 | The following is a draft working towards a proposal for adoption as a Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal must not be taken to represent consensus, but is still in development and under discussion, and has not yet reached the process of gathering consensus for adoption. Thus references or links to this page should not describe it as policy, guideline, nor yet even as a proposal. |
Identity verification is the process of confirming that a Wikimedia contributor's identity matches to some other identity, such as their offline identity, a user account on another website, or another persona such as a person claiming to be a representative of an organization.
Many aspects of the Wikimedia process for identity verification are controversial, but each of these things is true:
- There is no established policy or guideline for identity verification in Wikimedia projects.
- Identity verification is a requirement to participate in some online Wikipedia and Wikimedia editing.
- There are several Wikimedia community processes which demand identity verification, and more than 100,000 people have participated in these processes since c. 2010.
- Some parts of the current ambiguous process work well, and some parts of the process do not work well.
- This is a central page to discuss any aspect of the process, including what practices are in place and what policies exist.