Wikipedia talk:COI List

Preparations

At this point, I'm not looking for support or oppose, but rather, for revisions/improvements/corrections to the draft, prior to deciding whether or not to make it an actual proposal. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:04, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Moved to mainspace. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:01, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Notifications at:

• WT:AC: [1], [2]
• WT:OS: [3], [4]
• WT:CHECK: [5], [6]
• WT:Functionaries: [7], [8]
• WT:HA: [9], [10]
• WT:COIN: [11], [12]
• WP:CENT: [13]

What to do when you're absolutely certain but can't say?

Suppose there's an editor writing lots and lots of obvious corporate spam, and suppose a second editor finds their personal site, with the same name as their username, which advertises their services writing Wikipedia articles. Per what just happened to Jytdog, how can the second editor even bring a case to WP:COI without "outing" the first editor, at least per the curious definition of "outing" the arbcom appears to be using? It appears they can't. But this would preclude them telling this planned new list about the glaring smoking gun evidence that the first editor is the blatant spammer they are. How to proceed in such a case? I don't see how your proposal solves the problem it was created to - David Gerard (talk) 21:44, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you that what happened to Jytdog was unfair, because there has to be way to say what you are absolutely certain about, and yet Wikipedia does not let you say what you know. This proposal allows you to not need to say it publicly on Wikipedia. Instead, you can say it in a private email, and have it confirmed by a functionary, who can say on-site that it is confirmed. I think that what you are missing in your question to me is that arbcom's position only applies to what is posted on Wikipedia, not to what is submitted privately. Nobody will block you for outing because of that email, but this proposal allows you to have it confirmed that your evidence is real. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:53, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, but how does one even submit the required case to COI without effectively outing the spammer? - David Gerard (talk) 22:23, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

When you say "submit the required case to COI", do you mean COIN (as opposed to sending the private email)? In that case, what you post at the noticeboard is the username of the editor, and either the pages where the spam is, and/or the topic area of those pages, and say that "there may be a conflict of interest", but don't say anything about the website that you found, and say that you are submitting the evidence privately. Then you name the actual website in your email, and the functionary posts at COIN that there was evidence and it is "likely". That's enough to deal with the situation, and no one ever names the personal website on-Wiki. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:30, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

And in case you meant sending the email, the outing policy is explicitly about posting information on-Wiki. It is not outing to send the information to a functionary in a private email, and it never has been. People send confidential identifying information to ArbCom all the time. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:31, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

OK, that sounds workable :-)

I do understand why our outing policies are like they are - I've dealt with the sort of vicious deranged nutcases that mean we do literally have to go that far. But I've just started doing PRODs (I started doing the deletions to clear the backlog at guilt over filing so many) and I'm horrified at just how much blatant goddamn spam from paid bad faith actors we're getting. It's all a tricky one - David Gerard (talk) 00:04, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! Yes, it's really an unsupportable situation. We need to be better able to deal with that spam, but we also need to protect editor privacy. I'm trying to find a way to do both, but if it fails, I guess that deleting the spam will just become an increasingly time-consuming process. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:08, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm getting a disconcerting degree of that good old fashioned nerd vengeance feeling from tagging spammy articles. Evidently I need a healthier hobby - David Gerard (talk) 00:28, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Beyond COI

In its first iteration Tryptofish is calling this the "COI list". I have no opinion on whether this is a viable proposal, but at Wikipedia_talk:Harassment#Can_other_site_accounts_ever_be_linked_to the oppose votes seem to share the perspective that there is or should be a back-channel way to sort out blocks without publicly disclosing evidence. It seems to me that the consequence of this would be a private forum for discussing blacklists. If that happened, then I think that the creation of such a list would be unprecedented and surprising.

But suppose that it did happen - in the talk at the other forum, discussing COI is said to overlap with harassment. Could actual harassment (like sexual harassment) also be discussed in this private mailing list? There is at least as much demand for discussing traditional harassment as there is for discussing COI outing.

Should there be a blacklist discussion list for all sorts of personal information, whether for COI, sexual harassment, or other sensitive personal details for which the Wikipedia community currently has no means to address? Why call this page "COI list", when "blacklist" would cover all of the possible situations for which a system like this could be used, if there is desire to group them all together? I anticipate major problems with such a system, but it seems like a lot of really experienced editors are advocating for something like this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:15, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this idea. Such an expansion of focus would indeed go quite far beyond anything that I am proposing here. My understanding is that the WMF has an email address and professional personnel who, although they will not deal with COI and are unlikely to agree to do so in the near future, are specifically tasked with dealing with severe harassment and child protection issues. Assuming I am right about that, it seems to me that these WMF professionals are the appropriate people to deal with those problems, and that they are much better equipped to do so than are editors here. Something that I feel very strongly requires caution is that I would never want such a private list to be used for anything relating to content or POV, such as claims that an editor espouses some unusual or unpopular belief in real life, because I think that would be gamed to win content disputes or harass wiki-enemies. So, taking those factors together, I'm not sure what that would leave, outside of COI and undisclosed paid editing. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:33, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I would imagine that matters related to things like sexual harassment where there is confidential or potentially confidential information involved should go to ArbCom. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 01:03, 27 August 2016 (UTC).

They certainly should not go anyplace lower. But the WMF is better equipped to handle some of these things. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:06, 27 August 2016 (UTC)