Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Use of classified documents

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Closing Statement: As is often the case, real life conflicts find themselves mirrored on Wikipedia. The discussion here is somewhat more general; regarding classified material by any government. Wikipedia is an international project, with no aspirations to either help or hurt any national government. In general, it should not matter which entity classified the material for this discussion, whether it be the Chinese, German, Iranian or U.S. government.

Consensus in the questions put to this RfC seems to be:

  • Leaked documents, classified by a national government, are generally the viewpoints of the entity that produced them; they are not subject to the balance and editorial checks that we expect of reliable secondary sources. That does not mean a prohibition on using them as sources, but the guidelines and restrictions on using primary sources apply.
  • Wikipedia is, by virtue of having servers and staff located in the United States, subject to U.S. law, and there is a minority viewpoint which argues that disseminating material classified by the U.S. government is illegal in the U.S. (either by virtue of being classified or by the government asserting copyright) or causes sufficient harm that it should be prohibited. However that viewpoint has not reached consensus. In the absence of qualified legal opinion and no consensus, there is currently no specific reason to give links to material classified by any national government special treatment by prohibiting them.

henrik•talk 20:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]


This RFC is to answer the question "Under what, if any, circumstances may leaked classified documents be used as (a) sources and (b) external links?". Previous discussion includes Wikipedia:ELN#Propriety of linking to WikiLeaks 'released' documents and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#On linking to classified documents. The context for this discussion is the WikiLeaks publication of leaked US cables, but need not be limited to that. Classified material has been referred to within Wikipedia before; we have articles on the Pentagon Papers, on nuclear weapon design, most recently on the Afghan War Diaries; and in the previous articles made on Wikileaks releases, such as the Afghan War Diaries and the Iraq War Documents, the primary source to Wikileaks is included. Despite this, the issue of using the recent cables has sparked enough contention across enough pages to suggest an RFC may be helpful. Rd232 talk 08:54, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Links to other discussions