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Latest comment:26 days ago2 comments1 person in discussion
@SGrabarczuk (WMF):Here, you changed a section title in the FAQ toTrust_and_Safety_Product/Temporary_Accounts/FAQ#Will I need to sign any non-disclosure agreement?, and provided the simplified answerNo.I guess that you directly wanted to calm any user fearing having to identify themself and sign something like the ANPDP. I agree with this; but I'm not sure that your present formulation is completely correct. As a minimum, the WMF policies should be mentioned, e. g., as follows:
I started reading these pages, since I got a popup message about the IP Information tool; including a checkbox for activating it with the accompanying text
I agree to use this tool in accordance with theIP Information tool guidelines, solely for the investigation or prevention of vandalism, abuse, or other violations of Wikimedia Foundation or community policies.
(There also were information about IP Reveal tool, including even more explicit disclosure agreement demands:
You must not access, use or discloseinformation about temporary account IP addresses except if it is reasonably necessary for the investigation of or enforcement against vandalism, abuse, spam, harassment, disruptive behavior, and other violations of Wikimedia Foundation or community policies. If you do share the information with others, you must be sensitive about where and how you do that, and you should remove the information when it is no longer reasonably necessary for others to see it. ...
but I didn't now find any reason to investigate those 'user conditions' in detail.)
I do not have an education in law; and in particular I do not know precisely how the legislations in Florida and Massachusetts define "signing a non-disclosure agreement".(By following the links, one sees why these legislations are relevant.) However, I guess that at least the lawyers of Spur and of MaxMind would claim that clicking that checkbox does carry legal consequences; and I suspect that WMF lawyers would agree. Therefore, I think that the simpleNo you wrote ought to be qualified a bit.
Now, I think that many (probably most) web users tend to ignore messages of the type "By clicking this checkbox, you agree to the conditions [an appropriate link]". They just check the box, and continue with meaningful activities—to which they do not count reading lengthy legal texts. Personnally, I agree that commercial agreement texts are boring; but I simply refuse to agree to unknown conditions. When I followed the link for the IP Information tool, I found a tree of texts. I have doubts about some of them.
In the sense of theSpur privacy policy, I think WMF is "the company", while I (if I opt-in and employ the tool) is a "user" (since I suppose I would belong to "all others who use the Offerings under [the WMF] account"). In order to use the tool, I have to log in to my global wikimedia account. Now, Spur's policy includes the text
From users who are required to login to gain access to a particular website feature or Offering, we collect usernames, passwords, and other login credentials that are used for the purpose of verifying user authorization to access the feature or Offering.
Question 1: Does employing the IP Information tool implicitly or explicitly include gaining "access to a particular website feature or Offering" in the Spur sense?
Question 2: Does employing the tool involve logging in with a separate password?
Question 3: If the answers to the previous question are 'Yes' and 'No', respectively, does my employing this tool give Spur the right to store my usernameand password for logging in to my global wm user account? If not, why not?
I find clicking the toolbar link a bit too cumbersome, so I wrotea script to do that for me whenever I'm logged in; it does so at most once per day and the new timestamp is always 24 hours later (the hardcoded maximum). I realize this might not be in line withthe policy, which states:
You must not access, use or disclose information about temporary account IP addresses except if it is reasonably necessary for theinvestigation of or enforcement against vandalism, abuse, spam, harassment, disruptive behavior, and other violations of Wikimedia Foundation or community policies.
I find the wording a little problematic, especially theaccess part. The toolbar link on its own already allows enabling auto-reveal for at most one hour. If, during that time, the feature reveals the IP of a normal user (that is, someone who is not a vandal or similar), does that count as a violation on my part? If it isn't, then using the API to extend that duration to 24 hours can't count as a violation either, as long as I ensure I'm the only one using my account. Am I allowed to use the script?
Latest comment:15 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion
I am sad that there is no link toManual:$wgAutoCreateTempUser atHelp:Temporary accounts. Mediawiki.org is supposed to serve as documentation on how to host your own wiki. Instead, what I see is thatHelp:Temporary accounts seems to be biased towards WMF-hosted wikis. It took me a few hours of digging through the source code to finally find theRealTempUserConfig code that can be used to enable this on my own wiki. I propose that the WMF-specific content be transwikied tohttps://meta.wikimedia.org and that the "For developers" section be the main focus here.~2025-26841-12 (talk)02:34, 27 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
I also thought that feature was some kind of private extension exclusive to Wikimedia, but now that I've found this, it makes sense. Thanks to this, I finally know how to activate a temporary account.Indeedfore (talk)16:03, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:23 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
What's the user experience after a temporary account has expired? Can they still see their notifications or is it as if the account never existed?Bdijkstra (talk)17:15, 3 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
The experience is as if they logged out, so they can't see the notifications, but any messages remain visible on the account's talk page, if you know where to find them.Matma Rex (talk)19:27, 4 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:21 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion
How is the current deployment plan for the remaining projects? It looks like the original plan to deploy this week was post pound. Currently there is only a date for enwiki in the task. When will the deployment on Commons happen? If this does not happen this week we need to update our local help pages.GPSLeo (talk)07:15, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the question @GPSLeo. I'm impressed you have already documented temporary accounts in your help pages. We will deploy on Commons (and Wikidata) after the deployment on English Wikipedia, but we don't have the dates just yet. We'd also like to talk to Spanish Wikipedians first.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)10:30, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the information. Yes, the relevant pages explain temporary accounts and IP viewer rights. But we have to announce that it will not be enabled this week because we already announced that they will be enabled this week base on the original plan.GPSLeo (talk)10:45, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I see. Our goal is to roll it out on as many large Wikipedias as possible first, and then on Commons and Wikidata. We will post an announcement on your Village pump about two weeks before the deployment date.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)11:34, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
For context: Temporary accounts don't bring any changes to whether it's possible to edit using mobile apps. Instead, these settings depend on the wiki (for example, on some wikis it's not possible for logged-out editors to create new articles) and also the platform (technically there may be apps-specific settings, but I'm not an expert there).SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)14:26, 8 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hello,@~2025-28047-31, Yes, it’s definitely possible to edit using the Wikipedia Android app. Once you open any article, you can tap the pencil icon at the top of the screen to start editing. You can make quick edits to sections, add references, or even switch to source editing mode if you prefer.ARamadan-WMF (talk)16:55, 8 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:14 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I've noticed edits I've made on Translatewiki related to temporary accounts seem to take a very long time (more than a week) to make it over to Swedish Wikipedia. Is this the intended behaviour? It's tempting the community to start editing the messages locally on wiki, which would be a bit unfortunate IMO. I have made other edits unrelated to temporary accounts at a later date and they already made it across.Belteshassar (talk)21:00, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:4 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Why isIP editing getting phased out, and getting replaced with temporary accounts in favor of more protection of privacy, and safety of a user? Why did IP editing lasted so long in the last 20 years, compared to other wikis and wiki farms that have a choice of disabling anonymous editing? To be honest, why is this such a thing, despite Wikipedia being welcoming for both unregistered editing and registered editing? Why would there be noIP editing in all of these Wikimedia projects, although other independent wikis still have IP editing? Thank you for answering this.~2025-29730-21 (talk)02:48, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Heya, I'men:User:IPOfAFlower (see page for why IP addr is being used). I'm wondering if Temp accounts can be given IPBE because I often am forced to go onto a currently blocked ip addr due to having a class at an external campus.~2025-29952-76 (talk)18:35, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hey @IPOfAFlower/@~2025-29952-76. Thanks for writing here. I've read your user page, and I understand that this is a painful problem for you. Unfortunately, currently temporary accounts can't be granted any user rights, and IPBE is a user right. I will let the team know, though, and we'll see if there are any options on our end. Have a good weekend!SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)21:54, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
ty! You too.
Edit: Main issue is we get autoblocked via cookies if we forget that IP is blocked. We then loose that temp account annoyingly as I would like to consolidate every account that I "own" together so I don't have to deal with en thinking the accounts are socks.
