The city attorney ofDurham, North Carolina attempted to coax the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) to reveal the identities of three editors and to prohibit the placement of certain verifiable and truthful content on Wikipedia pages of city officials,Indy Week andThe News and Observer report.
A letter, dated June 29, outlined three complaints about content on Wikipedia. Two of the complaints pertained to coverage of a council member's alleged attempted extortion of a developer, while the third related to an image depicting the signature of the mayor of Durham. The letter requested that the Wikimedia foundation remove the image and bar users from uploading it on Wikimedia projects, and requested the names and identities of the various editors who added the text and/or image content to Wikipedia.
Recent months have been a tumultuous time for Durham's seven-member city council. In March,Elaine M. O'Neal, the mayor of Durham, publicly read anallegation that a Durham city council member (subsequently identified asMonique Holsey-Hyman) had extorted a developer for campaign contributions. The aftermath of the meeting wastesty, with the public able to hear shouting between officials, despite them being out of public view. An eyewitnessinterviewed byIndy Week alleged that Durham council memberDeDreana Freeman had attempted to strike Durham Mayor-pro tempore and council member Mark-Anthony Middleton during the shouting session, but instead struck O'Neal once and punched the head of fellow Durham council member Leonardo Williams twice before Williams subdued her. In the aftermath of these incidents, O'Nealannounced that she would not seek re-election as Mayor, and astate investigation was opened into the extortion allegation (Holsey-Hymandenies the alleged extortion attempt and a separateallegation that she ordered city employees to perform campaign work on her behalf).
For making edits to the Wikipedia entries about certain figures implicated in this scandal, the letter requested the identities ofMako001 andWillthacheerleader18. The entries contained unflattering information about the public officials at the time of the letter's sending, but the entries were well-sourced;Indy Week reports that the entries' descriptions of the scandal were written "without any apparent factual error and with links to news articles as references".
Several figures have publicly expressed concerns about the sending of the letter. Barry Saunders, a member of the editorial board ofThe News and Observer,wrote that, "[u]nless the Wikipedia posts were egregiously wrong—and there's no evidence that they were—the three Durham officials should have taken a page, when it came to criticism, from the title of the 1970s hit by the band Bachman-Turner Overdrive:let it ride .... Few voters, though, will forgive attempts to silence critics".
Duke University law professor Stuart Benjamin was taken aback by the letter. He toldThe News and Observer, "I understand why public officials do not want unflattering information published about them, but it is deeply troubling that any public official tried to unmask someone who posted this accurate information."
David Larson, opinion editor ofThe Carolina Journal, concurred. "[T]his attempt to intimidate anonymous people online for daring to discuss real but unflattering details of your political service is the stuff of dysfunctional regimes", hewrote.
The WMF, for its part, toldIndy Week that it is "strongly committed to protecting the privacy of editors and users on Wikimedia projects".
The letter, signed by city attorney Kimberly Rehberg, also states that she had removed the image of the signature from the Wikipedia article aboutElaine M. O'Neal on June 28. This checks out; that articlewasedited on that day by a user namedKimlynn69, and Kimlynn69 wrote a message toJohnson524 thatidentified herself as "Kimberly M. Rehberg" and as the city attorney of Durham. As it had for the editors who touched content relating to the scandal of the March 23 meeting, the letter had also requested Johnson524's name and identity as well.
In response to Rehberg's message, Johnson524 explained that he had obtained the signature fromDurham Performing Arts Center playbills.Indy Week reports that, following Johnson's reply to the message, Rehberg said in an email "there is little legal basis to demand that Wiki reveal the identity of the User or prohibit the upload of a photo of the signature to the Mayor's Wiki page".
The mayor, per an email obtained byIndy Week, was unsatisfied with Rehberg's reply. O'Neal told Rehberg that her request to send the letter to the WMF "still stands"; Rehberg said in an email sent later that day that the letter had been sent. Despite this, the letter may have never actually arrived at its intended destination. The WMF toldIndy Week that they had not received the letter and that the letter that had been made public contained an incorrect postal address for the WMF's headquarters. Rehberg, meanwhile, toldIndy Week that the letter had only been sent by physical mail.
The Signpost reached out to Johnson524 following the publication of Rehberg's letter. "I was so happy to see an outpouring of support from the Wikipedia community from editors who have been around longer than I have," he wrote: "I have always valued that Wikimedia has also never succumbed to external powers—and has continued to fight for a world of free information: whether that be not to take down/severely censor their project in Russia, to campaign for those jailed editors in Saudi Arabia, or even just go against unjust decisions by local governments here in the U.S."
He remained, however, displeased with the mayor's handling of the situation. "I would have even put it past the mayor Elaine O'Neal if she went back on her statement after I explained how I got the signature publicly, but since she doubled down on her attempt to try to 'unmask' me and two other editors after without really any prior contact, I am glad she will not be running for mayor again, because I don't think how this situation was handled was right at all", he wrote. –R
(For further coverage of this story see this issue'sIn the media.)
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Vladimir Medeyko (User:Drbug), the former head ofWikimedia Russia and founder of the Russian government-approvedRuwiki fork, has been"banned indefinitely by the Wikimedia Foundation from editing all Wikimedia sites". Medeyko hadpreviously been blocked indefinitely on the Russian Wikipedia, following adiscussion at the Russian Wikipedia's Administrators' Noticeboard, as well as on Commons, where thereason given was –
Long-term abuse: creating a Wikipedia fork which includes stolen content from Commons as well
See also previousSignpost coveragehere andhere. –AK
Wikimedia Europe has published itsEuropean Policy Monitoring Report for July 2023. Among other current legal developments, it highlights that –
France is working on a tech bill to regulate the entire online environment [...,] theprojet de loi visant à sécuriser et réguler l'espace numérique (SREN). There are several problematic articles and aspects in the proposal that would change how content moderation on [Wikimedia] projects works. Such examples are provisions aiming to keep links to 'banned' media off websites (thinkRussia Today) or an obligation to not allow banned users from re-registering (which would require some sort of background check on all new registrations).
The report also calls attention to "Italy['s] Crusade Against the Public Domain", referring the country's efforts "to restrict and get paid for re-use of public domain material" such as Leonardo da Vinci'sVitruvian Man. –H
The Wikimedia Foundation has launched an instance onthe federated social network Mastodon, athttps://wikimedia.social/ (fortechnical reasons, it was not possible to use a wikimedia.org domain). According to a July 17announcement on Wikimedia-l,
At the moment, sign-up is open for Wikimedia Foundation staff as we examine moderation and other areas. Product and technology staff will use it primarily for developer engagement. The goal is to create a space for people to connect and talk tech.
At the time of writing (July 30), the server lists 72 active users, although itsdirectory of recently active local users shows only five who have posted. The Foundation'sown @wikimediafoundation account leads, with 14 posts, and has already gained over 5,000 followers – undoubtedly helped by aHacker Newspost that made it(close) to the top of that site's front page.
The announcement comes amid continuing concerns aboutTwitter (where the corresponding@wikimedia account remains active, although viewing a list of its recent tweets currently requires registration, due to recent changes by X née Twitter). In late 2022, suggestions that the Foundation should mirror the official Wikipedia Twitter account (run by its Communications department) on Mastodon had fallen flat. This later motivated the creation of a community-run Wikipedia account on theWikis World Mastodon server in April 2023 (see our coverage:"Wikipedia gains an official presence on Mastodon ... without the Wikimedia Foundation's involvement" and"Who speaks for Wikipedia? Mastodon accreditation reverted"). At the time of writing, itcontinues to be active, with 16K followers and a verified checkmark, whilerequests by WMF staff "to change the name of the account [from @wikipedia] to 'Wikipedia movement', 'Wikipedia volunteers', 'Wikipedia worldwide', or something similar" remain unheeded. –H
Should have noted that besides the links recommended in the EU Policy report, there is also a blog post by Wikimedia Italia that specifically discusses the impact on Wikimedia projects:https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/06/05/open-access-to-heritage-images-is-becoming-increasingly-difficult-in-italy/ .Regards,HaeB (talk)06:16, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Italy wants to be paid because somebody who happened to be born there drew something 500 years ago? Do they want to be paid every time someone eats pizza, too?AryKun (talk)12:31, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent reporting on the events in Durham. Threats to the independence and integrity of Wikipedia should always be brought to our attention.Smallchief (talk)14:09, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This story was a tough read.Who, send what, why?The mayor requested, through a letter send by the city attorney, that her signature be taken down....but also content on pages of her political opponents of something she herself uncovered?This story left me with more questions then answers.What's her motive?Bart Terpstra (talk)15:21, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why is it theft if Wikipedia is licensed under cc-by-sa-4.0?Bart Terpstra (talk)15:27, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can't find a single Russian Wikipedian upset about ..., recall that he wasindefinitely blocked by the Russian Wikipedia community first. Are you disagreeing with their decision too? Regards,HaeB (talk)20:13, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
consider that Chinese Wikipedia pageviews spiked following their government ban- yeah, no, that's not what that chart shows. (The Chinese Wikipediawas blocked in May 2015, and the chart only starts from 2016. Also btw, as the small print below the chart warns, it includes automated pageviews from spiders and bots; for such an analysis one would need to remove them, using the filters under "Agent type".) Regards,HaeB (talk)20:40, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Section 13 allows the Foundation to block or ban violators of the ToS.To clarify a common misconception, the ToS gives the WMF the ability to ban people for whatever reason, or no reason at all ("with or without cause") - there is no requirement to violate the ToS before being WMF-banned.Legoktm (talk)07:26, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Long-term abuse: creating a Wikipedia fork which includes stolen content from Commons as well".Anomie⚔11:20, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Her signature isn't on the page anymore. Any indication why?Therapyisgood (talk)19:41, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Given that Durham already had an illustrious history of electing complete lunatics with law degrees to positions of power (Mike Nifong andTracey Cline come to mind, having a DA removed once is rare enough but who ever heard of it happening twice in 5 years?), I have to wonder what's going on with the civic culture down there. There are how many more important things to deal with while running a city of that size, none of which involve sending facially bumptious legal threats to Wikipedia editors.The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい)13:53, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly the City Attorney's letter was misguided in many ways and should not have been sent. The request to identify specific editors was especially inappropriate, as well as doomed to failure.
That being said, the letter's concern about reproducing the Mayor's signature on Wikipedia arguably has greater merit than its other aspects. Indeed,Wikipedia:Signatures of living persons, albeit an essay rather than a policy or guideline, observes thatif the person in question (or their representative) wants a signature removed to protect from identity theft, it should generally be removed
. This is reasonable guidance, especially where, as here, the signature is not of a highly prominent person and the signature itself lacks independent encyclopedic value. The fact that the mayor previously allowed her signature to be reproduced elsewhere is neither here nor there, as someone may come to perceive an identity theft risk belatedly, or may feel the risk is different in kind from an online posting rather than a paper one (and even more so now given the controversy).
Ordinarily we remove a moderately notable BLP subject's signature from Wikipedia at that person's request. Instead, thisSignpost article chooses tofurther disseminate the signature in our internal online newspaper, with the foreseeable and presumably intended effort of further publicizing it. I have no qualms about publicizing thedispute regarding the signature; but there is no more news value than there is encyclopedic value to posting the signature itself over the subject's objection.
While posting the signature here is not legally actionable—let no one think I am suggesting otherwise—including it on this page can reasonably be interpreted as striking back at or even taunting a BLP subject out of (understandable) annoyance at her representative's unwarranted tactics in raising concern about the contents of her article. As such, I suggest that in the spirit of the BLP policy, the signature should be removed.@Red-tailed hawk,HaeB,Jayen466, andBri: I'd welcome your comments.Newyorkbrad (talk)15:05, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
striking back at or even taunting) seem to be on shaky grounds. I'd find it more likely that they included this because it is an illustration that is highly suitable for conveying a central point of the story visually to the reader (something that we always strive to do, for example it's why I, as author of the EU policy story, spent time selecting and including that Vitruvian Man image after writing up the story). As for the alleged identity theft risks, I would recommend a balancedrisk assessment that also takes into account that Signpost stories almost never receive sustained traffic after the initial days following publication, as opposed to a mainspace article where such a signature image will receive views for years and years to come. Yes, the BLP policy applies to non-article pages too, but as you correctly point out, the essay you rely on here is not policy or even consensus. Overall, I'm doubtful that this is a problem so serious that it wouldrequire a post-publication excision. Regards,HaeB (talk)15:34, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
wantsthe image removed from Wikipedia, in the present tense, and is upholding that request - are we positive that this is still the case, after all the (non-Signpost) media attention and pushback from non-Wikipedians? As you point out, she had changed her mind about this kind of matter before. Regards,HaeB (talk)15:45, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
can reasonably be interpretedby some others as potentially retaliatory, since it has no independent news significance. If I personally thought that there was an actual bad-faith, malicious, retaliatory motivation here, I would have donned my administrator hat and unilaterally deleted the signature as a BLP enforcement action, instead of making the gently worded request that I did. (3) I can't say for certain that the mayor hasn't changed her mind about this, but we have no evidence that she has, and we certainly aren't in a position to reach out and ask her. Regards,Newyorkbrad (talk)16:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
we should make the decision dispassionately, rather than out of revenge: I agree, and that's what's been done here. —Red-tailed hawk (nest)00:33, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Of course we're keeping the signature image. The point of Wikipedia is the self-empowerment of over-educated under-employed dissenters who use free speech and privacy as a sort oflawfare against people with money and power. Wikipedia, as an institution, has traditionally stuck a thumb in the eye of decency when our mob of editors demanded it. Only a lawyer would attempt to make a farcical argument for the sake of propriety. It's as if you don't know who this community really is.Chris Troutman (talk)02:44, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As I said on wikimedia-l, I'm very excited that the WMF is now (finally) running its own Mastodon server. More detailshave since emerged about wikimedia.social, namely "staff from the Product & Technology department will maintain the instance". This reaffirms the stated goal that the instance will be used to "talk tech", which previously receivedsome good criticism fromErik about being too narrow of a view.
RegardingThe Foundation's own @wikimediafoundation account leads, with 14 posts, and has already gained over 5000 followers – undoubtedly helped by a Hacker News post that made it (near) the top of that site's front page.
