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Uh,the very same processes you are defending as set in stone, what? - We are talking about the inflexibility of community processes to deal with TAs and why they might not scale.

We don't actually know what the additional time required will be, and having worked with the interface to place over 13,000 blocks, - While I respect your opinions here, I think you are overestimating the amount of time here, you see a bunch of edits across different TAs, a non-TAIV editor starts reverting posts on AIV that a bunch of TAs are posting similar edits, a admin looks at the IP addresses for a few accounts (two or three more extra click than normal), clicks on the IPContributions and widens the search space untill all the TAIVs listed in the AIV report are covered and blocks the IP range and we are done. (If a TAIV editor sees the same edits, they directly report the IP address range and a admin blocks). I do understand your point about friction but I don't see it in the vast majority of the cases we aren't adding anywhere the amount of friction where folks will "just not do it". (and I assume with time user-scripts will be developed to make process smoother and less clicks).Sohom (talk)19:42, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There isAutoreveal mode for users with thecheckuser-temporary-account-auto-reveal right, which reduces friction for users who need to be able to scan a list of IP addresses of temporary accounts when viewing logs.KHarlan (WMF) (talk)21:03, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Will the link from IP to temp account still be availble after 90 days? Meaning, if we have the IP, all temp accounts from any time can be shown.ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!}02:20, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ARandomName123 No, the IP address is not stored in the database beyond 90 days - this is consistent with how we handle data for logged-in editors. --NKohli (WMF) (talk)09:03, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. So if, there is an IP vandalizing pages infrequently over months or years, and once discovered, I would like to go back to check if their previous edits were also reverted, that would now be impossible?ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!}17:39, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good question! I wonder how the full scope of something like thiscopyright investigation would be discovered where someone on a mostly stable IP address did widespread copyvio over a number of years.Sariel Xilo (talk)17:48, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It may actually be OK to document IPs on pages like CCI per the temp account IP addresses policy (seethis comment). 🤔SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)18:55, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't help if the issue is discovered more than 90 days afterward, though.jlwoodwa (talk)19:34, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That was my thought as well. Even if someone who cleans up/investigates copyvio has TAIV, the lookback seems quite limited so you would have to hope that each temp account is doing something obvious on a behavioral level to link them. And then that circles back to if you can name a CCI after an IP address & list the temp accounts there.@SGrabarczuk (WMF): I'm not comfortable with "it may actually be OK to document IPs" - there should be definitive clarification one way or other before the rollout occurs.Sariel Xilo (talk)20:03, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fair :D These were just my words, and the actual source is the policy. I meant to say thatin my opinion the policy allows that.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)21:31, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Even if we agree that English Wikipedia is unique and whatnot, there is a pattern and hopefully discussions about blocking IPs won't be that frequent (phab:T395134#11120266). I hope we agree that if EnWiki isn't unique, it's uniqiue in size (though I would argue that EnWiki, like all other large projects actually is unique in its practices and challenges, even if much is common). And so even if the number of range blocks decrease, the scale of exceptions may cause more problems than even other large projects. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)15:09, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is OK if necessary for anti-abuse purposes... Why isn't it always okay to link two temporary accounts? Saying that User 1 and User 2 are the same person doesn't violate any privacy law.ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)20:40, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• This is a whole lot of work just to get the community to disable IP/no account editing.ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)11:57, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'll just say this, and then run and hide: editing should only be allowed from registered accounts. <ducks for cover>DoubleGrazing (talk)12:04, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think this line of thinking (disabling IP editing) is short-sighted and will lead to a eventual demise of the the project (if we don't let people know we allow editing, we lose potential new editors/contributors). Weshould not' be making it harder for people to edit, instead we should be looking at ways to make it easier for folks to engage and edit our content (especially in the context of the fact that a lot of our content is being indiscriminately being remixed by AI).Sohom (talk)13:07, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Bizarrely, the only major test we have had of this has not in any way lead to the demise of said project. Protuguese Wikipedia has disabled IP editing since October 2020 (according to the Temp Accounts FAQ, question "Would disallowing or limiting anonymous editing be a good alternative?" where the WMF claims "there is evidence that this came at the cost of a significant reduction in non-reverted edits, weakening the growth of content in the Portuguese Wikipedia, and potentially leading to other negative long-term effects."

  These claims seem false or at the very least severely overstated (no surprise, sadly, to see this kind of thing when the WMF wants to promote what they want or suppress what they don't want), there is no reduction in the number of editor edits[3] compared to e.g. 2019 (2020-2021, the Covid years, are a bad comparison). The same can be seen for the number of new pages[4]. The number of new editors is stable as well[5].

  So contrary to what the WMF claims and what you predict, there are no negative effects from disabling IP editing (on the one large wiki who has done this).Fram (talk)15:33, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The number of new editors is stable as well The chart you linked to shows a slow decline/downward trend since 2020 to the present day (August 2023 was 9K, August 2025 is 7K). Again, this is not aFreenode style sharp drop-off we are talking about but a slow downward decline not unlike stack overflow.Sohom (talk)15:55, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Er, August 2023 was 7894, not 9K. August 2025 was 7227. As comparison, enwiki August 2023 was 93052, August 2025 was 85195. So Pt is at 91.5%, and enwiki is at, hey, 91.5%. Frwiki 11989 / 10656, or 88%. Dewiki 5919 / 5594 = 94.5%. So it seems like the decline for ptwiki is exactly in line with that of other large Wikipedia versions in general, and identical to the enwiki one.Fram (talk)16:07, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I misspoke, I meant June 2024, I think we can quibble statistics for a hot second, but there is a significant anecdotal and UX research behind the fact that you present people with a "sign up before doing the thing" screen, you see a steady user-attrition in that area of the funnel. If you are telling me that Wikipedia is somehow so special that this doesn't apply, I'm going to need a to see alot more data than what you are showing me at the moment.Sohom (talk)16:22, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  So you have no evidence for your claims, you compared apples and oranges, but according to you itshould happen as you predict and I somehow need more than figures of the past 5 years to prove that this didn't that didn't materialize, actually didn't materialize? Perhaps what you and your "sighificant anecdotical research" e.g. haven't taken into consideration, is that there may be many more editors who stick around because they no longer have to deal with lots of IP vandalism?

  Anyway, "I misspoke, I meant June 2024"? Oh right, that month with 7880 new editors, that makes all the difference in explaining how you came up with 9K... Please don't make such a mistake a third time or I will have to consider it deliberate.Fram (talk)16:37, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Fram, your message above is extremely adversarial and abrasive. I will refrain from engaging in this particular thread any further unless you reword your statement because your point here appears to be engage with me personally rather than with the issue more broadly. Your comment implies that I'm trying to deliberately misrepresent information in some way, which I sincerely am not and is a asusmption of bad faith.

  To explicitly answer your question, there is a clear slow decline visible and yes, I misspoke, I meant June 2023. Also, here is the other thing, we do need some kind of IPMasking, otherwise we open ourselves to lawsuits related to GDPR. I do not have access to any data about editor attrition due to IPMasking, but the whole reason the WMF is doing IP masking is to make sure admins and patroller have the tools they need to still continue doing anti-vandalism even with the legislation-required changes. Best,Sohom (talk)17:30, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I see no reason to change anything in my statement when you cherrypick one month and rwice fail to pick the right one to boot. June 2023 is also a thousandup from June 2022, so what´s that supposed to prove? One doesn´t check trends over 5 or more years by comparing one month from midway in the set with one from near the current end, unless one wants to prove some otherwise unsupported point.Fram (talk)18:20, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If temporary accounts goes poorly - something that seeminglyhasn't happened on other large projects - that seems like a logical response for the community to make. However, many people have been in favor of turning off IP editing for a while and so temporary accounts aren't forcing those people, or the community to that position. I have seen the value of IPs on their own merits, and seen the fromEditor reflections many editors with registered accounts started as IPs and so we should be careful about turning off that gateway. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)14:25, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• So the WMF is seemingly adamant on casually making vandals and other disruptive editors much harder to catch - and for what reason in particular other than some imaginary issue with IP addresses?2A0E:1D47:9085:D200:11D7:6E9D:E0E7:89A5 (talk)14:22, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Fun fact, the "imaginary issue" is also known asGDPR's mandate on personal dataSohom (talk)15:02, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  But this seems to specifically apply to Europe, and the WMF is based in the US, so I don't see how this should even apply to them.2A0E:1D47:9085:D200:11D7:6E9D:E0E7:89A5 (talk)16:17, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Besides what Juniper said, it legally applies because Wikipedia is available in the EU.Aaron Liu (talk)11:36, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is what's known as theBrussels effect. Its why for example, caps on bottles are tethered in the UK, even though its required under EU law. Countries outside the EU may have this treatment, so that companies don't create a queue for EU and non-EU lanes.JuniperChill (talk)18:18, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m concerned that IP info will disappear after 90 days. This will make it difficult to address long term abusers with stable addresses, of which there are a significant number. Instead, we’ll be playing whack a mole every 90 days or so, unless we can somehow retain info on IP use. — rsjaffe 🗣️15:10, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's also a lot of vandals on small ranges, e.g.Special:Contributions/2601:601:C81:5D20:0:0:0:0/64, that will be much more difficult to catch and handle in a long-term way.ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)15:19, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I’m thinking about this some more, one way to retain the ip record is to block the ip rather than the temp account when we suspect a long term abuser with perhaps a stable ip. If the block of the ip isn’t sufficient,then block the temp account. — rsjaffe 🗣️15:33, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I love adding extra steps to tasks that have to berepeated ten thousand times per month mostly by a couple dozen volunteers.ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)15:40, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, I as a CU cannot do this because the Ombuds have decided this is the same as the longstanding prohibition on connecting IPs to an account. But I hope non-CU admins could without jeopardizing the right. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)15:42, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Even CUs can block on behavioural similarities, unless that's changing too. A bigger question is perhaps, if an IP is blocked, is that block visible on the temp account and can others see the reason for the block as they do now?CMD (talk)15:45, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. I could block a temp account based on behavior. But I can't do what SFR and rsjaffe are mooting: block the IP as a signal before blocking the temp account (or at least can't without obfuscating it in some other way). Best,Barkeep49 (talk)15:50, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So if an IP is blocked and a temp account is not, and vice versa, what happens to that user?CMD (talk)16:00, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• If the IP is blocked but not the temporary account: All temporary accounts on that IP address will be prevented from editing, because all IP address blocks apply to temporary accounts (even if the IP address block isn't a hardblock)
• If the temporary account is blocked but not the IP: The temporary account targeted by the block will be unable to edit. Additionally, if autoblocking is enabled on the block targeting the temporary account then:
  • The last IP used will be autoblocked for 1 day (in the same way as autoblocking works for registered accounts)
  • Attempts to edit using that blocked temporary account will also cause an autoblock to be created

WBrown (WMF) (talk)16:18, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much, hopefully this can all be collated somewhere. I suppose the remaining question is whether other users see IP blocks and their reasoning, and if so how.CMD (talk)16:32, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Blocks placed on IP addresses will continue to be visible onSpecial:BlockList and other places that show blocks. However, a user wouldn't be able to see that a temporary account is blocked by an IP address block, unless they use IP reveal (TAIV) to get the IP address and then look for the block targeting that IP (such as opening the contributions page for that IP).WBrown (WMF) (talk)08:41, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Really? If that is the case, how are admins expected to handle say vandalism reports of a temporary account where an IP is already blocked? Always block the temp account as well?CMD (talk)09:58, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the IP address is blocked, then the temporary account cannot edit. Therefore, the admin wouldn't need to take additional blocking action on the temporary account. However, if the temporary account switches IP addresses then they will be able to edit.

Given that, if the target of the block is intended to be the temporary account the admin should block the temporary account. This will usually mean that it is better to block the temporary account first as opposed to the IP address.

We have seen that blocks of temporary accounts on other wikis have been enough to prevent abuse in most cases. Generally an admin would want to block the underlying IP address(es) if:

• If this user has evaded blocks by logging out, waiting for the autoblock to expire, and making another edit
• Multiple temporary accounts are editing for a sustained period on the same IP (therefore, it's easier to block the IP than multiple temporary accounts)

WBrown (WMF) (talk)11:52, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The issue I raise is vandalism reports, as given we now can't see if an editor is blocked multiple reports could be made. I suppose an admin could reply "Already IP blocked" and that wouldn't disclose the IP connection, but I suspect if multiple reports come in a dual block of teh temporary account as well will provide the clearest information.CMD (talk)12:25, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, a dual block would be the most clear. Blocking just the temporary account should be enough for any user that has not used TAIV to view the associated IP address.

Also it would be fine for the admin to publicly comment that action had already been taken (given that no IP was specified).WBrown (WMF) (talk)18:14, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is useful information. Is there any compendium of lessons learned so far? That would help reduce the disruption that I’m sure will occur as we learn over time how to address this new way of tracking unlogged-in users. — rsjaffe 🗣️13:19, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We have anFAQ for temporary accounts which I think is the best single source of information like this. We often place answers to questions or solutions to problems identified here.WBrown (WMF) (talk)18:30, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And this assumes they don't just hitctrl+⇧ Shift+del and wait until the autoblock on the IP expires.ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)16:39, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Or rotate their IPv6 address by simply restarting their router. Autoblocks should inherit the block settings of the TA, and if they are using IPv6 addresses, they should apply across the /64 range as well.ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)20:04, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Barkeep49,I can't block the IP as a signal before blocking the temp account - I'm pretty sure you can, I'd like somebody else to confirm it but as far as I know, this happens on other wikis, it's a tradeoff Legal is OK with.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)16:17, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad to hear admins can. But (and I would hope @RoySmith or some other Ombud reading this corrects me if I'm wrong) the Ombuds have written that I cannot as a checkuser. They did so in a message sent to checkusers in March and when I wrote in replyI find the implication that CUs will have to take similar measures to blocking two connected IPs as we do to blocking a registered account and an IP address to be incredibly surprising. no one corrected me or said I was misunderstanding in anyway. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)16:32, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's great that we'll be able to block the temporary account MAB or Salebot is using, then spend additional time to view the IP and check if it's a proxy before placing the proxy block, and if we're lucky finish that process before their bot has moved onto the next temporary account on another IP that will require twice as many blocks and three times as much time to take care of.
Or, as Barkeep points out, since we've gotten conflicting information I might have to block the temporary account, find an active checkuser or other trusted editor I can disclose the IP to, have them block it, and waste multiple people's time.ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)16:49, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Barkeep49 I don't remember your specific comment, but I assume it was in response to the OC's email of 17 March, which is reproduced for public view atmeta:Ombuds commission/2025/Temporary Accounts. I encourage anybody reading that to note that it's full ofweasel words like "limited experience", "initial", "preliminary guidance", "evolving landscape", "current understanding", etc. I should also point out that just like ArbCom, the OC doesn't make policy; we (again, like ArbCom) just get blamed for trying to enforce it.RoySmith(talk)17:16, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith this was based on follow-up answers the ombuds provided, particularly one from 27 March (sent on 26 March for those in the US). Best,Barkeep49 (talk)17:26, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, if an LTA comes back within 90 days on a new temp account and we can behaviorally link it to the prior temp account, and find that both are on the same ip, then we can go for a prolonged ip block. I think there’s going to be a significant learning curve to this as we figure out how to address chronic abusers. — rsjaffe 🗣️16:02, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's also this:When it is reasonably believed to be necessary, users with access to temporary account IP addresses may also disclose the IP addresses in appropriate venues that enable them to enforce or investigate potential violations of our Terms of Use, the Privacy Policy, or any Wikimedia Foundation or user community-based policies. Appropriate venues for such disclosures include pages dedicated toLong-term abuse. If such a disclosure later becomes unnecessary, then the IP address should be promptly revision-deleted. (Source)SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)17:28, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I'll just say that I really support temporary accounts, think privacy is good, and commend the WMF for rolling them out.Cremastra (talk ·contribs)20:06, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree. Temporary accounts may be a pain to deal with, but the added privacy benefits make the trade-off worthwhile, imo.Some1 (talk)01:02, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I also think privacy is good, so why does this involve installing tracking cookies in my browser? Will there be an option to decline them?98.97.3.234 (talk)22:51, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You can configure your browser to reject cookies, and in that case, a new temporary account will be created for every edit you make. Seethis FAQ entry. Note that if you do this, you can edit only 6 times/day before you have to create a real account, perthis FAQ entry.OutsideNormality (talk)03:30, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Hi! I want to note that we are not implementing any tracking cookies in your browser.Tracking cookies are used to track your browsing history and activities, typically across multiple websites. We are adding a cookie to attribute your edits to an anonymized username. And your data (IP address) will be stored for a limited amount of time and be exposed to a smaller group of individuals. We have a similar cookie for registered accounts, except that it lasts for a longer time period. --NKohli (WMF) (talk)09:32, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Cookies don’t anonymize edits, theyde-anonymize them. They enable activity to be tracked across IP addresses. (Or whatever you want to call it that isn’t “tracking”—haha, gotcha! It’s totally not tracking because we defined tracking as something you do with muffins, not cookies!) This cookie has no other purpose and I don’t want it.98.97.6.48 (talk)00:51, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The alternative is the expose your IP address every edit. The purpose of temporary accounts is to de-anonymize your activities on Wikipedia (which must be done in some way so blocks apply to the same person) while hiding your real-life identity, the latter of which is what the WMF probably means by "anonymize".Aaron Liu (talk)11:41, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Some questions about temporary accounts:
  • Would there still be a way for an unregistered user to view all oftheir own IP's (post-rollout) contributions, or equivalently the list oftheir own IP's past temporary accounts?
• Some questions about temporary account viewers:
  • If an unregistered user only edits constructively and without engaging in vandalism, trolling, or similar shenanigans, then would it be against the rules for a TAIV to check their IP address, or could they just decide to do it on a whim?
  • What's stopping a rogue TAIV user from programmatically checking the IP of every single temporary account that has edited in the last 90 days and dumping that list somewhere? Would there be ratelimits put in place or something?98.170.164.88 (talk)05:49, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  To answer your first question about temp accounts, what do you mean by "their own IP"? :) This was a fundamental concern with how we handle unregistered editors. IPs can change, sometimes very rapidly. We cannot say IP 1.2.3.4 is always User ABC.

  Contributions made before the launch of temp accounts will not be affected. So a user can see edits made by logged out editors an IP/range from before the rollout. Post rollout, a temporary account holder can look at their contributions from their temp account. If they have happened to have other temp accounts in the past, they'll need to remember which ones those are if they want to see their contributions from those temp accounts.

  To answer your questions about temporary account viewers:

  1. Thepolicy lays this out so please refer to it. We tried to make it as succinct and clear as we could. If you have clarifying questions about anything outlined in the policy, please let me know. Happy to answer.
  2. There is a log in place but we do not have any rate-limits. We trust that editors with this right will exercise their judgement and act in the best interests of the project. We also expect that admins will ensure users who are granted this right truly need this right to carry out anti-vandalism efforts.

  NKohli (WMF) (talk)10:00, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Chipmunkdavis,Rsjaffe, and other interested parties: I have made an attempt to document the answers to questions in this discussion atUser:Perfect4th/Temporary accounts. It's roughly topical; anyone who wishes to or has a better understanding than what I wrote is free to correct it, reorder in a way that makes sense, add further answered questions, etc. Happy editing,Perfect4th (talk)18:23, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Nice. Thanks for making this. Perhaps you should consider moving it to projectspace, or someone should create something similar to it in projectspace. I think a projectspace page to put tips, tricks, and notes on temporary accounts is going to be needed to help get everyone up to speed. –Novem Linguae(talk)21:07, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There is alsoUser:Giraffer/Guide to temporary accounts byGiraffer. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)21:50, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm just going to comment here that anyone who wants to see how temp accounts work in action can look at the other wikis, particularly Simple English for those who aren't bilingual (myself included).QuicoleJR (talk)12:03, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• I'll admit I've for some time now been rather dubitante over this whole change, and my overall assessment is almost certainly irrelevant to the people responsible anyway, but I'm still not sure if it's ever been explained by the WMF or anyone else why masking schemes that preserve ranges were disfavored, if that has been explained somewhere a pointer would be welcome.184.152.65.118 (talk)21:17, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Will it be possible for editors on a temporary guest account to "upgrade" their guest account to a "proper" account during the 90 days, retaining their editing history? I an imagine quite a lot of editors might start as guests, but find they are making good progress, finding it fulfilling being part of the project, and want to keep going. It would benefit both the community and the individual if they can move seamlessly to a named account. That way, we have continuity in any ongoing discussions in which they're taking part, and in interactions concerning their edits, and they can still go back to their older contributions, which will count towards their extended-confirmed status. In fact if they get kicked off, start a named account, and immediately reinforce a view they've expressed somewhere controversial, we have to make sure they don't get instantly accused of socking.Elemimele (talk)14:46, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That's not a good idea since people can reveal the IP address of the temporary account without CheckUser perms, and can trivially link it back to the named account.ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)14:49, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If the upgrade process is implemented, I'm sure the software would prevent such IP lookups.Aaron Liu (talk)16:40, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Wouldn't help if the IP was looked up before the transfer.ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)17:01, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Disclosing another's IP would run afoul of TAIV rules. I'm sure whoever chooses to use the process would be warned about the chance risks.Aaron Liu (talk)19:43, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't believe that's possible, in the same way it's not possible now with an IP. But there's nothing to stop somebody from making an account and noting "I used to edit as ~2025-12345-99" on their user page if they want to.RoySmith(talk)14:51, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  ChildrenWillListen, I don't think so; I was under the impression that the main point of having the temporary accounts was to conceal the IP of the person using them, so that they offer logged-out users a better level of privacy, consistent with the way privacy law is going. YesRoySmith they can do so, but from a community perspective it still means we need to look back at a separate place for their edit history, and from their perspective they're back to square one for anything like extended-confirmed (not that that's tragic)Elemimele (talk)17:46, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Hey @Elemimele, I just wanted to confirm that it's not possible to "upgrade" into a registered account. Instead, temporary account holders will be (perhaps they already are, periodically) encouraged to create registered accounts.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)12:10, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Fair enough! It was just an idea. Thanks for the clarification.Elemimele (talk)17:08, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• There's a certain IP address whom I work with, as they periodically make NFL drafts and I come along to improve and publish them (I find the drafts by checking their contributions). How will I be able to continue working with the IP editor if this change goes through?BeanieFan11 (talk)16:35, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Ask them to create an account and edit using that. We are long past the "if this change goes through" point. It is going to happen, it's just a matter of the exact rollout date for enwiki having changed.RoySmith(talk)16:58, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  (edit conflict) @BeanieFan11 if you talk to that person, you will be able to ping them, they will be getting your pings, pretty much the same way you work with a regular community member with a regular account. The main difference is that their account will be changing at least every 90 days, or more often if they choose to exit session. For more details, see the part#For community members interacting with logged-out editors.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)17:00, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What I'm not sure of is how I'll be able to find them once they're given new "temporary accounts".BeanieFan11 (talk)17:32, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If they insist on not registering a "permanent" account, at least they will get a user page for the temporary account where they could note that they previously edited from an IP address. If I were regularly collaborating with an IP editor I'd find it hard to resist reminding them that a regular account would make communication and collaboration much easier.ClaudineChionh(she/her ·talk ·email ·global)21:30, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What I don't understand is the resistance to registering an account. Let's say, like Beanie's collaborator, you have a long-term static IP address that people know you by. That's essentially the same as having a registered account except that 1) there's a few editing rights you can't have and 2) anybody can find out where you are by looking you up in one of the public geolocation databases. So what are you gaining by not registering?

  I'm not being facetious here; I really do want to understand why people are opposed to registering an account. Given the disadvantages of IP editing, there must be some offsetting advantages which makes it the right choice for some people.RoySmith(talk)21:46, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Objectively, registering an account is better in every way (increased privacy, better tools). Those that still prefer to edit as IPs seem to have some kind of contrarian, anarchic ideology. Example:Template:Proud of editing as an IP. –Novem Linguae(talk)11:43, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was looking at the contributions pages for temporary accounts on other language editions of Wikipedia to get a feel for how this will work. I discovered that, under the new temporary account system, every time an unregistered editor merelyreads a Wikipedia edition they had not previously accessed, the date, time, and language of their reading will be publicly logged.

See for exampleSpecial:CentralAuth/~2025-54321-0, who made one edit to Polish Wikipedia on 7 September, then merely read an article on German Wikipedia on 3 October (without making any edits in German). Another example:Special:CentralAuth/~2025-100123, who edited Polish Wikipedia and then read the German, Serbian, and Chinese Wikipedias about 13 hours later.

I find this odd. Why does the software have to keep track of mere reads instead of actual edits? If the goal of the new system is to improve privacy, then this seems like a step backwards.98.170.164.88 (talk)04:51, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. This is a quirk of the account registration system in MediaWiki. Every time a user visits a project that they haven't visited before, the account "attaches" to the new wiki. This works similarly for registered accounts too (example). Since temporary accounts use the same mechanism to generate accounts, the same behavior applies to temporary accounts. --NKohli (WMF) (talk)09:27, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It does the same for us logged-in users too. This is currently the only way to automatically log-in on wikis you haven't visited before that share your account because the account-creation date is a required field on each local wiki too.Aaron Liu (talk)11:32, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just checking —The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation means that the cookie expiration isnot refreshed by subsequent visits by the same browser? So an "IP editor" will get a series of user names – a new name per browser every 90 days? Which means that any discussions in the user's talk page will need to be linked or moved to the new account if the discussion is to continue? Is the cookie lifetime 90 days on all wikis? —GhostInTheMachine^{talk to me}15:35, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the cookie is per-browser, and expires at 90 days. It can't be extended. The 90 day limit is set on all wikis.KHarlan (WMF) (talk)15:57, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So any IP block for more than 90 days has to be on the IP address and not on the temp account, by definition?Fram (talk)16:15, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. If someone wants to block the IP address (and all current/future traffic from it, e.g. past the 90 days limit of a temp account), they can block the IP. Based on what we've seen so far (T395134#11120266: [Request] Analyzing the roll-out of temp accounts on major pilots as it impacts anti-abuse work), it seems that blocking a temporary account is an effective deterrent in many cases.KHarlan (WMF) (talk)17:46, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since its not possible to delete an account on Wikipedia due to attribution issues, does it mean temporary talk pages will be kept after 90 days? Messages from IP users get deleted after a few years, but remains visible in the edit history.JuniperChill (talk)18:13, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is up to each wiki to decide how they want to handle the talk pages of old temporary accounts (leave them unchanged, blank them, or delete them). I don't expect enwiki to delete them.jlwoodwa (talk)23:56, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the user extends the cookie expiration date, will the server-end detect that and still kill the account on the 91st day? —GhostInTheMachine^{talk to me}17:02, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that’s correct.KHarlan (WMF) (talk)17:40, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I see the benefit of resetting a person even if they vandalize on the 1st and 89th days.GMG^talk20:23, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it's to nudge them towards making a regular account. –Novem Linguae(talk)21:44, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of related questions:

• Is the expiration time of a TA visible (publicly, to admins, to CUs?)
• If I try to block a TA for longer than its remaining lifetime, what happens?

RoySmith(talk)00:55, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To the best of my understanding: 1. it is 90 days after the temporary account was created (globally, not locally), which is public information, and 2. it has the same effect as blocking it for the remainder of its lifetime (modulo a brief difference in autoblock behavior at the end, perhaps).jlwoodwa (talk)01:06, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• To answer your first question: When a temporary account has expired, this information is shown publicly on Special:CentralAuth. For example, at testwiki the temporary account~2024-10120 is shown as having expired. I am not aware of an interface that shows when a temporary account is expected to expire (though you could estimate this by looking at when the account was registered and comparing it to the current date)
• To answer your second question: Any block placed on a temporary account for longer than it's remaining lifetime will succeed. We do not prevent the blocking of temporary accounts for more than 90 days. One advantage with this is because there may be a need to track block evasion. For example:
  • A temporary account is editing disruptively and an admin decides to block the user behind the temporary account indefinitely (intentionally)
  • The admin communicates that this block is indefinite and editing the wiki again would be considered block evasion
  • The user ignores this and, after waiting till their old temporary account expires and waiting for any autoblocks expire, they edit again getting a new temporary account
  • A different admin receiving the report of block evasion can more easily see that there is still an active block on the first temporary account that applies to the user behind the account. Without a block longer than the expiry time of the temporary account, then the different admin would need to check that the intention was to block the user for more than the lifetime of their old temporary account
• If there is no need to block the user behind the temporary account, then a block of 90 days as standard would be enough to always ensure that they are prevented from editing throughout the lifetime of that temporary account

WBrown (WMF) (talk)08:56, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"If there is no need to block the user behind the temporary account, then a block of 90 days as standard would be enough to always ensure that they are prevented from editing throughout the lifetime of that temporary account" Under what circumstances would we ever block a temp account without the need to block "the user behind the account"? Blocks (excluding some username blocks, which aren't relevant here) arealways for the user behind the account, and not for the account itself.Fram (talk)09:21, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree that blocks are intended for the user behind the account and so in probably all cases the best approach would be to block the temporary account indefinitely.

I mentioned the last point primarily from the point of view that some wikis have requested that we change the default blocking period for temporary accounts on their wiki to 90 days (T398626). Without a change in blocking policy to indicate 90 day blocks apply to the user indefinitely, these 90 day blocks would no longer prevent that user from editing under the blocking policy after their original temporary account expires.WBrown (WMF) (talk)09:38, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps one nice thing about temporary accounts will be that they can be blocked like regular users, without special rules about block duration. There are many IPs out there that have only gotten 36 hour blocks or one week blocks, when a full account would have normally been indef'd. In other words, it simplifies blocking. (And of course the normal indef appeals process can be used. Indefinite is not infinite.) –Novem Linguae(talk)21:47, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Won't any block of a temporary account for more than 90 days be for show only?Donald Albury22:49, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's also quicker to not have to change indef to 90 days. And it also signals that the admin's intent is an indef rather than a time duration. –Novem Linguae(talk)22:55, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are blocks on previous temporary accounts only visible to admins, or are they visible all editors with TAIV permissions?CMD (talk)03:14, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Chipmunkdavis the latter - TAIV gives you access to other temp accounts from the same IP.

• To check the blocks on previous temp accounts from the same IP, use IP reveal, check the list of temp accounts using the IP, and then see if any have been blocked.
• In addition (thanks to @WBrown (WMF) for this part), if the active temporary account is editing similar pages to other inactive temporary accounts, you could initially assume that these older temporary accounts are the same person as the active temporary account (especially if the topic isn't that active for editors). You could then confirm this by using IP reveal to look up the IPs of the temporary accounts you found and compare to the active temporary account.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)17:12, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): I'm sure I've asked about this elsewhere, but can this be made easier for us by publicly flagging temporary accounts using the same UA and IP address/range?ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)01:25, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @ChildrenWillListen, yeah, I'm almost certain I've seen that question too but I'm not sure what you mean. A couple of thoughts:

• How would you like to have them flagged, given that there are so many IP ranges? You can see different temp accounts using the same IP onSpecial:IPContributions (it will be blueified once temp accounts get introduced). You can read more about this page in the guideTemporary Accounts/Access to IP.
• Definitely it's not possible to flag any connections publicly.
• In the context of tracking abusers, we're trying to move away from treating IPs as the main identifiers. The connection between a person and a temp account, their editing patterns and other metadata is much tighter than that between the user and the IP. As an example, we expect thatIP reputation filters will be useful in mitigating abuse without needing to target a specific IP address.

What do you think? Is my comment helpful? Thanks!SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)09:26, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SGrabarczuk (WMF):

1. If the address is an IPv6, any temp acccount within the same /64 should be flagged. It is practically impossible for it to belong to someone else. We can filter by user agent here, particularly for IPv4 addresses since there's a possibility they're behind a NAT and the address is shared with multiple households.
2. Why not? We're just linking ~2025-3999-1 with ~2025-4002-3. No IP info is revealed. I'm not a lawyer, so I could be totally wrong here.
3. Currently, for people with TAIV access, you need two operations to find temporary accounts within an IP range, much like with the CheckUser tool. The more time you spend combating abuse, the less time you have to, well,build an encyclopedia. If this feature is introduced, a person can simply see at a glance that these accounts belong to the same network, and report/block if needed, which also reduces the number of IP reveals needed, improving temporary account privacy in the long run.
4. As forthe connection between a person and a temp account, their editing patterns and other metadata is much tighter than that between the user and the IP, while this may be true in the short term, people can and will change their behavior, and sometimes technical evidence is the only way you can link them.

ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)12:40, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The answer to 2 is because you could link one temporary account to multiple IPs, eg. home and work. However, I agree with 3. RegardingHow would you like to have them flagged, it would be useful if a temporary account contributions pages included any underlying blocks for IPs, and this could just include the type of block and reason without specifying the IPs. Similarly, any IP contributions page should on that page include blocks given to linked temporary accounts (presumably there is no need to hide the account name that way around).CMD (talk)13:18, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The answer to 2 is because you could link one temporary account to multiple IPs, eg. home and work.: No, because no IPs are revealed in the process. All you see is ~2025-3999-1 and ~2025-4002-3 share the same IP addresses. Unless you use the TAIV tool to reveal the actual IP addresses, you cannot come to that conclusion.ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)13:21, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, I misread. The numbers for TA accounts confused me.CMD (talk)13:58, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Has it always been permissible to link IPs to accounts publicly. For example, if an IP user gets blocked, and a new user does the exact behaviour (or vice versa)? Of course, CUs are not allowed to use the tool to link IPs with accounts.JuniperChill (talk)00:41, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the behavioral evidence used to come to that conclusion is all public, then I believe it's always been allowed. Unlike things like a logged in user's IP address, there is no expectation of privacy for two accounts that behave the same and someone simply points out the similar behavior.WP:DUCK comes to mind. –Novem Linguae(talk)03:32, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ChildrenWillListen, we've recently updated theUser Info card to indicate how many other temporary accounts are on the same IPv4 address or same IPv6 /64 range. You will find more information inT388718. I hope this helps!SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)12:21, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): This is definitely a welcome step, but I have a few more comments:

1. numbers are bucketed to protect privacy: 0, 1-2, 3-5, 6-10, 11+: How does this protect privacy? If the exact number of TAs is leaked, how would a bad actor be able to find the IP address of a temporary account?
2. We should *not* provide any details about which specific temporary account names are active on the same IP / IPv6 /64 range. Again, why? The whole point of temporary accounts is to prevent most users from seeing the IP addresses of anonymous contributors. It isnot meant to conceal connections between different accounts operating under the same IP address/range. This information cannot be used to find the IP addresses of the underlying TAs.
3. Even if you don't agree with the above statement, it would be nice for people with TAIV access to be able to list the specific accounts with one click, since they would be able to do that manually anyway.

ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)17:25, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SGrabarczuk (WMF) and @EMill-WMF: Any updates on this?ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)15:03, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ChildrenWillListen thanks for these questions and my apologies about the delayed response. Bucketing the numbers was a suggestion from Legal. We are talking with them about making these exact and we should have an update soon. Same goes for the second point you made -- we are currently looking into a way to show connected temporary accounts. I will be able to share more details once I have more clarity from engineering and legal about these. Thanks. --NKohli (WMF) (talk)11:10, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ChildrenWillListen: There is nearly the same probability of two or more people sharing an IPv6 /64 as being NATted behind a single IPv4 address. Homes and small organizations typically get a temporary IPv6 /64 assignment from their ISP for use on their internal network. All devices connected to the same internal network interface use one or more IPv6 addresses from the assigned /64. If you block the /64, all of the people connected to the internal network interface where it is assigned will be blocked. If you block a dynamically assigned /64 and it gets reassigned before the block expires, all of the people connected to the internal network interface where it gets reassigned will be blocked.216.126.35.228 (talk)01:07, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unlike with CGNAT, the people who would share the /64 would probably be under the same roof, and having a vandal and a productive contributor in the same household isexceedingly rare.ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)01:17, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WMF, in theFAQ it is claimed in the section "Would disallowing or limiting anonymous editing be a good alternative?" that this is "unlikely" because at the Portuguese wikipedia "On the other hand, there is evidence that this came at the cost of a significant reduction in non-reverted edits, weakening the growth of content in the Portuguese Wikipedia, and potentially leading to other negative long-term effects." As I described above, these claims seem false, and the growth or decline of ptwiki seems exactly in line with that of other large Wikipedia versions. There is no significant extra loss of new articles, user edits, or new editors compared to these other Wikipedias. See e.g. the number of active editors[6]. So based on what numbers do you claim these statements to be true?Fram (talk)16:30, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very curious about this as well. Because the public research I've seen suggests it didn't harm ptwiki, but have had multiple conversations with various WMF staffers who firmly believe it did. While Iexpressed reasons other than this above why I supported keeping IP editing, that was before I realized thatno matter what temp accounts reset after 90 days. So understanding what evidence we have about this would be important for me in any such discussion about disabling IP editing. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)16:47, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I too am interested in this question, and shareFram's concern that causal inference in statistics is very hard and at minimum a properdifference-in-difference model is necessary to attempt to capture the causal effect of disallowing IP editing on content, which we don't seem to have.KevinL (akaL235·t·c)17:57, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I want to first clarify about the metric. The leading metric we looked at for ptwiki isNet non-reverted content edits - defined as the number of content (main-namespace) edits that were not reverted within 48 hours, excluding bot edits, reverted edits, and edits that reverted other edit. We chose this metric because we felt it was most representative of the impact on the community's content health as a result of this change. Unfortunately this metric is not displayed by default onstats.wikimedia.org.

We have measured the impact of this change three times since the change was implemented:In August 2021,June 2022 andApril 2024. Each time we saw a similar downward trend inNet non-reverted content edits. You can see how the numbers compare over the four years in themost recent report, Table 6. In Q1 of this year we saw a decline of as much as 36% compared to pre-restriction days. We also compared this trend with Spanish, German, French and Italian Wikipedias and did not see the same trend on those wikis.

You are right in noting that there have been many positive outcomes from this change as well - lower blocks, reverts, page protections -- all point to a decrease in vandalism on the project. The feedback from the survey was quite positive as well. However, we do not think the decline in net non-reverted content edits is worth the trade-off. @Benjamin Mako Hill and his team wrote about theValue of IP Editing to offer their perspective on this too in case you haven't seen it.

Lastly, I want to point out that before embarking on temporary accounts our team seriously considered turning off logged out editing as a viable alternative. Some of you might recall that we put out acall to communities that want to experiment with this change. TheFarsi Wikipedia experiment was a result of this call. If this option did turn out to be viable, it would have been the easier way out - way less work than temporary accounts. Unfortunately the results from ptwiki and fawiki were not what we had hoped for. --NKohli (WMF) (talk)13:19, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I find it disingenuous that you never mentioned the only metric that matters: the editors of ptwiki are happy with banning IP edits, and they have no intention of going back. Moreover, the metric you do focus on,net non-reverted content edits clearly shows that ptwiki was already in decline before it.Tercer (talk)14:43, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that editor happiness is the only metric that matters. I am here to serve our readers and so if our readers are being hurt by having old information, when new information would be possible, or (more importantly) incorrect information when correct information would be possible, that matters a great deal to me. It also matters a great deal to me about whether turning off IP editing harms the pipeline to gaining more new registered editors. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)17:30, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You don't get new information or new editors if editors are unhappy. If editors are unhappy they leave and the project dies.Tercer (talk)20:29, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I generally tend to express my unhappiness instead of leaving right away if there is something I don't like, since I have invested a lot in the project. I imagine it's the same in other wikisIta140188 (talk)16:51, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you are a very dedicated editor that will stay no matter what, but you can't generalize this to everyone. Editors come and go all the time. I don't think there's really any doubt about whether unhappy editors tend to leave the project.

And in this particular case WMF has already been clear that it will push through regardless of editors' opinions, so "expressing your unhappiness" won't make any difference.Tercer (talk)15:52, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it's not a good look reputation-wise if readers are exposed to more vandalism or long-term abuse, which they most likely will be in the long run with the temporary accounts feature. Not all vandalism is reverted quickly. For instance, to pick a relatively low-stakes example, if temporary accounts had been active here in May, I would never havediscovered this edit because of the 90-day cutoff for retrieving IP information (seethis comment of mine for more context). If push came to shove I would absolutely support discontinuing IP editing ... but we're basically damned if we do, damned if we don't. When I was invited to participate in theWMF's let's talk program, one of the reasons I agreed to do so was to bring up my concerns about this cutoff. ButI well know why it's been implemented.Graham87 (talk)09:17, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the only big issue with this is that everyone's complaining about traceability, since this doesn't really affect the reverting vandalism side of things aside from tracing. And this whole TA thing is literally reducing traceability, so you can't really get around that despite any attempt to do so. The alternative would be to set no expiration or longer expiration to the cookies, but then it would be basically 'we replaced IPs with something that looks a bit better but functions like an IP'2A04:7F80:6E:D2B:900C:A6A9:FD99:F70 (talk)14:31, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Traceability is my main concern as well (see my comments above). In their FAQ, the WMF said that they are "open to extending" the 90 day period for IP retention. Maybe it should be increased?

In the same answer, they mention we could use "behavioral evidence or patterns of editing" but that's a bit hard to do for the occasional vandals with little edits.ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!}14:57, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I could also see cases where a range IP user that clears cookies could either purposely or accidentally sock in a low volume way that would be really hard to notice based on behavioral evidence alone. In a recent AfD, I encountered an IP who nominated the article and then later voted when their range changed slightly. I don't think they intended to be malicious but I was able to flag that I thought these two edits were by the same user. But there wasn't really anything behavioral that stood out to connect the two edits and in the case of temp accounts, I wouldn't have been able to identify them as being from the same editor. Non-admins who frequently close discussions should probably have TAIV.Sariel Xilo (talk)16:28, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is mentioned in the third paragraph.Aaron Liu (talk)11:45, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't say the metric was already in decline before the date. It seemed to be just jumping up and down within the same range, but after that there was a very clear downward trend.Aaron Liu (talk)11:47, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There were roughly 195k non-reverted edits in 2017, 132k in 2019 (the baseline), and 107k in 2023. The decline from 2017 to 2019 was roughly 47%, much larger than the 22% decline from 2019 to 2023 that WMF considers so disastrous.

The third paragraph mentions "the survey", with zero information about who was surveyed about what.Tercer (talk)12:16, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Table 6 has the actual numbers, though interestingly not including 2017 (which looks more like 170k on average though):

Table 6. Net Non-reverted Content Edits Year-over-Year Comparison

Monthly Average	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
FY2018/19 (5 years prior)	133913	125289	134459	147502
FY2019/20 (4 years prior)	154321	132012	133236	131285
FY2020/21 (3 years prior)	166618	128595	123720	132507
FY2021/22 (2 years prior)	120482	109471	111890	113829
FY2022/23 (1 year prior)	105311	98015	113500	98271
FY2023/24 (study year)	98442	102844	-	-
3 years prior compared to 4 years prior	8.0%	-2.6%	-7.1%	0.9%
2 years prior compared to 4 years prior	-21.9%	-17.1%	-16.0%	-13.3%
1 year prior compared to 4 years prior	-31.8%	-25.8%	-14.8%	-25.1%
Study year compared to 4 years prior	-36.2%	-22.1%	-	-

Aaron Liu (talk)16:05, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think these numbers can be correct. I just checked, and the last 5000 non-minor mainspace non-bot edits on ptwiki[7] go back 2 days and 3 hours, which equals some 70,000 edits this month. This would mean that about half of those edits are not counted as "net non-reverted content edits", despite the much lower revert rate since disabling IP editing (revert rate in 2024 was below 6%). Is there any explanation anywhere what they actually consider to be "content edits"?Fram (talk)16:37, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Content edits are identified based on whether they are from a content namespace. This is themonthly average data (no idea why it's the heading of the first column instead of the last four); the numbers average all the monthly totals within that quarter instead of being a sum total.Aaron Liu (talk)01:48, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thank you, I should have seen that.Fram (talk)10:31, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I agree withWe chose this metric because we felt it was most representative of the impact on the community's content health as a result of this change. If community systems are overwhelmed in a community that has IP editing (with or with-out Temp Accounts) the edits that stay unreverted may be, on the whole, a net negative to the project and to its readers. Put another way: if a community is overwhelmed then the net non-reverted edits are lower pre-change than policies and guidelines would suggest they should be and if they are then not overhwelmed afterwards, may be showing the true rate. I also am not sure I agree that it is the only metric worth looking at - as I indicated above statistics about overall community health in terms of editor registration, retention, and "moving up the ranks" - also feel worth examination. I would suggest English Wikipedia is not currently overhwelmed and so we do have a good baseline - something I don't know was the case for ptwiki - but I do worry that these changeswill overwhelm the system because of the extra work that it is going to require to dealing with unregistered accounts. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)17:38, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Barkeep49 I did not mean to imply that this was the only metric worth looking at. Like you can see in the report we did examine multiple other metrics and also carried out community survey(s) to assess how the editors feel about the change. However this metric stands out as important to us because it indicates a sustained loss in high-quality contributions and has consistently been on a decline in ptwiki since the restriction was in place.

I would also like to add that our team has been continually working on delivering tools to assist with anti-vandalism work. hCaptcha, GlobalContributions, IP Info, AbuseFilter improvements (including IP reputation filters), UserInfo card etc to name a few. We strongly care about moderator burden and this is reflected inour team's priorities. If you have ideas for how we can do these better, your thoughts are welcome on thetalk page. --NKohli (WMF) (talk)11:15, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@NKohli (WMF) I did read the report and did see other metrics. In the most recent report the two other takeaways were favorable on disabling IP editing. The fact that the foundation has decided that the metric which showed a decrease is so alarming as to say it's a failure suggests that the WMF does think it's the only metric that matters. I appreciate you answer my question - I really do - but I think my original assessmentthe public research I've seen suggests it didn't harm ptwiki. needs to be amended tothe public research I've seen suggests mixed results on ptwiki which does not, for me, justify the labeling the Foundation has chosen to attach to it. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)14:36, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It feels that as always the only metric that matter is the one that aligns with and supports the WMF's interests and viewsIta140188 (talk)16:54, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's also worth noting that@MuddyB: complained about the surge of vandalism on the Swahili Wikipedia (where he is an admin), following the enabling of temporary accounts, though as I understand IP editing may have been previously disabled outright on this wiki.[8]Hemiauchenia (talk)23:32, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And of course WMF couldn't care less about the wishes of swwiki, and rammed temporary accounts down their throats anyway.Tercer (talk)08:27, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Temporary accounts are going to be "rammed" down everyone's throats as they are being made for legal reasons. For better or worse, office actions exist for these sorts of matters. (And curiously Swahili Wikipedia was another one that had Vector2022 imposed over the wishes of the community. That said, Vector2022 has also now become universal across all wikis, as temporary accounts will also.)CMD (talk)10:18, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the thread before commenting. The subject is banning IP edits as an alternative to introducing temporary accounts. It would also solve the legal problem.Tercer (talk)11:25, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You are misunderstanding the implications of the proposal. Banning IP edits is not an alternative to temporary accounts, both actions are technically independent of each other. Temporary accounts are becoming implemented whether IP edits are allowed or not. Even if en.wiki responds by banning article editing by IPs, we will still have to figure out how to work with temporary accounts on talkpages.CMD (talk)14:35, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it is an alternative. If IP edits are banned there's no longer a legal reason for implementing temporary accounts. Are you claiming that WMF would nevertheless implement temporary accounts? Just out of spite? I find that hard to believe.Tercer (talk)14:49, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you assume that when people say we should ban IP editing they are only referring to mainspace? But, yeah, as a practical matter, anonymous editing exists (and thus temporary accounts also exist) and that's not going to change any time soon. So the community needs to figure out how to handle them.RoySmith(talk)14:50, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the WMF would implement temporary accounts because they already exist and have already been rolled out and will continue to be rolled out as a standard part of the underlying software for every wiki, whatever en.wiki does, rather than out of spite.

I assume that in general the IP editing bans will be likely called for with the main space in mind because of the consistent raising of the pt.wiki precedent, as well as on-wiki precedent regarding how we currently handle protections and even weird situations like the ARBPIA ECP talk page restrictions.CMD (talk)15:08, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair I don't think the latest surge in vandalism on swwiki is related to temporary accounts.WP:LTA/Wikinger decided to target swwiki in the past weeks/months on an almost daily basis. The LTA uses rapidly changing proxy IPs which is a burden to admins with or without temporary accounts.

I did a quick check and it seems to me that none of the swwiki admins enabled their access to temporary account IPs which also means they can't use features like IP autoreveal – and have no way of knowing (except based on behaviour) if a temporary account is a newbie or a potential LTA.

@Muddyb fyi I recommend reading the pages linked in#Impact for different editors and enable your access to temporary account IPs viasw:Special:Preferences#mw-input-wpcheckuser-temporary-account-enable (enabling the IPInfo tool viasw:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal-ipinfo might also be useful).Johannnes89 (talk)06:53, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Johannnes89 It's chaos—completely. Temp aacounts actors aee now on my blog, commenting gibberish. Good thing Wordpress can't comment without approval. Ditching them every now and then.Muddyb (talk)13:21, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can’t see the blog comments but I bet all of them were written byWP:LTA/Wikinger. I don’t think the situation on your home wiki would be much different without temporary accounts (except that some tools currently require a few more clicks). Wikinger has annoyed different projects for years and unfortunately he currently chooses to annoy swwiki. You might want to checkmw:Extension:IPReputation/AbuseFilter variables in case that’s helpful to fight against his proxy abuse (unfortunately many open proxy IPs are not known to IPoid).Johannnes89 (talk)17:24, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What's the point of comparing different months in different years (August 2021, June 2022 and April 2024)? This will not eliminate seasonality effects. Maybe it's not that 2024 saw less edits, but that April has generally less edits than August or June?Ita140188 (talk)16:49, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think it inevitable that Wikipedia projects will disable anonymous editing in the future. As projects grow, the opportunity for anonymous editors to do anything productive continues to shrink. (1) The level of knowledge necessary to contribute positively to the projects keeps increasing. More policies, more guidelines, more standards, more templates. This growth in required knowledge is glacially slow but inexorable. (2) There is ever increasing lack of ability for editors to contributein general due to the (ever unattainable, thankfully) goal of completing the project. The lack of productive work possibilities gives ever decreasing opportunities to anonymous users to contribute positively. (3) The ratio of administrators to the amount of work administrators need to do continues to worsen. Those are just a few of the factors in play that are driving this reality. Imagine, if you will, Wikipedia 50 years from now. There will always be growth to be sure, but the opportunity for anonymous users to do anything will be almost absent. There needs to be a long term strategy to reverse these trends, else new blood coming into the projects will die. We're already in a long term drought. --Hammersoft (talk)14:52, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There won't be any wikipedia 50 years from now. What wikipedia does is harness the energy of many people to read books, newspapers, journal articles, etc, and distill them into encyclopedia articles. In way less than 50 years from now, AI will be good enough to make that an obsolete concept.RoySmith(talk)01:26, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, 50 years is quite optimistic. I can see the project lasting for another decade or two, but beyond that... I'm not so sure.Some1 (talk)01:43, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AI will be good enough to decide what is true? Leaving this to AI (ie. most likely to a private corporation) will never be acceptable, no matter how "good" the AI is. Wikipedia works because it's based on consensus among people.Ita140188 (talk)16:37, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with my experience patrolling recent changes.Aaron Liu (talk)03:00, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think, let's see how it goes, but certainly keep this option open if it proves untenable, as I suspect it well might. I'm not tremendously impressed with WMF over this whole thing; there was a lot of pushback on the idea, so they came up with "We're legally required to do this!", but then when they were asked "By what law, where?", they wouldn't answer that.Seraphimblade^{Talk to me}08:46, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The example usually given is that the EU's GDPRconsiders IP addresses personal data.  novovtalkedits09:23, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person’, including an online identifier that identifies the person directly or indirectly. Like an account identifier created just for that person that persists across IP addresses? I still think it's a lot of work to have gone through just to have communities disable IP/anon editing entirely.ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)10:48, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the defense is that it is the equivalent of a anonymized, randomly generated username. The data is (for all intents and purposes) anonymized and after 90 days, and a "random party" will not be able to map your TA to you with any level of certainty.Sohom (talk)16:01, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Seraphimblade, You are framing the events in the wrong order: "We're legally required to do this" (WMF does nothing for a while) -> "We had some light regulator scrutiny" -> "WMF scrambles to implement IP Masking" -> "Community outrage at the initial idea" -> "WMF slows down, spends a lot more time building some anti-abuse tooling around it" (and now here we are). Also, the reason the WMF is cagey about why they need to implement it is because it's typically bad legal strategy to publicly proclaim "we are currently breaking this exact provision of GDPR". (And, yes we are probably flouting multiple privacy laws including but not limited toGDPR's absolute stance on IP addresses andCCPA's slightly more nuanced take on IP addresses) It's frustrating as a volunteer but I think understandable from the point of the view of the WMF.Sohom (talk)16:16, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This summary of events reflects my understanding. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)16:24, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It’s also bad legal strategy to publicly proclaim that you’re going to violate theePrivacy Directive instead of the GDPR, by openly admitting in an FAQ that your cookies are not strictly necessary. But here we are.98.97.4.79 (talk)02:35, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This cookie is necessaryiff you chose to edit. (If your argument is somehow "we should not ever set a cookie", I'd like to see you defend the concept of a session identifier.) Regarding the ability to refuse the cookie, you are welcomed to refrain from editing and the cookie will not be set at all. (And if you clear your cookies regularly, a new one will be set, every session). If you do edit, you will be given a anonymous identity that will be destroyed/expired after 90 days. I don't see how any of this violates the ePrivacy Directive.Sohom (talk)02:55, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The cookie is not “strictly necessary for the delivery of a service requested by the user”, because the FAQ admits that editing will work just fine even if a browser discards the cookie. The purpose of the cookie is apparently to reduce the number of extra database entries created by the WMF’s own software, which is not a service requested by the user, so users must be presented with the option to accept or decline it. Sites can’t just say that cookies are “necessary” for their own private reasons; the law would have no effect if that were the case.98.97.4.79 (talk)03:14, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Again, you have the explicit ability to click cancel on a edit or not edit at all which would be a declination to the cookie (and a declination does not adversely affect your reading experience). Also, the cookie is required not because of "the number of extra database entries" created, but rather for attributing the edit to a user, a service you request and agree to by clicking the big blue "Publish changes" (or the large "Reply" button). By doing that you are agreeing that the cookie essential for attribution is set on your device. Your argument does not make sense in this context.Sohom (talk)03:29, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, to put things into context Wikimedia's infrastructure is largely open-source in a way that no other top-10 website is. The Foundation does not share any identifiers, and has a privacy policy that is much more detailed than any other top-10 site. If you are looking for technical privacy violations, you are barking up the wrong tree here. The search engine you used to get to this site probably collects a order of magnitude more data about you than Wikimedia will ever get from it's temporary account rollout.Sohom (talk)03:38, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“Agree to the tracking cookies or else we won’t let you post” is exactly the sort of arrangement not allowed under the ePrivacy Directive.98.97.4.79 (talk)03:44, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Access to specific website content may still be made conditional on the well-informed acceptance of a cookie or similar device, if it is used for a legitimate purpose.

Looks fine to me.jlwoodwa (talk)03:47, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Surely "the service as can be provided with a specific amount of labor" is the service? We could, in a strictly literal sense, serve pages as printed paper via FedEx, employing millions of clerks and envelope-stuffers, and this would require no cookies at all, but I scarcely think this would prove they were unnecessary all along.jp×g🗯️09:09, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I do not work for the WMF, by the way, I am just some guy.jp×g🗯️09:10, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So the take away here is that despite claims to the contrary, there is no evidence at all that the disabling of IP editing at Portuguese Wikipedia had any actual negative consequences (i.e. results not also felt at languages whichdidn't disable IP editing or which weren't present at Portuguese Wikipedia before the disabling)? It seems that Portuguese wiki flourishes just as well (or as badly) as other languages in all meaningful statistics, that they are not considering reversing their choice, and that they have a lot less vandalism to revert. I suppose the WMf will adapt their FAQ and other documentation to correctly present this?Fram (talk)10:26, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The "Portuguese wiki flourishes just as well (or as badly)", I would not term a "reduction in good faith unreverted edits" in such a manner. Yes, editor morale is up, but there are less contributions overall potentially having less vandalism to revert but also potentially hurting the readers in terms of how updated the information is (or not?), make of that what you will. The answer is up for debate and to my understanding the WMF has decided to take the more pessimistic interpretation of data here (which is still valid within this context and does not constitute a misrepresentation). From your POV, you want to take the more positive interpretation due to your entrenched position/expected outcome of "turning IP addresses should not cause problems and instead will improve morale". What you have identified are a bunch of threats of validity, but these threats of validity are coming from a position of "I expected to see a different result" and the real answer is "there are indicators of a reduction in the number of edits but we don't really know for sure".Sohom (talk)12:36, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They have taken the one metric which vaguely supports their position if you don't consider that the same trend was visible before IP editing was disabled. And from that, they decide "Would disallowing or limiting anonymous editing be a good alternative? Unlikely." But sure, my "entrenched position", which is not the "real answer", is the issue here. Your "we don't really know for sure" is not the same as stating "unlikely".

I do wonder how many of the "non-reverted edits" prior to the disabling of IP edits were just unconstructive edits which were not found because the other editors couldn't catch them all. When I e.g. think back to the time IP article creation was allowed on enwiki, I recall that while many poor creations were found quickly, we still had a much larger number of unacceptable new articles which lasted for longer than 48 hours. If the same applies to "non-reverted edits" on ptwiki, then the decline in that number is even less of a sign of a problem. It's too bad that this metric happens to be the one we can't compare for ourselves (unlike the other stats, which turn out to indicate no problems at ptwiki compared to other wikis).Fram (talk)15:36, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm saying is that I think the data is up for interpretation, you are interpreting the data in a very specific way (that reflect your biases) and then heavily implying/making loaded assumptions about the WMF intentions based on that and trying to strong-arm that conclusion. (to be blunt) I think the WMF's interpretation of the data is also a valid perspective on the data (which does not invalidate other perspectives including yours). While I disagree with your heavily implied conclusion of "they cherry picked data", I agree that the WMF should have done a better job of distinguishing between subtle vandalism and good-faith edits, but I view that as a much more subjective metric that can be infinitely bikeshed and argued about, so I do understand why the WMF went with the specific parameter that they did.Sohom (talk)16:06, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You should read again the FAQ entry. WMF wrote that "The results have been largely harmful", and "we cannot say that disabling logged-out editing on any project is a beneficial solution". Such strong conclusions simply do not follow from this ambiguous data. And yes, it does reek of ideological blindness.Tercer (talk)17:20, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have read the FAQ, you are quoting editorialized text out of context. Most studies/report/research present a broad conclusion ("we found X"), while underlying that are always caveats and assumptions about other factors (X, Y, Z) possibly being (ir)relevant. If we decided to demand the level of rigour that you demanding from the WMF, such that no statement can be ever be stated unless every possible confounder (X, Y and Z) was fully resolved, we'd need to start revising a large majority of academic literature. Yes, the WMF should have done a better job of representing the other relevant factors but that does not detract from the fact the interpretation is valid within the data they had and you are within your right to disagree with that conclusion since you interpret the data differently.Sohom (talk)17:55, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to get my head around the WMF claims about why the Portuguese experiment is not successful. Their 2024 study[9] claims:

• Revert rate decreased by 47%
• Non-reverted edits is 20% lower
• Non-reverted mainspace edits 22% lower

They compare 2019/2020 with 2023/2024, which is partially a bad fit because 2020, the Covid year, was an outlier in nearly all statistics. So let's compare 2019 to 2023. This[10] is the total number of edits by editors per month. Comparing 2019 to 2023, we get

• January: 155613 vs. 183959
• February: 137478 vs. 156183
• March: 155340 vs. 174412
• April: 139152 vs. 144277
• May: 169299 vs. 155512
• June: 160814 vs. 150569
• July: 175301 vs. 148916
• August: 162330 vs. 151748
• September: 158192 vs. 146822
• October: 151785 vs. 156850
• November: 158451 vs. 139514
• December: 139242 vs. 147410

Total: 2019 = 1862997, 2023 = 1856172. I hope I have not miscalculated anything, please check!

So 6 of the 12 months show an increase in edits, 6 show a decrease. In total we have an extremely feeble decrease of 6825 edits, or less than 0.5%!

But we have a 47% "revert rate decrease", which are at least 2 edits each time which are no longer being made (1 or more edits to revert, plus the revert), for which we sadly only have a percentage, but which dropped from 10% of the edits to 6% of the edits. Meaning that (4*2) 8% of the edits being made in 2019, some 150000 edits, no longer need to be made in 2023 (and of course this also means that 75000 vandal revert edit, which are "non-reverted content edits", no longer need to be made: perhaps these are the "missing" edits in the WMF reasoning?)

Overall, it seems that we have an actual clearincrease in good edits on ptwiki between 2019 and 2023, instead of the decrease the WMF claims and uses as its basis to declare the ptwiki disabling of IP editing unadvisable.Fram (talk)16:58, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Edits reverting vandalism were not counted as "non-reverted content edits":

Net non-reverted content edits are defined as the number of content (main-namespace) edits that were not reverted within 48 hours, excluding bot edits, reverted edits, andedits that reverted other edits.

jlwoodwa (talk)17:20, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Then I understand even less where they have found such a drop, when the tital number of human edits is nearly the same and the number of vandal-revert couples clearly dropped.Fram (talk)17:38, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you work through the numbers often enough, any wanted outcome can be proven. SeeConfirmation bias.Johnuniq (talk)02:54, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Filtering out the non-content edits makes this less absurd, but still a big discrepancy:

	FY2019	FY2023
January	108119	129475
February	97711	113876
March	108697	111136
April	95259	100825
May	128205	104882
June	117662	99895
July	129755	102871
August	118385	104037
September	117689	100172
October	105702	111224
November	109822	100347
December	97589	109709
Total	1334595	1288449
Nominal decrease	(0)	46146
Percent decrease	(0)	3.46%

Accounting for revert rate decrease would probably bring the percent decrease closer to 3%.Aaron Liu (talk)02:05, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you.Fram (talk)10:31, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, wikistats's "Download (as CSV)" button is very convenient.Aaron Liu (talk)13:17, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please seeWikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard#Implementation of user unnamed ip to filters, and suggestions for filters using only user editcount/user age as pre-filters.Codename Noreste (talk)16:28, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again, on behalf of theProduct Safety and Integrity team. First, thank you for all the comments above and all the effort you are putting into making this a smooth change. We wanted to acknowledge all the discussions here and on Discord, changes to existing tools, updates to meta-pages, themention in yesterday's Signpost, and other steps you've taken. We are grateful for your openness and curiosity about temporary accounts and new tools.

Technically, everything appears to be ready for deployment next week. However, we have decided topostpone the deployment to October 21st (by two weeks). We are going to take this time to hold more discussions – we want to meet with you to discuss the deployment and clarify anything about the tools you may still be unsure about. We will also put together some additional guidance and documentation to help you prepare to use the new system.

Taking this opportunity to look back at all the discussions, we wanted to comment on a couple of points:

• Users who currently can block IP addresses will still be able to see and block IP addresses from temporary accounts.
• From our deployments so far, we do not see evidence that volunteers are experiencing increased burden in managing abuse from logged-out editors. Since 2023, we've been working with stewards and other trusted volunteers to figure out what is needed to effectively handle abuse from temporary accounts. This appears to have been successful on other wikis, and we would not be proposing deployment if we were seeing evidence that this was going to increase community burden.
• Since this project was first announced years ago, our approach has changed. Initially we called it IP Masking, which focused on just one problem – IP addresses being so visible. Now, it's called Temporary Accounts, which is not only about hiding IPs – it's an additional and separate layer, with new tools built specifically to allow more precise actions (perWikipedia:IP addresses are not people).

Some tips on the tooling:

• Weupdated AbuseFilter to support matching against the IP address of a temporary account, though this isn't technically bi-directional support.
• Special:IPContributions allows viewing all edits and temporary accounts connected to a specific IP address or IP range. (Bear in mind that a temporary account may be using multiple IPs though.)
• Special:GlobalContributions supports the same search as IPContributions but globally.
• We expect thatIP reputation AbuseFilter filters will be useful in mitigating abuse from logged-out editors, without needing to target a specific IP address.
• TheUser Info card makes it possible for anyone to see the bucketed count of temporary accounts active on the same IP address range.
• Weupdated Special:AbuseLog to support IP range search for logs triggered by temporary accounts.

If you'd like to test some of your workflows with temporary accounts enabled or learn more:

• We haveset up a Patchdemo. Log in as user: IP Viewer, password:password321!. You may also patrol temporary accounts viaTest1 andTest2 history pages.
• We invite you to read theAccess to IP page and suggest changes to it.
• Take a look atnew gadgets and documentation created by other communities.

As always, we encourage you to also seeour FAQ where we have covered many topics related to temporary accounts. Thank you!EMill-WMF andSGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)18:29, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My primary ask is that you seriously consider extending the duration IP addresses are available (currently will be set at 90 days). Please monitor this experience closely, as I believe that erasure will cause us to lose some control over persistent threats. Among other things, we'll be unable to assess collateral damage from blocks as readily as we currently do, and we'll lose the ability to track periodic IP hoppers to identify the proper breadth of a range block. — rsjaffe 🗣️21:01, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It seems highly unlikely that will happen. However, I could see it making sense to spin up a TAIV wiki, similar to checkuser-wiki, where TAIVs could maintain data on an as-needed basis. I suspect there will be some pushback to that idea, but consider that if we provide people with a secure and convenient way to store the data, they will use that. If we don't provide that, the data will still get stored, except now it'll be on post-it notes, files on people's laptops, Google Docs, and all sorts of other places where we have less control over it.RoySmith(talk)22:43, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Most permanent accounts have little to no edits. Of the almost 50 million accounts we have on Wikipedia, only 2,5 million are autoconfirmed, and even then, the vast majority of them are inactive. The original reason why I wanted to create an account was so that I don't reveal my IP address, but I didn't notice I have other benefits like editing semi-protected pages (although I almost never edit protected pages even if I have the ability to), moving/renaming pages directly and gaining additional permissions (I have page mover and template editor, both of which have <500 users). I only made a few edits on the month I created the account, before properly editing from 2023.JuniperChill (talk)17:50, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I still don't see any plausible reason why the WMF is even doing this in the first place.2A0E:1D47:9085:D200:1479:37FD:EA26:64E (talk)01:59, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We've said why multiple times in this thread, if you didn't take the time to read through it, please do before commenting.Sohom (talk)02:05, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have an idea to help track IP hoppers while still preserving privacy. My initial thoughts are that, when a temporary account is blocked, to add a block log entry to the underlying IP(s) as well, so that retrospective analysis could detect the amount of disruption occurring from a specific IP. To protect identity, the log entry could have a different time (e.g., rounded to the hour or to the day), and would only list the type (partial vs regular) and duration of block. Omitting the text entry from the original block prevents leakage of any identifying info in the narrative the blocking admin added. Any thoughts? — rsjaffe 🗣️18:52, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A minor addendum to the list of feature changes - we alsoupdated Nuke so that when temporary accounts are deployed, administrators entering an IP in the tool will fetch all pages created from any temporary account which used that IP.Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk)07:14, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, that FAQ, where you still use the debunked claims about Portuguese wikipedia to dismiss calls to simply disable IP editing instead. Please see the sectionright above this one on the discrepancy between the numbers used by the WMF (from the sole metric which supposedly supported tjhis), and the actual numbers from this metric, and the evidence from other metrics. If you can't present this fairly, then why should we believe any of your other claims about experiences with temp accounts on other wikis?Fram (talk)09:43, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What’s even the point of all this? Wouldn’t it be objectively more efficient, and far less time and energy consuming when it comes to fighting vandalism, to simply allow only registered accounts to edit? The way this entire process is being handled feels like the WMF is forcing temporary accounts on everyone without genuinely considering the many meaningful and well-reasoned concerns and proposals raised by numerous editors. Based on evidence from the Portuguese Wikipedia, it seems clear to me that disabling IP editing had no negative consequences and actually freed up a significant amount of time and energy for editors and administrators there. I genuinely don’t understand the rationale behind the WMF’s refusal to consider proposals allowing only registered accounts to edit. —EarthDude (wannatalk?)14:58, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A very minor counter-vandalism consequence is that you now have to use regex search if you want to monitor talk pages by individual IP range (or do any other kind of searching-based review of temporary account edits), since the only searchable identifier unique to temporary accounts is a tilde character. Temporary account viewing permissions won't do anything to help there. Monitoring all new talk page edits by date still seems to work, though.Gnomingstuff (talk)20:20, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@NKohli (WMF),EMill-WMF,SGrabarczuk (WMF), andSamwalton9 (WMF): we have tried to duplicate the figures you (WMF) have provided to justify why the ptwiki example shouldn't be followed, but no matter how hard we try, we don't come anywhere near the given reduction in non-reverted content edits which is used as the sole justification for this. Depending on how we count, we get no reduction at all or a very minimal one, not the 20%+ one you use (see the latter parts of the above section, with calcs by me and byUser:Aaron Liu). I (and judging from the above discussion quite a few others) really would like a better answer to this before proceeding with this.Fram (talk)08:29, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@NKohli (WMF),SGrabarczuk (WMF), andSamwalton9 (WMF): you've all edited here since the above, can you please reply to the above (or send someone else to reply)?Fram (talk)09:37, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't involved in that experiment, just the work to ensure Nuke would continue to work & expand its capabilities for temporary accounts. Hopefully someone with more insight can get back to you soon, though it may take some time since this is about the details of data analysis.Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk)09:55, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you.Fram (talk)10:22, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram,Tercer, andEarthDude: You're experienced editors, and I'm an intermediate editor. Beginner editors can't find this thread. If IP editing gets disabled, what stopping experienced editors from demanding that registration also get disabled and put behind areferral system?

Why is the top 0.01% of editors ignoring thecurse of knowledge and speaking for the bottom 99.99%? When impatient new users face theuser friction of mandatory registration, they also becomeunhappy[,] leave and the project dies. On the internet, there are many existing projects that frustrate power users, but projects that frustrate new users are dying.

@Graham87:Reputation-wise,vandalism and partisanship facilitated by anonymous editing is a relatively minorcriticism of Wikipedia. Immediately after, the lead section criticizesclique behavior (from contributors as well asadministrators and other top figures),social stratification between a guardian class and newer users, excessive rule-making, ... and ..., which would be worsened by disabling IP editing. Most vandalism isn't the sneaky kind that would affect ourfactual reliability. Furthermore, opponents of TAs appear mostly male, so how would disabling IP editing affect women wanting to start editing, and thesystemic bias alonggender ... lines?173.206.134.138 (talk)00:50, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why would disabling IP editing affect gender bias? That seems like anon sequitur to me.ChildrenWillListen (🐄 talk,🫘 contribs)00:56, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I asked thatquestion (sorryUser:Aydoh8 if it sounded like an accusation) to finish covering the lede ofcriticism of Wikipedia. Supporting me: [books']Women authors hid behind pseudonyms. Both supporting and opposing me:"women tend to ... hide their gender identities to remain anonymous" but women contributed less [because] of anonymous users. Opposing me:anonymous editors may exacerbate the Wikipedia gender gap.173.206.134.138 (talk)02:10, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how the first supports you. IPs are not pseudonyms; registered accounts can be pseudonyms.jlwoodwa (talk)04:52, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) With respect, I don't believe that your comparison to Nupedia isrelevant. Nupedia was not a wiki and was written predominately by SMEs. Wikipedia and its sister projects are by nature collaborative, so I don't think that anyone willdemand...that registration also get[s] disabled. The disabling of IP editing on ptwiki was a choice by that community and they have seen a reduction in vandalism on that project. Keep in mind that ptwiki is a lot smaller of a project than enwiki. I concur with CWL in that your accusations of gender bias in the opposition of IP editing here also appear to be unfounded;opponents of TAs appear mostly male is roughly in line with the overall gender bias of the project, which is mostly male, though in recent years involvement by female and LGBTQ+ editors has steadily increased.Aydoh8^{[what have I done now?]}01:01, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To answer the direct question, there is nothing stopping experienced editors demanding anything. Self-selection towards experienced users is always going to happen naturally. However, experienced editors are the group who have developed a variety of onboarding or outreach tools, so the potential that they would decide to end registration seems a small concern. As for the idea that social stratification would beworsened by disabling IP editing, that seems quite back to front. Disabling IP editing means there won't be a "class" of users flagging themselves as new and/or unwilling to be a recognised member of the community.CMD (talk)03:42, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no, Wikipedia is going to die if we require users to create an account. Like almost every single website on the internet. That's why theinternet is dead, right? So much friction! One has to think of a username... and a password. No, that's too much effort we would be demanding, clearly our very survival depends on implementing temporary accounts.Tercer (talk)09:05, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Tercer, can we tone down the sarcasm?Sohom (talk)15:08, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No.Tercer (talk)15:10, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am an experienced editor, but I will oppose any proposaldemanding that registration also get disabled and put behind a referral system and I would expect others to do the same whatever happens to IP editing. That's what stops it happening.Phil Bridger (talk)17:53, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That, the ultimate stopgap in this context is community consensus and driver is community consensus.Sohom (talk)18:43, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

With the rollout of temporary accounts in just over a week, I think it would be a good idea to send a mass message to the user talk pages of all administrators of this imminent substantial change. We can useWikipedia:Administrators/Message list for this purpose. For reference, in the past, we have used the list to inform administrators about the extended-confirmed protection level back when it was brand new, see e.g.Wikipedia talk:Protection policy/Archive 17#Draft mass message to administrators. If we sent one for that, then I think it makes sense to send one for this as well. I'm thinking we could send something like this, much of which is copy-pasted from above (see above for attribution):

I've transcluded the above fromUser:Mz7/sandbox/draft temp account massmessage – feel free to be bold and make edits to it if you'd like!Mz7 (talk)20:19, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since this affects more than just admins, awatchlist notice might make sense in addition to or instead of anWP:MMS. –Novem Linguae(talk)07:03, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think having both may be good. Some admins might miss the watchlist notice if they are on an extended break.– robertsky (talk)13:55, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I agree we should do both.Mz7 (talk)18:45, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent idea, thanks @Mz7 for working on this! Tbh I had the same idea and was going to start a draft today :D I was/am going to send this message to CUs, TAIVs, basically anybody with access to temp account IP addresses.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)14:56, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be possible to add something toSpecial:IPContributions to remind users of their responsibilities, a link to the tutorial, and/or a link to the policy statement, similar to what we show atSpecial:CheckUser?RoySmith(talk)15:10, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith Do you know which MediaWiki message that would be (you can figure it out by adding?uselang=qqx to the end of the URL) ?Sohom (talk)15:15, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there's a messageMediaWiki:Ipcontributions-summary. It's displayed between the page title and the form, and you may put some text there.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)15:16, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that this should be a MassMessage (in addition to a watchlist notice). That MassMessage should give a brief rundown ofWikipedia:Temporary account IP viewer#What can and can't be said. If you can be desysopped for sharing information with unauthorized parties, you should get a clear warning; not all admins are active every month of the year, so a watchlist notice would be insufficient in my view. On the other hand, to alert non-admins, a WLN would be great. Maybe include do onenowWP:PERM/TAIV applications, hopefully decreasing the rush?HouseBlaster (talk • he/they)16:58, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good idea. I am a little worried the mass message might be getting a little too long, but I do think it is important to note that directly connecting IPs to temp accounts is going to be against the rules.Mz7 (talk)02:19, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey again! This is another update from theProduct Safety and Integrity team. We took the time to meet withfunctionaries about how to make the temporary accounts deployment go smoother for your community.

A big theme of these discussions was that requiring users to make even small amounts of clicks and choices can add up to real time and cognitive load being piled on top of a community's anti-vandalism work. We also identified some relatively low-lift technical improvements to make it a little harder for vandals to engage in common block-evasion techniques.

Based on our talks with functionaries, we made two decisions:

1. We are introducing technical changes tosignificantly cut down clicks and choices needed to show IP addresses, and to tighten up how temporary accounts are rate limited.
2. To avoid these last-minute changes creating bugs or instability, we will delay deployment one final time, toNovember 4th. This lets us deploy these changesthrough our normal processes.

The biggest change is that we will allowIP auto-reveal to last for up to 3 months to reduce the practical and cognitive load involved in showing IP addresses. (T407222) This doesn't change who can see temporary account IP addresses, but should make the work easier for many of those who do.

We're also updating theonboarding dialog to allow users to turn on 3-month auto-reveal at the same time as they opt into generally having access to temporary account IPs. (T407257) This dialog is displayed to all users who can view temporary account IP addresses, the first time they visit relevant pages.

For rate limiting, we added a 10-minute limit to temporary account creations on top of the existing rate limits of 6 accounts per IP per day. (T405565) We are also now applying IPv6-based rate limits to an entire /64, rather than a single unique IPv6 address. (T406710) These changes are already deployed, so please do let us know if you see any issues.

These are the last changes we will make before deployment. We know that last-minute changes and delays are not ideal, but we felt that on balance it was worthwhile to take this bit of extra time to remove more friction and respond to community feedback.

We have also edited Mz7'sdraft of a mass message for admins to help introduce the feature and these changes. We'll coordinate on who will send a similar message for other users with access to temporary account IP addresses.

Finally, we've also created some instructional videos, to better explain how to work with temporary accounts:

• How to reveal IP addresses
• How automatic reveal works
• New special page: IPContributions
• How to use IP Info
• How to use the User Info card

Thanks again for all the comments and suggestions! We're also quite interested in continuing to meet with community members after the deployment, to shape what we do next.EMill-WMF,NKohli (WMF),SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)19:26, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

10-minute limit to temporary account creations Should there be an exemption for the second account of the day? MediaWiki bugs gave me multiple TAs. Using Firefox, I received different TAs for frwiki and mediawiki.org. I also got blocked on zhwiki as a bot for clicking "Show preview" too many times in Firefox. After switching to Chrome, my first TA had an error with SUL cookies in incognito mode.66.49.187.185 (talk)04:00, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting us know. I'm sorry this happened to you - this sounds like a bunch of problems, each worth investigating. I'll let the engineers know.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)22:12, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

SGrabarczuk (WMF), aside from the five projects who are converting from LiquidThreads to read-only Flowand from November 4 being the TA deployment date for this project, there is no specified date for the implementation of temporary accounts for the remaining projects (Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, etc.) onphab:T340001.Codename Noreste (discuss •contribs)04:50, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @Codename Noreste, that's correct, Commons and Wikidata must go after most large Wikipedias, and Spanish and Russian had their reasons to be excluded from the earlier deployments. We'll talk to these communities soon; we're just focusing on English now. Do you have a specific question about the remaining deployments?SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)21:47, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, I was noting here.Codename Noreste (discuss •contribs)22:14, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the instructional videos, these are very helpful.Toadspike[Talk]15:59, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier this week, the BoTannounced that of the candidates shortlisted for Board of Trustees election in 2025, two would be disqualified -Ravan (Ravan J Al-Taie) andUser:Bluerasberry (Lane Rasberry). This means that out of 6 candidates shortlisted by Affiliates, only 4 are on the ballot, out of which 2 will be elected.

The reasoning included for this removal is the "Board of Trustees Candidate Review Process", a policy voted in by BoT 2 days before the removal was announced.

There is discussion onWikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost#Lane_not_on_ballot_for_WMF_board_of_trustees, including comments from Lane Rasberry about why he was removed.

As this is the more proper venue for this, starting a thread here as well. This is drastic and needs discussion within the greater community.Soni (talk)08:52, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While we call these "elections", they are technically only "suggestions" to the WMF board. The board is in fact self perpetuating and while they can take into consideration the opinion of the communities they are under no legal obligation to do so. In my opinion this is not an ideal situation as it exposes us to take over by a board not aligned with our movement. The movement needs greater checks and balances in place to prevent such an event, one a movement charter I was hoping would play.Doc James (talk ·contribs ·email)14:57, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've been trying to learn more about the history of how the Board of Trustees operates and how vetting of candidates happens. I was quite apathetic and confused about all this before, but nothing like recent events to motivate me. I'm in the early stages of planning a petition to make things better. I think the way things currently are stifles true community representation.Clovermoss🍀(talk)15:27, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we should also be having this discussion at:meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections committeeHexatekin (talk)16:23, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, as I said, early stages. I'm sure I'll comment there more once I have more of a plan.Clovermoss🍀(talk)16:44, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Clovermoss, @Hexatekin, @Doc James, and @Soni: It's a fair guess that several users are warming to the idea of making a petition and/or an open letter. Having had success a couple of times withsuch a move to put pressure on the WMF, I think it would be an excellent idea. It shouldn't be rushed, in any case nothing is going to change anything for the current election - which is a total parody of a democratic poll. It should probably be prepared offline by asmall collaborative task force rather than creating a public shitfest about how to do it , and to avoid a duplication of effort, and losing the impact it would have.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)22:49, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I do like the idea of a boycot. If my vote is not going to count, I'd at least like my !vote to be a statement.RoySmith(talk)23:16, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

6000-odd users voted in last year's election. Every watcher of this page could boycott, and sign a petition of no confidence besides, and the WMF wouldn't even notice. —Cryptic23:57, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is also the Talk: page for the announcement of their disqualification (meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/October 2025 update); the update itself includedWe invite your questions on the talk page of this message on Meta. —OwenBlacker(he/him;Talk)17:58, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Boards are required to do their due diligence about director candidates. Also, unless there's a confidentiality ageeement about the board selection process, Lane and Ravan can share what reasons the board gave for excluding them from the ballot. Until they do, we have no way of knowing what the board's concerns are. For those saying they want a public explanation from the board: if you applied and they discovered something about you that might be embarrassing/disqualifying, would you want the board to publicly disclose that?voorts (talk/contributions)13:32, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I see now that Lane explained why. Ignore that part of my comment.voorts (talk/contributions)13:39, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I still stand by my statement that the board should not share potentially incriminating information that causes it to remove a candidate, but that does not appear to be the situation here.voorts (talk/contributions)03:26, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've signed the petition. As far as I can tell from the various comments from Board members, the concern was that Lane might want to publicly post internal information that the Board treats as confidential. Removing a good-faith candidate from the ballot on this basis is deeply objectionable. The proper solution would have been to require anyone elected (or anyone expected to be on the final ballot) to sign an agreement not to release private information. We have similar things that Oversighters and Checkusers sign, and that would not be a problem. But it sounds to me like Lane was kicked off without ever having been asked about that, just on the basis of innocuous things he has said about the importance of reporting, and Board members assuming the worst after reading that. It also sounds to me like Ravan was eliminated for having posted comments on social media about Israel/Palestine that (I infer) would not go over well with the Trump administration. I think it goes against every core principle of the Wikimedia movement to expect Board members to "speak with one voice", as opposed to coming to consensus after hearing differing views.And it's a very autocratic-seeming election process, when the number of candidates gets pruned down to the number of open seats. The WMF Board has lost my confidence, and it's hanging by a thread in terms of losing the confidence of the editing community. --Tryptofish (talk)23:22, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And it's a very autocratic-seeming election process, when the number of candidates gets pruned down to the number of open seats. Aren't there now four candidates for two seats?voorts (talk/contributions)00:03, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'm taking in a lot of information, but I'm pretty sure I saw someone say that it's four candidates for four seats. If that's wrong, I'll strike it. --Tryptofish (talk)00:06, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Tryptofish: Four candidates for two seats, which isn't much of a selection. Even if everybody previously approved ran, we would've only had six people in the election.Clovermoss🍀(talk)00:14, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, both of you. I've struck it here, where the reason is given just above, and I'll correct it at the other two places I posted it. --Tryptofish (talk)00:18, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would venture that the time spent reading through four candidate statements is likely longer than the average editor would want to spend even thinking about the board or elections. I don't think more candidates necessarily entails better quality or better choice.voorts (talk/contributions)01:54, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly to ViridianPenguin, below, my concern isn't simply about the number of candidates. It's who gets to decide, how they decide, and for what reasons. --Tryptofish (talk)20:35, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be good to have more diversity in perspectives. People who don't want to do a little more reading could always follow a voter's guide if they don't want to do that research themselves (not that I'd recommend that course of action, but I don't think we should cater the entire election process to that). But having limits on how many people can run prevents all that.Clovermoss🍀(talk)03:07, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the six shortlisted candidates were trimmed to four by random draw to simplify the ballot, I would still disagree but could stomach the situation. It is Lane's disqualification for contributing toThe Signpost, which was known from the start, on the basis of achieving a uniform WMF Board viewpoint that folks like me find especially disagreeable.ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬)14:34, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I see the disqualification ofRaven asmuch worse, as do other wiki communities it appears. Also well aware this isn't a competition of how controversial a disqualification can be. It also seems like nobody really cares, at least not compared toother issues. I assume the community lost faith in the WMF a long time ago to bother caring that much about their "election" these days.CNC (talk)17:25, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m not gonna lie - while I have my concerns with the board’s actions here (shouldn’t any possible issues have come up far earlier in vetting? Why are these two only being booted from things now, which, to put it bluntly, is grossly unfair to them after going through the entire process? Is this to appease the regime currently burning down the foundations of American democracy?), the argument that Ravan’s removal from the ballot constitutes a violation of her human rights under international statutes comes off as extremely tone-deaf. Remember, this is an election for anon-profit’s board of trustees, and not even a household-name one (ex. the NAACP, Red Cross, MSF, etc - while Wikipedia is a household name, I’d argue the Wikimedia Foundation isn’t even close).

Additionally, echoing statements above, the WMF and community are so out of step with each other at this point that I’ll lose little sleep about whatever happens. There’s far more pressing things for me and others to worry about in day to day life.TheKip^(contribs)02:08, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The WMF Board adopted ahuman rights policy in 2021 that commits them to following the international human rights instruments cited in the objections. If the board, which is currently conducting a purportedly free, fair, and transparent non-profit board election, removed a candidate from the pool as a result of political/government pressure based on their advocacy, that would appear to violate article 19 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides for "the right to freedom of opinion and expression", including the "freedom to hold opinionswithout interference". (I am skeptical that article 25 of theICCPR covers non-profit board elections and I haven't evaluated the rest of the provisions at issue.)voorts (talk/contributions)02:58, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, TIL. Good to know that the objection has genuine backing/precedent, albeit I still personally find the “human rights violation” description lacking perspective; again, this is an election for a medium-profile nonprofit, not something the average individual would consider a matter of human rights.TheKip^(contribs)03:03, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If true, I find it chilling for the future of theopen knowledge movement andcivil society writ large.voorts (talk/contributions)03:05, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When multiple states have (and are attempting to) wage disinformation campaigns on and off Wikipedia, I hardly think this is the most pressing issue regarding open knowledge and civil society on Wikipedia itself, let alone society as a whole (see: literally everything the current American government is undertaking domestically).TheKip^(contribs)03:11, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This would be part of theliterally everything the current American government is undertaking domestically. I agree with you, disinformation is bad; so is engaging in an agitprop pressure campaign to force a candidate out of a non-profit board election because of their political speech.voorts (talk/contributions)03:18, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this falls under that; my point is moreso it’s not even close to the most pressing issue at hand regarding that, and I disagree with making it out to be bigger than it is.

Anything further I can say would delve intoWP:FORUM territory, so I think I’ll call it here.TheKip^(contribs)03:22, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It still shouldn't be a competition over who can make the worst decisions and create the largest problems, nor is it necessary prioritising some of these and ignoring others, broadly speaking that is. A weighted approach to caring about these things is usually a more desirable and effective overall. And per voorts comment, if the board that oversees the foundation of the largest open encyclopedia in the world is breaching human rights in elections, there are probably much worse problems to come in the sphere of diffusion of free information. It's not a good look either way.CNC (talk)12:46, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Nataliia, the chair of the BoT, has posted an update with answers to some of your questions on Meta.That update can be found here. She has asked for further questions or concerns to be voiced on that talk page, which is more actively monitored by the BoT since it's on Meta.ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)^{Talk to Me!}13:30, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Those of you who will be at WCNA next week might want to attend theConversation with the Wikimedia Foundation trustees scheduled for16:05 - 17:00 on Saturday.RoySmith(talk)13:40, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thank you for boosting this - There will also be aBoard Elections panel that will have a Q&A/suggestion board portion. It's on Sunday from 13:30 to 14:00.ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)^{Talk to Me!}13:44, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm guessing the answer is no, but do you know if that session is being livestreamed (or recorded and put online subsequently) ? —OwenBlacker(he/him;Talk)17:34, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The proposals for both sessions say "Livestreaming is okay" so I would assume that will happen.RoySmith(talk)17:48, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thank you for flagging this! I will be there, and I am happy to ask any questions that folks unable to attend have, though this frustrating situation has left me with many of my own.ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬)01:04, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Here's my write-up, which I also posted tometa:Talk:2025 WMF Board reform petition#WCNA: During today's Day 2 of WikiConference North America 2025, Wikimedia Foundation CEOMaryana Iskander led a discussion on the WMF with Board membersMayree Clark andKathy Collins. This choice of panelists did themselves no favors, as our primary concern is that a ballot whose candidates are hand-picked by the Board makes community seats redundant with appointed seats, yet we did not have any community board members to explain why they joined the unanimous vote to drop Lane and Ravan. As Theklan put ithere, folks are especially concerned that Chair-Elect Lorenzo Losa was elected by the community on promises that seem directly contradicted bywikt:eleventh-hour unexplained removals of two highly qualified candidates. Instead of getting a response from our representatives, we only heard from those who naturally support Board appointments.

  Mayree Clark,a recent appointee, began her remarks by noting her prior service on the board ofDeutsche Bank, and she praised its similar structure of evenly dividing its members between typical businesspeople and union-elected representatives. When I asked why that recognized strength of Deutsche Bank should not encourage us to have freer community elections for WMF Board seats, Iskander claimed that early in her tenure, she found community-nominated Board members to be at odds with appointed ones. I fail to see why this history should mean the WMF Board should effectively appoint all the seats, rather than have the community elect a greater share.

  Most upsettingly, whenClovermoss disputed Iskander's view, she retorted that one could not question her decision-making until they served as CEO of such a large organization.Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, butwith great power comes great responsibility. When paid ~$500K USD per year, Iskander has a responsibility to explain the Board's decision-making beyond its finality, rather than blithely dismiss the concerns of someone sorecently recognized for their value to the community.

  I ended my questions by noting that Deutsche Bank workers achieved their board representation with the threat of strikes. I highlighted that if the WMF Board only offers platitudes in the coming weeks without serious consideration of reform, then Wikimedia projects will be left to exercise our similar threat of blackouts. Let us hope that this round of criticism yields rooms for reconstruction.ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬)03:19, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I have compiled a series of events surrounding what is being discussed, as well as open questions that need to be discussed in response to these events at:m:Learning from events and reactions surrounding the removal of Lane Rasberry from the 2025 Board Elections candidate shortlist. I had help from a few others to copy-edit and verify details.Hexatekin (talk)14:32, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• The incoming board chair has left anew announcement. Best,Barkeep49 (talk)17:26, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest we write on their talk pages asking them to take a position. Current candidates:

• Bobby ShabanguUser:Bobbyshabangu
• James AlexanderUser:Jamesofur
• Michał BuczyńskiUser:Aegis Maelstrom
• Wojciech PędzichUser:Wojciech Pędzich

Hexatekin (talk)17:19, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I see you have done that. I, for one, will not vote for any of the current candidates who do not reply.Phil Bridger (talk)19:54, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

from Ars Tech. Mostly repeating similar points about left-wing bias and trying to get the WMF to reveal the process to keep WP neutral and complaining about how Fox News is unreliable on WP:RSP and similar. WMF's response to that, quoted"Wikipedia is supported by strong safeguards and high-quality volunteer oversight; it is a living encyclopedia that is always improving. We welcome the opportunity to further educate policymakers on the important work of Wikipedia, and the Wikimedia Foundation stands by its unwavering commitment to protect editors' exercise of free expression. Through rigorous policies, editorial standards, user privacy protections, and transparent processes, nearly 260,000 volunteers have created over 65 million articles in 300 languages. Wikipedia seeks to inform, not persuade."Masem (t)00:11, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, regarding the Manhattan Institute study he quotes, I had taken a closer look at thatin theSignpost/research newsletter last year. (On the other hand, the criticism ofWP:RSP that immediately follows this inhis letter to Maryana Iskander is likely influenced byLarry Sanger's recent writings and media appeances.) Regards,HaeB (talk)01:32, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone who accuses Wikipedia of anti-Israel bias has no idea how the first 18 years went, with unblockable admins such as Jayg suppressing Palestinian viewpoints with a heavy fist. Shortly after the big Polish holocaust revisionism arbitration case closed, the Board of Trustees' Community Affairs Committee hosted a Zoom call with the spokesperson for the group that was complaining the loudest about antisemitism at the time, and she couldn't articulate what alternativearbitration outcome they would have preferred, what policy or guideline changes they wanted, or even a list of grievances concerning article text beyond an objection to the use of the term "apartheid." Now days they are just as clueless, but have forgotten apartheid for objections to accusations of genocide, while the sources supporting the latter are now much stronger than the former was. So what I'm trying to say is, I think it's best the WMF just ignore Cruz and similar complaints. They aren't worth responding to.2603:800C:1200:596A:9BFF:B043:AA5B:14FF (talk)23:57, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just say we're only going on vacation in Cancun ...Daniel Case (talk)04:50, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In case folks didn't see it: Jacob Rogers has responded in anotherArs Technica article.AntiCompositeNumber (they/them) (talk)01:41, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above about temporary accounts is quite heated. It's clear that there is some opposition, but I'd like to know if it's a majority of editors or just a couple of loud critics. I don't think it will change anything, as WMF never asked our opinion and made it clear that it will introduce temporary accounts regardless of what we say, but I think it is important to register what our opinion is. Furthermore, I think both alternatives are undesirable, but the legal situation forces us to choose one of these paths, so I'm asking a simple yes/no question to focus the debate and facilitate counting.Tercer (talk)08:57, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How will asking the same question in the same forum, read by the same audience, enable you to determine whether it is "a majority of editors or just a couple of loud critics"? --Elmidae(talk ·contribs)09:49, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The question hasn't been explicitly asked before. We have lots of back and forth above, about several different subjects. And yes, I'm interested in the opinion of the editors that participate in this forum, who haven't expressed it clearly or didn't participate in the above discussion (that includes you). If you want to advertise this topic in other forums to get a wider participation that would be great.Tercer (talk)10:06, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Like Elmidae, I have not contributed to the "Temporary accounts rollout" thread and do not plan to.WP:PETITION disfavors such yes/no questions "since they not only encourage the community to avoid meaningful discourse and engagement, but also limit their scope to only one initially-stated opinion or preference with little or no opportunity for discussing and reconciling competing or opposing points of view." Even if you had 60% of a whopping 1000 respondents to vote for banning IP edits rather than introducing temporary accounts, that would be insufficient for our consensus-based model.ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬)17:09, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is definitely insufficient for our consensus-based model is WMF's imposition of temporary accounts without asking for our opinion or giving us any alternatives.

A cornerstone of our consensus-based model areWP:RfCs, which do involve asking editors what their opinion is. Perhaps I should have started one straight away instead of trying to gather opinions informally. Then at least I wouldn't have had two responses that are only talking about format instead of the subject matter.Tercer (talk)17:38, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Decisions of the WMF areexempt from consensus.SuperPianoMan9167 (talk)14:43, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think we're asking this question too early. I think we should let temporary accounts roll out, then if it goes poorly, someone will likely propose an RFC to ban logged out editing at that time. However, WMF has rolled out temporary accounts to most other wikis now, and those wikis haven't imploded. I think that is good evidence that temporary accounts won't create a vandalism catastrophe, and that we can continue to permit logged out editing. –Novem Linguae(talk)00:47, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As a matter of fact I believe that editors should make the decisions about Wikipedia, not WMF. It is not too early, it is too late, because the decision has been made without our input and will be implemented regardless. As for the other wikis, we have seen feedback only from a single editor from a single wiki, and it was very negative. That's not good evidence, but it is evidence of theopposite of what you claim.Tercer (talk)09:19, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Tercer: The vast majority of WMF wikis have already implemented temporary accounts. As an administrator aten.wikibooks, I can express a positive experience.JJP_Master (she/they)16:29, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm that is also the case with Wikibooks and Meta-Wiki (I hold admin privileges on both projects).Codename Noreste (discuss •contribs)16:36, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for chiming in. Can you elaborate on what was positive about it?Tercer (talk)16:52, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically, the addition of IP info variables to AbuseFilter has been quite beneficial.JJP_Master (she/they)11:33, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reacting once an implosion has occured is too late. How is a community going to recover from said implosion anyway?

Inphab:T364073 the Lithuanian Wikipedia disabled Content Translate because it had so many edits that the admins could not keep up.

Writing that, temporary accounts are not that bad. If an temporary account vandal ip hops without invalidating the account one ban is enough, while one ban per ip, or an rangeblock (if the ip's are close enough together without collateral damage) would be needed now. Tempoarary account vandals become hard when they invalidate their accounts. I checked the Norwegian Wikipedia in June/July and compared ip's in months of last year compared to temporary accounts in the same month of this year. I found out the ratio hovers around 1:1, with occasional spikes to 2 temp accounts per ip. That spike is normal to me, because temp accounts only exist for 90 days maximum. For an IP hopping, temporary account invalidator, there is alwaysIP auto-reveal mode which shows for admins IP's in recent changes as they are shown now for a limited time.Snævar (talk)13:58, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop talking about banning IP edits until the new system has had a six months trial. People have tried banning IPs in the past and it gets quickly shot down. Repeating the half-baked proposal is counterproductive because it biases people such that they reflexively voteno next time, rather than examine the issue yet again.Johnuniq (talk)00:56, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What about "Please stop talking about introducing temporary accounts until we do a six months trial of banning IP edits"? Unlike temporary accounts, that would be very easy to implement, and very easy to reverse, so we could actually have a trial. You know very well that temporary accounts is not a trial, it will not be revisited after six months.

And frankly, there's nothing "half-baked" about banning IP edits. It's technically simple, and has been done already. What else do you need to consider it fully baked?Tercer (talk)09:23, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All discussion prior to implementation will be entirely overshadowed by what actually happens when they're implemented. Either they will work out ok or they will make it to difficult to counter disruptive editing and will have to be limited somehow. Realistically I don't believe there is enough evidence to say for certain what will happen, but given the feedback I've seen from the WMF and the experience of other smaller Wikis I think it should be ok. --LCUActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°19:52, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the impact will be large, but I'm certain it will be unambiguously negative. And I think that when Wikipedia is under attack from very powerful people, including the US government, WMF should be making the life of malicious actors harder, not easier.Tercer (talk)19:50, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While I’m not a fan of temporary accounts for LTA/sock-tracking purposes (IP geolocation is a cornerstone of linking accts to sockmasters), banning IP edits altogether would be a horrible idea - for every two-bit vandal, there’s a productive contributor that just didn’t want to or hasn’t decided to create an account yet. Hell, half of the recentUSHL season pages have been maintained by an IP who’s filling a valuable gap inWP:NHL.TheKip^(contribs)02:13, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for being the only person who deigned to answer the question I was asking, even if you disagree with me.Tercer (talk)08:39, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I am in favor of banning IP edits and temporary accounts. All editors should be required to create an account connected to a verified email address or phone number. Anyone can still edit and vandalism practically ceases to exist.216.126.35.228 (talk)17:14, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This just defeats the whole point of all Wikimedia projects, in which anyone else can edit. If votes were allowed here, I would be strongly opposed to banning all unregistered edits, and strongly support the introduction of temporary accounts.Codename Noreste (discuss •contribs)22:26, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Codename Noreste: How would requiring a verifiable account defeat the whole point to create a repository of the entire sum of human knowledge which anyone can edit? Anyone can create an account.216.126.35.228 (talk)16:37, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Let's see how the "temporary accounts" bit works out, first, once the dust settles. If it works okay and there's not a major increase in vandalism and abuse, then the temporary accounts thing is still notgood, and it would've been better to keep IPs, but if it's not causing massive headaches, then it is what it is. If it is causing major headaches and we do see a noticeable spike in vandalism, socking, LTA activity, etc., then we'll have to decide on next steps at that point, which may involve restricting or disabling anonymous editing. But let's wait until we actually have the data, rather than just speculation.Seraphimblade^{Talk to me}22:58, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Even if 99% of Wikipedia editors support disabling IP/temporary account editing, I believe the WMF will still have the final say on whether to implement this change (and I believe they've stated before that they will not get rid of IP/temporary account editing).Some1 (talk)23:03, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Counter-example:Portuguese Wikipedia turned off IP editing years ago. –Novem Linguae(talk)12:43, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't it time to have a "vote of no confidence" on the whole Board of Trustees? There is some limited precedent for this, seehere for such a vote about one BoT member (who then stepped down).Fram (talk)14:53, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As that RfC noted, we lack the power to enforce a vote of no confidence. Whereas the Board could easily handle the resignation of one member based on their professional misconduct, the WMF being a board-only organization would mean that the only way they could resign en masse over election issues is if they first set a procedure for selecting their replacements, which brings us back to the present issue.ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬)15:03, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It would at least make it clearer how the communities feel, and make it harder for them to continue as if nothing untoward happened.Fram (talk)15:30, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, strikes me as childish and absurdly out of proportion.Horse Eye's Back (talk)15:30, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it out of proportion when the BoT decides which opinions are allowed within it and which are stifled? How is it out of proportion if people feel that that BoT doesn't represent the ideals of the WMF (or at least of Wikipedia)? What is more appropriate than a "vote of no confidence" if people have actually lost confidence in them?Fram (talk)15:32, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thats an interesting framing... But it seems fundamentally dishonest because that isn't what the BoT has done here.Horse Eye's Back (talk)15:39, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As far as powerful institutions that affect my life go, the WMF, while not flawless, is about the last one that I would sign onto a no-confidence vote for._signed,Rosguill^talk15:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine. Unlike the BoT, wedo welcome disagreeing opinions.Fram (talk)15:59, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're skating awfully close to a BLP issue here, hyperbole is no excuse either.Horse Eye's Back (talk)16:04, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"That strikes me as childish and absurdly out of proportion".Fram (talk)16:24, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"it seems fundamentally dishonest"Fram (talk)16:25, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"That/It" is not a person in either case, in the first it is the proposed no confidence vote and in the second it is the framing. You are casting aspersions about the board that aren't supported by either the facts or the complaints being made by other parties. You're going so far that I think you're alienating people who would otherwise agree with you... But the issue at hand here is a lot more nuanced than the BoT refusing to allow disenting opinions.Horse Eye's Back (talk)16:29, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To quote from someone's else opinion on this very page: "I think it goes against every core principle of the Wikimedia movement to expect Board members to "speak with one voice", as opposed to coming to consensus after hearing differing views. The WMF Board has lost my confidence, and it's hanging by a thread in terms of losing the confidence of the editing community." So at the very least it seems that my "aspersions" are supported by the complaints of at least some others. Looking at the open letters I linked to below, I see e.g. this from LGBT+ group: "By corrupting the defined democratic process for its own elections after an open call for candidates and the voting immediately due to start, the WMF Board has exposed itself as either incompetent or being misused to pursue an unstated agenda. " At the meta discussions, I see e.g. a post titled "Value of an election where candidates are vetted for unanimity", with others stating "pre-filtering choices for the sake of “unity” or “alignment.”"

Other statements I read there (from different editors, not just rehashing one person's opinion):

• "I find it really scary to read that candidates were possibly excluded because "the Foundation needs a strongly unified board committed to collective decision-making responsibilities". The strength of our movement is the diversity of opinion and being able to compromise without having the same opinions. In a world that's moving away from democracy, I'm saddened if we move the same direction."
• "A closed circle decides who can join them. The WMF board is an oligarchy. "

And so on...Fram (talk)17:06, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If only you would be so good as to tolerate my dissenting opinion... A letter or motion of objection is likely proportional (we will know better once we have more communication from the two excluded candidates), but a vote of no confidence still seems to be out of order here... The board is following its rules and procedures even if many (including me) would like to see those rules and procedures evolve. TLDR I have confidence in the board to follow its rules and procedures, what I lack is confidence in those rules and procedures... Does that make sense?Horse Eye's Back (talk)17:13, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem with your dissenting opinion, only with your "framing" of this as a borderline BLP violation which isn't supported by anyone.Fram (talk)17:29, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your comment was a borderline BLP violation, at best it was hyperbole. You responding to being told that with an attack on me simply isn't warranted... Take the criticism and adjust your argument accordingly, thank you. Now, does what I have to say make sense to you?Horse Eye's Back (talk)19:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I had been under the impression that I was up to date on WMF-related drama, but evidently was not. I'm uncertain as to whether a vote of no confidence is the best response, but I do agree with the general thrust of the letters of objection._signed,Rosguill^talk16:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram, forgive my ignorance, are there some examples of why you would want a mass resignation?Knitsey (talk)15:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I should have linked this in my opening post. See above,Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)#About the 2025 Board of Trustees Elections, and all the discussions linked from there. Basically, they have at the very last moment removed two of the 6 candidates in the BoT elections on very flimsy grounds.This page at Meta lists some of the groups which have negatively reacted to this intervention, e.g.meta:Objections to the 2025 WMF Board election removals/Arab Community has them boycotting the elections, as does a group of Spanish language wiki and a group of LGBT+ project members (so quite a wide range of voices).Fram (talk)15:58, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram, thank you for the link, I appreciate it. I will have a read through it.Knitsey (talk)16:01, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram, I've still got some more reading to do. Have I got this right? 2 days before the election, 2 people were removed from the ballot? There was no public reason given at the time? The reasons were pertaining to 1 candidate being a journalist and 1 candidate being an activist but this was then denied by the BoT?Knitsey (talk)17:02, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this was really denied, it is so far hard to find out what their official reasons for the rejection are (hiding behind "privacy" I believe). But yes, that's basically the gist of it.Fram (talk)17:07, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't there be privacy issues? Is that why the reasons were not published?Knitsey (talk)17:11, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The issue seems to be that the board can't disclose what it told the candidates... Only the candidates themselves can do that and the candidates so far have been rather vague about it (I may be out of date on that though, or more may have been published on another language wiki).Horse Eye's Back (talk)17:16, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't want to make any assumptions but that would make sense.

It is difficult to see how this can be overcome, or if it should be overcome.Knitsey (talk)17:25, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like the candidates should provide that information if they want the community to support them... What reason would they have for not being transparent?Horse Eye's Back (talk)19:22, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't seem to find the info on timing for removal vs when they applied. 2 days before an election, that I assume requires quite a bit of preparation, seems poor timing. That would depend on the gap between application and refusal.

The privacy issue would overide transparency in this instance. As you said @Horse Eye's Back, it would be up to candidates to disclose the removal reasons.Knitsey (talk)19:31, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What privacy issue? I can't come up with a legitimate reason for the candidates to keep that information private, can you?Horse Eye's Back (talk)19:34, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I meant that the BoT reason for removal of candidates from the list. Contacting them privately to explain why they were removed, rather then making it public would come under privacy issues? Then, if a candidate wants to make the reasons public, they can do so.Knitsey (talk)20:20, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The reasons for their removal are given here:m:Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/October_2025_update#Message_from_Victoria_Doronina_on_Wikimedia-l.Some1 (talk)23:58, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Some1 thank you for the link.Knitsey (talk)13:45, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The WMF long ago lost my confidence, and recent events have only proven me right. Who owns the WMF anyway?Phil Bridger (talk)19:06, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To some extent, the donors. See for exampleOmidyar Network#Investees. —Rutebega (talk)20:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

More so, the big tech corporate customers.75.75.121.85 (talk)00:57, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support.sapphaline (talk)12:27, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No. IMO, that "precedent" turned into an internet mob trying to destroy and harass a living person (perhaps more than one living person, members of the board also). That's what regularly happens on the internet, and we should not give occasion for it. (The irony, here, is it is likely that attack, that, in part, made the board screen of new members even more searching, to protect the person and the foundation. So, board members are damned if they do, and damned if they don't, that's also the way of the internet (and the way of diffuse and contradictory communities).

That people don't know or refuse to know how boards work, and what is legally and constitutionally expected of board members as fiduciaries, is no good basis for attacking them. I get it, some disagree, they would exercise their own judgement, and even insist that the board do what they want, and only what they want, but it is the members of the board that have thelegal duty to exercise their own independent judgement (not your judgement, and not people on the internet's judgement -- with respect to the board, people on the internet have no legal duty, no legal risk, and no legal responsibility, board members do). --Alanscottwalker (talk)11:27, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, I have my own problems with a bunch of what is being said and done within the construct of the BoT elections and as such have boycotted the elections. That being said, I don't see how veto/no-confidencing the entire board is in our interest at all. The correct approach would be to demand transperancy and move the board to reform the election procedure. --Sohom (talk)02:32, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It occurs to me that not everyone watches/reads the centralized discussion template and that mentioning the existence of them:2025 WMF Board reform petition here would be relevant.Clovermoss🍀(talk)12:10, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on September 26. Please helptranslate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations
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• Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Selection:Announcement of the final ballot for the 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election andmore answers about the decision. Eligible voters canvote between October 8 – October 23.
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MediaWiki message delivery14:50, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because the search for funders of Antifa àre going to look at this foundation.[11].Doug Wellertalk09:45, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According toTides_Foundation#Wikimedia_Foundation, yes.Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk)14:47, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but it’s not clear from that if we still are.Doug Wellertalk15:11, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm told we aren't, that "The WMF split from Tides in 2023 and launched the endowment as a separate nonprofit" see[12] Looks like that article needs updating.Doug Wellertalk15:26, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, but is the "Wikimedia Foundation Knowledge Equity Fund" in some sense an ongoing thing?Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk)16:23, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

m:Knowledge Equity Fund says that was moved from Tides in 2023 too.Anomie⚔16:26, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This was my understanding as well, I believe that we jumped ship over general internal backlash againstdonor advised funds (most average people seem to hold them as deleterious to democracy and the worst form of "dark money") more so than specific criticisms of this particular fund or related political complications.Horse Eye's Back (talk)16:30, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So "Not for a couple of years or so." Think that'll help?Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk)16:32, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m writing because when I became an admin, and later an arbitrator, it was my intent to do everything possible to protect the community that I belong to and love. I work for that community, not for the WMF. Also, when I ran for the committee I committed to providing transparency whenever possible. The recent incident at WCNA 2025 has pushed me into breaking the ANPDP in order to make sure the community that I serve is safe, and has all the information they need to make informed decisions about their continued safety.

On February 20th, I blocked Gapazoid, who is Connor Weston, the person who brandished a firearm and threatened suicide at the conference. Any oversighter can look at their user page, which I suppress deleted at the time, to verify this. The Arbitration Committee is also aware of his name as he appealed my block to the committee via email. I blocked them for child protection/pedophilia advocacy. I also immediately emailed WMF Trust and Safety, seeking and expecting a WMF ban. The following day Risker pulled talk page access due to continued disruption. They were already blocked on Wiktionary for the same reason.

For the next several months I pressed with every tool at my disposal for a WMF ban. This included discussion on several Arbitration Committee calls with the foundation. My fellow arbs joined me in pushing for this ban. It was such a sticking point between the committee and the foundation that the WMF held a “Process sync” call on June 24th for us to explain how T&S makes decisions about WMF bans.

During this process, on April 25th, Weston sent an email to the info queue saying they were going to travel to the WMF offices to protest my block. The message states, in full:

<information redacted>

This email was forwarded to T&S who verified receipt. I am also aware that information regarding Weston threatening suicide was sent to T&S.

On August 11th they closed the case, along with a second child protection case, with no action. To quote the email sent to me personally in response to my initial report:

Having carefully weighed the evidence, we found no indication that Gapazoid’s contributions amount to advocacy or encouragement of illicit activity.

In their response to the Committee they said:

We recognize that taking no action in these cases may not fully align with what ArbCom expects or hopes the WMF's role to be in situations of child safety concerns, particularly given the importance and sensitivity of child safety matters on the platform and the fact that you, ArbCom, have been trusting the Foundation for years to handle these matters. The fact is, however, that while the community can sanction based solely on its own judgement, the Foundation must be able to legally defend our decisions to take action, including their consistency with our policies over time. This includes the need to have evidence of a risk of harm that violates our policies. We don’t think that either of the above two examples would be successful in meeting that standard.

This decision allowed a suicidal pedophile who threatened to travel in-person to WMF headquarters to protest a block to gain access to an in-person meeting of our community. Even if they didn’t plan on using a gun to end their life in front of all of us, this would still be unacceptable.

In the weeks and months leading up to the convention the committee and other members of the community brought up concerns about event security, and were assured that appropriate security measures would be taken. At the event there was essentially no security. No bag checks and no checks with a metal detector or wand. After the incident there was an increased presence of security personnel and bag screenings, but no additional searching or screening of carried belongings.

Every member of the community deserves, and absolutely must be given, the ability to make informed decisions about their safety within the community. The WMF is responsible for taking every reasonable action to keep our community safe. In this case, they made the unreasonable decision of not banning a suicidal pedophile who had made clear their intent to protest a community block in person, and in doing so explicitly allowed the incident at WCNA to occur. The foundation’s actions put everyone attending the conference in life-threatening danger. Thankfully, due to members of our community, the worst case was avoided, but this was in spite of the WMF’s decisions and actions.

From a personal perspective, before I left to attend the conference my wife expressed concern for my safety. She’s aware of the anti-abuse work I do, and the threats of harm and death that come along with that. I told her, based on the WMF’s assurances, that it was safe for me to attend, they planned on having enhanced security, and she didn’t have a need to worry. Days later I would be sending her messages after evacuating the conference due to a suicidal man that I’d blocked from Wikipedia months earlier charging the stage with a gun. As soon as he began speaking, I recognized with horror who it was. I immediately informed WMF employees on-site. I was not informed that Weston would be attending, and either T&S didn’t screen the attendees or screened the list and let this pass. Either situation is completely unacceptable.

Thankfully, no one was physically hurt. Due to heroism by members of our own community, the threat was mitigated, but that doesn’t mitigate the trauma we all suffered. It is essential that nothing like this ever happen again, and because of that the community must be aware of the extent of the failures that occurred. The community did everything right in this situation, from blocking a pedophile, reporting it to T&S, forwarding the suicide threats and intention to protest in person, and pushing in every conceivable way for a WMF ban, and due to systemic failures from the WMF we were almost all party to an incredible tragedy.

This statement is published with the consent of the majority of active, non-recused members of the Arbitration Committee. Please discuss this atWikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Statement from SFR on the incident at WCNA.

With deepest respect for the community,

ScottishFinnishRadish (talk)20:19, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I want to acknowledge that the Foundation has seen this post and, as requested, will respondhere. –Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk)22:32, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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