Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2024-11-06

In what The Hindu called "the first instance of an English Wikipedia article being taken down by the foundation in the encyclopedia's history", the Wikimedia Foundation has deleted the Wikipedia article Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation pursuant to an order from the Delhi High Court. This article deletion is the third major conflict of concern to Wikipedia editors in this story; the first is Asian News International (ANI) suing the Wikimedia Foundation over defamation in the Wikipedia article about themselves, and the second is ANI's demand that the Wikimedia Foundation reveal the identity of certain editors to that article. The Signpost previously reported this story's development in October, September, and July.

Editors' discussions about the events, and their response, can be found at a wide variety of locations, including mailing lists and community-managed offsites like Discord and Telegram.

On October 21, Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees member and Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales wrote:

Hi everyone, I spoke to the team at the WMF yesterday afternoon in a quick meeting of the board. Although I've been around Internet legal issues for a long time, it's important to note that I am not a lawyer and that I am not here speaking for the WMF nor the board as a whole. I'm speaking personally as a Wikipedian. As you might expect, it's pretty limited as to what people are able to say at this point, and unwise to give too many details. However, I can tell you that I went into the call initially very skeptical of the idea of even temporarily taking down this page and I was persuaded very quickly by a single fact that changed my mind: if we did not comply with this order, we would lose the possibility to appeal and the consequences would be dire in terms of achieving our ultimate goals here. For those who are concerned that this is somehow the WMF giving in on the principles that we all hold so dear, don't worry. I heard from the WMF quite strong moral and legal support for doing the right thing here - and that includes going through the process in the right way. Prior to the call, I thought that the consequence would just be a block of Wikipedia by the Indian government. While that's never a good thing, it's always been something we're prepared to accept in order to stand for freedom of expression. We were blocked in Turkey for 3 years or so, and fought all the way to the Supreme Court and won. Nothing has changed about our principles. The difference in this case is that the short term legal requirements in order to not wreck the long term chance of victory made this a necessary step. My understanding is that the WMF has consulted with fellow traveler human rights and freedom of expression groups who have supported that we should do everything we can to win this battle for the long run, as opposed to petulantly refusing to do something today. I hope these words are reassuring to those who may have had some concerns!
— Jimbo Wales at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) § The Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation situation (09:13, 21 October 2024 (UTC))

On October 31, the Foundation legal team gave an update that "We have not shared any user data".

This issue of The Signpost includes multiple columns of coverage. Here, we report Wikimedia community news updates. This issue's "Technology report" describes how Wikipedia editors and technology interact in the context of this case. "In focus" is a different telling of this story, formatted as the common questions and answers which commentators are exchanging. "From the editor" clarifies that The Signpost is a newspaper, and that newspapers in countries where many Signpost editors live, usually cover important court cases as a public service.

As always, The Signpost invites all Wikipedia editors to post in the comments section for any article, and to submit journalism and new perspectives to future issues. – BR, Sb

32 candidates stood through the entire administrator elections trial that began this month. Voting concluded as of 23:59 31 October (UTC), and after scrutineering to remove invalid, sockpuppet, or duplicate votes, we have the results posted at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Results. The 11 new administrators are as follows, alphabetically:

• Ahecht
• DoubleGrazing
• Dr vulpes
• FOARP
• Peaceray
• Queen of Hearts
• Rsjaffe
• SD0001
• SilverLocust
• Sohom Datta
• ThadeusOfNazereth

With the 11 elected admins, this brings the total number of new admins in 2024 to 20, significantly more than recent years. The last year with more admins by end of year was 2019, with 22. This is a significant step forward in terms of reducing administrator attrition, though it's unclear if the long term trend will be reversed – the number of active administrators increased from 419 on 3 November to 429 the following day, when the new cadre was given the sysop bit, putting the count back to about what it was at the end of August. This topic was last covered by The Signpost in the 19 October issue, and broad discussion about reforming the process for granting administrator rights has been ongoing since 2007 as documented in Wikipedia:RFA reform.

As the community approved Administrator Elections as a one-time trial, it would need approval through an additional RFC to become permanent. There is ongoing discussion on a dedicated 'debrief' page about the next steps from here.

Community members who were officially part of the trial election process included monitors Theleekycauldron and Pickersgill-Cunliffe; and scrutineers Johannnes89, EPIC, and Yahya. This author (B) additionally notes the unofficial yet crucial involvement of Novem Linguae in moving the SecurePoll process forward, and other work that made the election possible. Some of these folks have already received barnstars, but The Signpost encourages readers to thank and acknowledge the organizers for their labor, ethical guidance, and dedication to this crucial aspect of Wikipedia volunteer community governance. – B, S

You may now submit your self-nomination for the Arbitration Committee election until 23:59, 12 November 2024 (UTC). Eight vacant ArbCom seats may be filled. Questions for candidates from the community can be submitted at any time during the election. Voting will be held over 14 days, from 00:00 UTC, 19 November 2024 to 23:59 UTC, 02 December 2024.

For complete information see WP:ACE2024. – Sb

The ability of the community to remove or "recall" administrator's privileges has been discussed for almost two decades. Some important way stations in the recent discussions are:

• Phase I - Proposal 16 and Proposal 16c
• Phase II - Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Administrator recall
• a request for comments - RFC to confirm Phase II consensus
• WP:RECALL - Recall as a policy page

A new administrator recall policy, part of the 2024 RfA Reform, was adopted by separate RfC on October 26. The new policy follows unsuccessful attempts to formulate a recall procedure in 2006 and 2019. Until this point, only the Arbitration Committee could remove admin privileges without the cooperation of the administrator;^{[adminrecall 1]} now a community consensus can also result in removal of privileges (see prior Signpost coverage).

The first recall was initiated under the new policy soon after the RfC was marked as adopted (Special:Permalink/1253547916 / Special:Permalink/1253758891). As of our writing deadline, there is almost 100 kilobytes of text in the ongoing discussion (about the equivalent of 50 typewritten pages), which may reflect the participants hashing out process and procedure for this new venue. – B

In June 2024 the Wikimedia Foundation established the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin as a channel for staff of the Wikimedia Foundation to share project updates with the volunteer Wikimedia community of editors. The bulletin is a flood of information of interest to Wikipedia enthusiasts. The late October issue describes Temporary Accounts, which is a project intended to give new privacy options to Wikipedia editors, and which may be of interest to anyone exploring how privacy works in the Wikimedia platform. Temporary Accounts seems to be the new name for IP Masking, discussed previously in The Signpost here and here.

Other relevant posts include the removal of Flow on all projects (It'll be replaced with DiscussionTools), an ongoing research project on admin recruitment and attrition, and a publicity campaign to highlight Wikipedia in the United States. – B, BR, S

• Milestones: Congratulations to the Romanian language Wikipedia, which recently published its 500,000th article ro:Ulug Beg, who was a Timurid sultan.
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Slow living. Next week's Article for Improvement (beginning 11 November 2024) is Stationery. Please be bold in helping improve these articles!

The long saga of the paid Wikipedia edits made at the behest of Portland, Oregon mayoral candidate Rene Gonzalez (or his commissioner's office) continued on October 15, during a candidate debate.

Gonzalez justified the paid edits made by his commissioner's office staff — with the help of contractor WhiteHatWiki — by saying that the contractor had trained his staff to counter misinformation spread about him. He said "Wikipedia is one of the tools that I have used and will use in the future".

Co-moderator Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, who first reported the story in The Oregonian, probed further, asking if he was "fine with sticking taxpayers with that bill". Gonzalez attacked the accuracy of the original article, saying they "had to correct it under a threat of a libel suit from the contractor". Kavanaugh disagreed. A correction to the original article had made this change:

The next Monday, the Portland City Auditor's office released its second report, a "reconsideration" based on new evidence, with respect to a complaint that Gonzalez had misused taxpayer money to fund his campaign.

They found that he had, for paying to post a requested edit saying he was a Democrat.

It would have been allowed if it had been about his non-partisan commissioner's position, rather than about his current mayoral campaign — but an edit to disclose his political party could only have been relevant to the mayoral campaign. The auditor’s office also said that Gonzalez hadn't cooperated in providing the information on that requested edit; for example, he had pressured the chief deputy auditor by accusing him of a conflict of interest. The fine was $2,400.

Gonzalez's city-paid policy advisor had actually submitted the requested edits drafted with WhiteHatWiki despite his discomfort with them, and an attempt to "slow-walk" the process. The Oregonian, Exhibit A, pp.8-9.

The entire process involving WhiteHatWiki helping to create and submit the requested edits started with WhiteHatWiki and the commissioner's office staff exploring possible edits.

• Rene Gonzalez's policy advisor "shared with investigators that when he joined the Commissioner’s office in February 2024, the decision to edit the Wikipedia page had already been made. He was assigned to work on the Wikipedia edits with WhiteHatWiki shortly after his arrival at the City and described his role as a 'middleman' between WhiteHatWiki and Gonzalez."
• The advisor and WhiteHatWiki "exchanged ideas for edits over the course of a few months (March – June, 2024.)" He said that he "did not care for the Wikipedia project, so he 'slow-walked' it". He "recalls having several discussions with Gonzalez and others in the office about the status and content of the Wikipedia edits".
• According to the advisor, "the Wikipedia edits under consideration with WhiteHatWiki were frequently an agenda item during the full office’s Monday meetings". He "estimates the Wikipedia edits were discussed four to five times at these Monday meetings during the course of a few months" and "further recalls that Gonzalez was present for the meetings 'consistently,'" but "reflected that it is possible Gonzalez was not there every single time".
• Gonzalez's advisor "informed investigators that because he was slow on the project, Gonzalez would check in with him periodically (about once a month) for an update".

Both Rene Gonzalez and WhiteHatWiki CEO Ed Sussman were asked for comment when the story first broke. On August 7, I asked whether the mayoral campaign had paid for Wikipedia editing in making the edit requests on the article. An unsigned response from the candidate's official email address — presumably Gonzalez — stated that no campaign staffers had been paid for the edits, and referred me to the commissioner's office as well as the "paid editor" who had commented on the article’s talk page. Nobody from the commissioner's office (including Gonzalez's policy advisor) replied to a request sent to his official email address.

Sussman’s reply on August 8 stated that WhiteHatWiki "only served as a consultant", and thus didn’t need to declare as a paid editor. He did say that that the editor was an "employee of the commissioner", but denied that the paid editing disclosure policy applied: only the less-strict conflict of interest guideline.

The three main involved parties all seem to agree that Gonzalez's policy advisor was being paid while he posted edits to the article talk page. And WhiteHatWiki was being paid. But nobody made a formal paid editing declaration. – S

Pirate Wires wrote an article about a Wikipedia article (itself about other newspaper articles), which as of press time was titled Comparisons between Donald Trump and fascism, although a second move request and a deletion debate are both currently underway. The claims made therein are generally along the lines that the article is irreparably biased, that it was written unreasonably close to the election, that it reflects a failure of the project and a "tightly coordinated effort to control the narrative". It afterwards goes into substantial detail on sourcing and policy — beyond what can be summarized here.

Just a year ago, Elon Musk offered to donate $1 billion to the Wikimedia Foundation, contingent on one small requirement, and today he remains a regular feature of the news cycle, for a variety of reasons; of late, the most noticeable being his effusively outspoken support of Donald Trump's campaign for President of the United States. This item is no exception, as he tweeted the original Pirate Wires article, sparking additional coverage of his remarks by the Washington Examiner and The Times of India, the latter of which saying he believes Wikipedia is "controlled by far-left activists. People should stop donating to them."

Lest the level of simulacra become unmanageable (articles about tweets about articles about articles about articles about public statements about things potentially happening in reality), and more to the point: while some claims are obviously silly, allegations of political bias on Wikipedia are neither a new phenomenon nor prima facie preposterous. You can see previous Signpost reporting for some attempts to study this more or less rigorously. Indeed, there is a very long article titled Criticism of Wikipedia detailing twenty years of these allegations, as well as the subsequent back-and-forth on them. If anyone remembers this article exists a dozen news cycles from now, we might actually be able to find out whether it's biased. – J

Way back on October 29, 1921, tiny Centre College defeated the dominant American football team of the day — Harvard — 6–0 in one of the biggest upsets in football history. Exactly 103 years later, the Wikipedia article on the game was Today's Featured Article on the main page. The same day, Centre College News featured the main author of the article, Patrick Nelson, who graduated from Centre this May with a degree in mathematics.

Nelson started editing Wikipedia during high school, focusing on college football rivalries. He told CCN that wiki editing "helped prepare him for the rigors of college writing". The preparation worked both ways "Getting not only my work, but also Centre's name, in front of millions of eyes is very exciting. Especially so, knowing that Centre contributed to my writing and research skills (and provided resources that I used to research that article) and, in part, made the article possible in doing so."

The Wikimedia Foundation's latest PR campaign is "Knowledge is human" designed by the VIRTUE Worldwide advertising agency. Zack McCune of the WMF is quoted as saying, "We’re living in a world that feels defined by online echo chambers, misinformation, and polarised opinions. This leaves people around the world increasingly sceptical of their information sources." The project's landing page shows videos, photos of people many of us know, and is designed to emphasize the humanity of Wikipedia. It is an updated version of a campaign presented last year. One innovation is a Wikipedia truck which made at least four stops in New York City, and the same number in Los Angeles. The truck displays a huge version of a Wikipedia article on its side and is displayed on billboards and in other ads. See also meta and articles in Design Rush and Ad Age.

• Australian place names: Phys.org reviews a Wikihistories project How Australian Places are Represented on Wikipedia. The project, led by Heather Ford, gives an outstanding overview of Australian place name articles, their editors, and the editing process that any Wikipedia editor should be able to recognize and learn from.
• Indian court case: straight from The Hindu.
• Legal trouble: The BBC reports on the same case.

On 21 October 2024, the Wikimedia Foundation removed access to the Wikipedia article titled Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation, in response to a demand by the Delhi High Court. This followed Asian News International, a news agency in India, suing Wikipedia for defamation, and seeking the identity of three Wikipedia editors who had contributed to their article. Here follows a community perspective of what happened.

Briefly: Wikipedia editors avoid original research, and instead they summarize reliable sources while citing those sources. From a Wikipedia editor's perspective, the complaint in this case is directed at Wikipedia and particular editors for summarizing what reputable news sources have said. This does not make sense to Wikipedians, because summarizing reliable sources is how the site ensures high quality content.

Asian News International, a news agency in India, complained about the Wikipedia article about itself. The Wikipedia article contained information which the organization felt was defamatory. It was unable to negotiate removal of that information from the article, and in response, filed a court case asking for content removal related to defamation. Asian News International speaks for itself; please seek comment from them and other journalists who have focused on their perspective for a more complete view.

From a Wikipedia editor's perspective, the complaint was that Wikipedia summarized what was already contained in sources widely considered to be trustworthy and credible. As is well known, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not a newspaper or source of original research. Consequently, Wikipedia is not the originator of information, but rather relies on knowledge creators such as journalists and researchers at news outlets to actually publish the information. Wikipedia editors then summarize this information into articles, and cite the source of information, so that anyone else can fact-check it. If someone says a Wikipedia article is wrong, then editors can check the claims in an article against what the source originally said, or evaluate the reliability and respectability of the original sources.

The controversial assertion is that Asian News International spreads propaganda. Sources which have asserted this include BBC, The Caravan, The Ken, Newslaundry, and The Diplomat. Wikipedia editors summarized those sources while citing them. Wikipedia editors are not journalists; as encyclopedia editors, they do not need to be, because the role of a Wikipedia editor is simply to summarize what reputable journalists and academics say, cite their sources, and to be mindful to cite high quality, reliable sources. Anyone who wishes to examine the original articles which Wikipedia editors have cited and the way that they represented the original journalism in the Wikipedia article can check the relevant article revisions, such as the present version. Wikipedia editors are proud of the content and it meets Wikipedia's typical quality control standards.

Wikipedians often take for granted that there is shared global notion of what constitutes a reliable source. Wikipedia editors have summarized the views of external commentators in the Wikipedia article, "Reliability of Wikipedia", but the Wikipedia community itself has defined its concept of reliability in guidelines including Wikipedia:Reliable sources and in forums including the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. More specifically, Wikipedia editors conduct and log evaluations of particular sources for their reliability for fact-checking other topics, as for example the community review of Asian News International on its reliability. When Wikipedia editors evaluate the reliability of a source, they are not passing a moral judgement on whether a source is good or bad, well or ill-intentioned, biased or neutral. Instead, they seek to review evidence that a source conforms to journalism ethics and standards in its social context. Both a major media house and a modest student newspaper can be considered reliable sources for their scope of journalism, and reliable sources for one cultural community may conflict and give contrary information to reliable sources from another demographic perspective. It can even happen that sources find different absolute facts, and both be reliable and worth reporting in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not the mediator or judge of absolute truth; instead it seeks to report what journalism as an institution in the humanities has reported. Sources like BBC may be biased or incorrect, but Wikipedia editors confirm that such as it is, it is journalism and a perspective worth summarizing to present in the encyclopedia.

The cultural collision between Wikipedia editorial culture and Asian News International is that ANI seems more interested in challenging Wikipedia's way of summarizing and citing information from other sources, than it is in challenging the original journalists and news agencies. A question that immediately arises to Wikipedia editors is why the organization would challenge Wikipedia rather than filing a lawsuit against BBC as a major international news source, or against the news agencies in India which published the original claims which Wikipedia is citing. In this case, Wikipedia editors have found multiple reliable sources making similar assertions, and so far Wikipedia editors have not identified other sources of similar standing which report any different perspective. Wikipedia editors expect that if someone wants a claim modified in Wikipedia, then they should use options such as challenging the reliability of the cited sources, correct Wikipedia editors in summarizing those sources in Wikipedia, or present sources with differing perspectives. It might be the case that ANI feels that journalism is ephemeral and not worth challenging, while Wikipedia is persistent, higher traffic, and more influential. Also, perhaps Wikipedia is more attractive as a target than the other media houses. The available information does not clarify exactly what the problem is. The contested and defamatory claims are not clearly identified.

Wikipedia editors find such complaints and behavior puzzling. Instead, Wikipedia editors wish that critics would do things like complain about the journalists and publications who made the original claims, or challenge Wikipedia's evaluation of a source's reliability, or critique Wikipedia's accuracy in summarizing sources in encyclopedia articles.

Briefly: From a Wikipedia community perspective, Asian News International and the court are inappropriately seeking to harm some of the editors who took content from those news sources, and repeated those claims in Wikipedia with citations to the original sources. Wikipedia editors are in solidarity that these users have a right to privacy for editing Wikipedia articles, especially in routine editing like this which complies with Wikipedia's process for fact-checking and quality control.

Asian News International complained about defamation. As part of that, the court demanded that the Wikimedia Foundation reveal the identity of the editors who brought those claims into the Wikipedia articles.

Going back to 2001 at the founding of Wikipedia, the community of editors have had some shared understanding and rules. All of these values have been endlessly repeated, but for anyone who wants to hear how Wikipedia works again, here is the explanation again. Also consider checking any of the thousands of previously published explanations of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia does not produce original thought or research like a newspaper or university, but instead, it summarizes and cites what reliable sources publish. The reason why anyone can edit Wikipedia is that authorship should not matter, as all editors bring in claims from other publications. Since Wikipedia editors cite their sources, anyone else can fact check that the Wikipedia editors correctly summarized the original assertion, and that they cited a reliable source. Wikipedia editors become confused when anyone criticizes the content which Wikipedia reports in the absence of criticism of the original journalism.

Because there is rarely any reason to connect a person's offline identity to their Wikipedia user account, most Wikipedia editors do their editing through a Wikipedia username. The concept of an Internet handle or username is a basic idea in understanding the Internet. Major social media platforms allow this, and there are standards for privacy in that generally when someone makes an account, they have an expectation that the platform host will have a standard for privacy protection. People who edit Wikipedia, especially when they edit by the rules, have a right to privacy.

To request the identity of Wikipedia editors who cite journalists seems like an action intended to have a chilling effect on Wikipedia editing. Undoubtedly, an organization like the BBC is prepared to defend its journalists. Wikipedia editors include volunteers around the world, and these volunteers are never as close to legal protection as, for example, credentialed journalism staff at the BBC would be. It is highly worrisome to Wikipedia editors that anyone would skip criticizing the original journalism, skip criticizing Wikipedia's practice of mirroring and citing journalism, and focus on actions which bring global attention and the associated danger of that to Wikipedia's global community of volunteer editors. Random Internet people have the right to post content to the Internet, and those rights are even greater when their activity is Wikipedia editing to share fact-checked general reference information from reputable media sources.

Briefly: In response to the court case, conventional news journalists outside of Wikipedia published stories covering the court case. This is how everyone got information about the defamation case and the threat to editor privacy. As Wikipedia editors do, they made an article about the court case, citing those journalists. The court demanded censorship of that article. Wikipedia editors object to this removal.

The defamation case went to court, and that included the issue of revealing the identity of Wikipedia editors. There were journalists observing the court case, and they published stories. When those journalists published stories, then Wikipedia editors created an article titled, Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation. As usual, that Wikipedia article was a summary of what journalists had written about the topic, and content in that article included a citation to the original source which anyone could use for fact checking.

The court objected to Wikipedia editors producing an article about an ongoing court case because of India's laws around sub judice. The court ordered the Wikimedia Foundation to delete the Wikipedia article about the court case or be held in contempt. On 21 October 2024, the Wikimedia Foundation suppressed it and its talk page.

Wikipedia articles which provide background information on why these conflicts matter include freedom of speech, journalism ethics and standards, Internet privacy, censorship, and freedom of the press. Wikipedia editors collaborate to uphold good and ethical editorial standards. Wikipedia's editorial processes and fact-checking worked well in this case. Wikipedia editors demand the right to share knowledge, protect the privacy of its editors especially when they are compliant with our rules, and to not endure unfair censorship.

Other more specific Wikipedia articles which give context to relevant ethics and rights include Censorship of Wikipedia, Wikipedia in India, Contempt of court in India, Deletion of articles on Wikipedia, Disputes on Wikipedia, Wikipedia and fact-checking, and Litigation involving the Wikimedia Foundation.

Protect freedom of speech. Wikipedia editors encourage everyone in the world to examine our content and criticize it fairly. It is challenging to make sense of the court's perspective in this case. Please edit and develop any Wikipedia articles mentioned here.

In particular, support Wikipedia's community of editors in India. Particular help which could be useful includes asking Wikipedia editors in India what support they want, supporting them in accessing global resources of the Wikimedia Movement, and encouraging Wikimedia movement affiliates to include collaboration with Indian community organizations in their global Wikimedia content development plans. Everyone needs everyone else to sustain Wikipedia as a global information resource. Right now, it is very helpful to ensure that Wikipedia editors in India have what they need to develop Wikipedia independently, in the way that is best for them.

Asian News International sued the Wikimedia Foundation over defamation, and to reveal the private identities of Wikipedia editors. In this lawsuit, the Delhi High Court also ordered the Wikimedia Foundation to delete the Wikipedia article about the court case. See additional coverage elsewhere in The Signpost.

A news agency called Asian News International (ANI) sued the Wikimedia Foundation for defamation, based on things written in its article on the English Wikipedia. Then other Wikipedia editors made an article about that lawsuit, and the Delhi High Court ordered Wikipedia to delete that article in its entirety. Wikipedia's community of editors is upset at all of this, and feels unfairly treated.

Again, the three issues are

1. Asian News International says that the Wikipedia article Asian News International contains defamation.
2. Asian News International wants the identities disclosed of three volunteer Wikipedia editors who edited that article.
3. The Delhi High Court ordered the Wikimedia Foundation to delete the Wikipedia article Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation.

• Wikipedia editors are the volunteer community of encyclopedia writers who develop Wikipedia, using normal editorial practices like fact-checking and quality control. Hundreds of them have edited Wikipedia content related to Asian News International, and this entire situation.
• News agencies, including BBC, The Caravan, The Ken, and The Diplomat authored and published the information which Wikipedia editors added to the news article "Asian News International", and which that organization says is defamation.
• Asian News International is the organization suing the Wikimedia Foundation, and seeking the identity of three particular Wikipedia editors among the hundreds who have edited the Wikipedia article titled "Asian News International".
• The Wikimedia Foundation is the legal organization that hosts the Wikimedia platform, including Wikipedia. This foundation does not have editorial staff, and cannot tell the Wikipedia editors what to do. Wikipedia editors have some governance ability to tell the Wikimedia Foundation what to do.
• The three particular Wikipedia editors seem to be random Internet people. The Wikipedia community wants them to be safe, and not to be put into a global spotlight or multinational diplomatic conflict, because what happens to them could happen to any Wikipedia editor.
• The Delhi High Court is a court in India which is hearing the defamation case, demanded the identity of three Wikipedia editors, and ordered the Wikimedia Foundation to delete the Wikipedia article Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation.
• The Signpost is the Wikipedia community newspaper producing journalism for Wikipedia editors, by Wikipedia editors, and in advocacy of Wikipedia editors. It is editorially independent of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Signpost reports stories like this one.
• Wikimedia editors in India are particular stakeholders of this whole situation. Although most Wikipedia editors engage with Wikipedia only online, editors are more likely to form friendships and collaborations with people from their own culture and region. Also, throughout the world, there are Wikimedia community organizations which provide local training, support, and partnerships to encourage Wikipedia content development. Several such organizations exist in India. They get funding and support from the Wikimedia Foundation.

Two entities are seeking Wikipedia content change: Asian News International, and the Delhi High Court.

Asian News International initiated a lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation. They claim that the Wikipedia article about their organization, Asian News International, contains defamation against them. They want that content removed.

The Delhi High Court is overseeing that defamation lawsuit, and under the sub judice surrounding the proceedings, it ordered the Wikimedia Foundation to delete the Wikipedia article about the lawsuit. That Wikipedia article is titled, Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation.

Asian News International is complaining of defamation in the Wikipedia article about itself.

The Delhi High Court seems to want Wikipedia to enforce privacy and discretion of the ongoing court case, but strangely, does not seem to react to the news agencies which create the information which Wikipedia editors are summarizing. From a Wikipedia editor's perspective, the court's actions seem confused with regard to Wikipedia being a publication which relays information from other sources.

The specific disputed content is uncertain, and Wikipedia editors have had no communication with Asian News International to clarify the situation; the guess is that the alleged defamation is this content from Asian News International:

Investigations by The Caravan and The Ken into the company have alleged that it has served as a mouthpiece for the incumbent government of India for decades, especially after the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014.^[1][2] ANI has been accused of amplifying a vast network of fake news websites spreading pro-government and anti-Pakistan propaganda.^[3][4][5]

1. ^ Donthi, Praveen (1 March 2019). "The Image Makers : How ANI Reports The Government's Version Of Truth". The Caravan. Archived from the original on 8 February 2023. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
2. ^ Ahluwalia, Harveen; Srivilasan, Pranav (21 October 2018). "How ANI quietly built a monopoly". The Ken. Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 28 December 2019.
3. ^ Hussain, Abid; Menon, Shruti (10 December 2020). "The dead professor and the vast pro-India disinformation campaign". BBC News. Archived from the original on 12 November 2022. Retrieved 10 December 2020. The network was designed primarily to "discredit Pakistan internationally" and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and European Parliament, EU DisinfoLab said.
4. ^ Saeed, Saim; Kayali, Laura (9 December 2020). "New pro-India EU website enrolling MEPs campaigns against Pakistan". Politico. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
5. ^ Rej, Abhijnan (12 October 2020). "EU Non-Profit Unearths Massive Indian Disinformation Campaign". The Diplomat. Archived from the original on 12 November 2022. Retrieved 11 December 2020.

Asian News International is seeking the identities of three of the editors of the Wikipedia article "Asian News International". Presumably, their motive is to bring those editors to justice against the accusation of defamation, and to deter future defamation.

The Delhi High Court ordered the disclosure of those editors.

As a website, the Wikimedia Foundation necessarily gathers some user information. However, whereas typical major commercial websites gather as much user information as possible, Wikimedia sites seek to only gather information in advocacy of user rights. The Wikimedia Foundation describes the specifics at wmf:Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy and Requests for user data, but all values and ethics in Wikipedia come from the volunteer community of users, and not the Wikimedia Foundation itself.

Editing Wikipedia is not supposed to be dangerous — but see, for example, List of people imprisoned for editing Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation has deleted the Wikipedia article for the court case. Right now probably is not the time to re-create that deleted article, but other than that, Wikipedia editors wish to encourage everyone to edit Wikipedia articles in useful ways. Perhaps anyone who feels intimidated by Asian News International should avoid editing about that organization.

The Signpost invites anyone with legal insight to post in the comments section, or submit articles for publication in the next issue.

No. The government of India may have made, or may be considering, rules requiring media and technology platforms including Wikipedia to have a physical office and presence in India. The Signpost is uncertain if or how this applies.

Courts in India have said that they might block all of Wikipedia for the entire country if Wikipedia does not comply with certain requests. The court discussed blocking Wikipedia for this defamation case. Previously in 2020, another court discussed blocking Wikipedia related to maps in Wikipedia differing from India's official maps on the matter of the India–Pakistan border. Before that, there was a Wikipedia dispute related to the Information Technology Rules, 2021.

Bad. They feel justified in using Wikipedia as a place where anyone can cite and summarize information from other sources. Also they want privacy and freedom from persecution for editors. On-wiki discussions about the case include the following:

• Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)#The Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation situation
• Talk:Asian News International
• User talk:Jimbo Wales#ANI v. WMF time frame

Talk:Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation was a place to do fact-checking about this case, but was deleted by order of the Delhi High Court.

Typically Wikipedia editors prefer to discuss things on-wiki, but in this case, there are editors having off-wiki discussions based on fear that posting on-site carries the risk of having one's identity revealed.

Some editors suggested that The Signpost not report on this, or seek permission or approval to publish from staff of the Wikimedia Foundation, or the Wikimedia Foundation legal team, or from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees; while we share basic principles with the community and the Foundation, we are an independent newspaper. That independence is a strength of journalism, and not a flaw or error.

Two Wikipedia community-deleted versions of the article include

• simple:Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation
• fr:Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation

A global and multilingual community discussion on how to react to censorship is likely forthcoming. Thanks to the admins who deleted these articles to protect the safety of other editors. This is a big issue for broader conversation.

The Wikimedia Foundation announced the start of its fundraising campaign in India in 2020. Community outreach for the latest campaign is at meta:Fundraising/WMF India fundraising campaign.

The 2023-24 report says that the Wikimedia Foundation sent US$398,000 in that year, which is about 3 crore rupees.

They say a few things. These are not quotations either.

One is that many individuals do not want global public attention speaking on controversial things. If The Signpost is mistaken and there are Indian people out there with opinions and perspectives that they want to voice about this case, then post to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions or contact us otherwise. To understand the avoidance of commenting, one must understand the public perception of courts and lawsuits in India.

Another common line of discussion is to change the subject to the broader context of the difficult relationship which the Wikipedia community in India has had with the Wikimedia Foundation and global Wikimedia community for more than 10 years. Common complaints include lack of representation in important Wikimedia community governance committees, lack of justice in access to Wikimania travel scholarships, and a persistent sense of not being heard in important movement decisions as a result of not having representation. Also, to a lesser degree, the community complains of lack of access to movement grant funding, but very much and truly wants much more legitimate representation and voice before having more Western money come into India. In general, people in India may not talk about this case without also raising the context of the difficult relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia community in India.

It is common knowledge that pendency of court cases in India is a major problem. Popular television shows like the comedic 2024 Maamla Legal Hai make court-related conversation fun for anyone, but the Indian film industry including Bollywood and beyond produces all sorts of dramatic, informational, and theatrical films as in Category:Indian courtroom films or Category:Indian legal drama films.

One common perception that people in India have is that court cases sometimes take a long time. Also, people involved in court cases must spend a lot of their time engaging in legal matters, as if it were a second profession which consumed all free time.

In general, many people in India will not seek to become involved in controversial issues which do not concern them, especially if that could mean that they may become a party to a court case which would last 3–5 years or possibly longer. To non-lawyers who watch Bollywood court films, the Asian News International case seems like one of the sort which could take years at its present level of court, years more in appeal, then more years to the Supreme Court of India. For anyone who does not want to be compelled to engage for years to come, it seems best to leave reactions to this case to others.

The article "Wikipedia in India" presents Wikipedians' view of this relationship, which anyone can edit by citing and summarizing reliable sources.

Many countries have a national Wikimedia movement affiliate community organization. India does not. It did, but Wikimedia India closed in 2019, with deep thanks from the Wikimedia Foundation CEO for all that editors in India do for the Wikimedia Movement, and a commitment that the Wikimedia Foundation would support the growth and development of community organization in the region. Since then other Affiliates based in South Asia have organized their own activities and make annual reports of what they have accomplished, and what they are planning.

While the easiest way to get reports and status updates is to look to such Wikimedia community organizations, these organizations do not represent the majority of Wikimedia editors in India. In India, just like everywhere else, most editors simply go on the computer and edit articles on Wikipedia, upload images to Wikimedia Commons, post texts to Wikisource, write definitions in Wiktionary, and add data to Wikidata. The majority of Wikimedians do not engage with formal community organizations or the Wikimedia Foundation at all. The usual experience is that people are happy to share knowledge online, and to socialize with other people almost exclusively for the purpose of collaborating on Wikimedia general reference knowledge development, rather than volunteer administration, organization, or outreach.

The reality of the relationship is challenging to identify among media messages, organizational annual reports, and online posts and Wikipedia edits related to building the encyclopedia. There is no journalism, student research, or reports of important community stories such as the community of editors in India submitting multiple candidates for representation to the 2024 Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee election, and getting none accepted. The problem is not just lack of representation here; the problem is the perceived lack of representation in all such leadership opportunities, repeatedly for a generation, and with no obviously changes or plans coming which could increase future representation.

While journalists may have difficulty finding people in India to interview about the Asian News International case, there is no shortage of interesting, positive Wikimedia projects which people in the region would like to share and profile. Also, there is no shortage of people in India who are willing to share interesting, positive perspectives on major challenges which people in the region face. There is significant exhaustion about the Western commentators — including me, here, the journalist for this article — continually asking questions and talking rather than explicitly presenting ways to bring increased representation and leadership opportunities for regional community growth immediately.

Some people have said that the Asian News International case is a matter of disrespect by the Wikimedia Foundation to India, Indian people, and the courts of India. The Signpost does not have journalistic or editorial capacity to know how common such beliefs are. It is possible to find such comments in discussions hosted in the Wikimedia platform.

A general idea among non-lawyer, Wikimedia editors who criticize is that the Wikimedia Foundation should eagerly and politely follow the law in India. It is fine to challenge ideas in court, but when the court requests something, the Wikimedia Foundation should respectfully reply. Bar and Bench, a legal newspaper, quoted Justice Navin Chawla as saying to the Wikimedia Foundation, "If you don’t like India, please don’t work in India." Ideally for Wikimedia community editor interests, the Wikimedia Foundation could retain a public image of being well-liked in India by Wikimedia editors, the public, and the judiciary.

Wikipedia's community of editors invites anyone to discuss Wikipedia article content in appropriate discussion forums.

Anyone can start by posting in the comments section here in The Signpost. The Wikipedia community maintains a forum for discussing issues which overlap with the affairs of the Wikimedia Foundation at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF), and that is a good place to discuss this.

Please share submissions at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions.

Wikipedia is a social machine in which people and software tools interact to build an encyclopedia. In considering the court case Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation, here are some of the technologies which affect this case.

The "black lock" is a tool which the Wikimedia Foundation applies to completely disallow anyone from editing a given Wikipedia article. Right now, the only English Wikipedia article with a black lock on it is Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation.^{[blacklock 1]} Currently, there is no easy way to determine which Wikipedia articles have ever had a black lock. The Wikipedia community used to maintain a log at Wikipedia:Office actions/Log, but had trouble managing it. There are data feeds which contain Wikimedia Foundation office actions which are difficult for humans to interpret, such as at Meta-Wiki, but in general, the only way to get information about Wikimedia Foundation locked articles is to find a human who already knows and ask them.

"Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia which anyone can edit", and the Wikipedia community wants to encourage discussion and development for all Wikipedia articles. Applying a black lock to an article immediately maximizes attention to that topic. There is no discreet way to use this feature, and attempts to use the black lock to gain privacy will only trigger the Streisand effect.

The black lock is part of Wikipedia:Protection policy, which are other article locking mechanisms for other purposes. The other locks are in the control of Wikipedia volunteer administrators, not the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia administrators almost always use locks as a way to halt unproductive conflict within Wikipedia articles, and to instead direct editorial disputes to the associated Wikipedia talk page where editors can permanently and publicly log their article critiques while also seeking editorial consensus with their colleagues.

The Wikipedia community places high value on global access to Wikipedia for both readers and editors. Everyone has the right to read Wikipedia, and everyone has the right to edit Wikipedia. Regarding readers, Wikipedia is the rare website which seeks to avoid spying on and tracking its readers. In the context of the Asian News International case, the more relevant right is safety and privacy for Wikipedia editors.

The safety and privacy protection extends to editors of who are here to build an encyclopedia. The usual activity for that is identifying reliable sources, then summarizing and citing those sources in Wikipedia articles as an editor. Based on information which the Wikipedia community has, the editors in the Asian News International case are good editors doing good editing in the Wikipedia way.

Editors have a right to privacy as described in the Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy. One way that Wikipedia offers privacy is by allowing editors to register user accounts then edit through a username, rather than their offline legal identity. Information which might be associated with a user account includes an email address and the IP addresses from which that user edits. IP addresses are private, and the Wikimedia Foundation resists sharing them.

In the case of Asian News International, that organization asked the Delhi High Court to order the Wikimedia Foundation to reveal the IP addresses of three editors who had edited the article about the organization. Editors who have edited this article have reported distress at this news. The Wikipedia community strongly objects to revealing the IP address of users, as this privacy protection is one of the foundations of trust between Wikimedia users and the Wikimedia Foundation. For more reactions, check the public community discussion forums on the subject.

English Wikipedia intensely and continuously discusses editor privacy, including in the context of moderation and a class of volunteers who investigate misconduct in the Wikipedia:CheckUser role. It is also common knowledge that Wikimedia projects generally disallow editing through virtual private networks or Tor according to the meta:No open proxies rule. Right now in October 2024, the big news in this domain is that the Wikimedia Foundation is rolling out a new type of account called "Temporary Accounts" which permits users to edit for a limited time, then have certain private account information deleted. All of these features and tools include a complex interplay of Wikipedia editors governing the project with a mix of social consensus and technological tools to manifest community design and wishes.

Archive.today, formerly called archive.is, is a mysterious archiving website which an unknown, non-Wikimedia entity operates. It has no formal relationship with Wikimedia projects. In practice, however, the website is the best, easiest, or only option which Wikipedia editors have to gain access to certain deleted Wikipedia articles. To access the last version of "Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation" all you need to know is archive.is/ and a five letter code. It is impossible to gain a basic understanding of this story for journalistic purposes without seeing the deleted article. Discussions about this case throughout the Internet and social media point to this archival copy hosted at that site.

Accessing the deleted article is necessary because Wikipedians tell stories through Wikipedia articles. The Signpost is attempting to create journalism about this story, but the best explanation would be simply linking to the Wikipedia article for the topic, were it not deleted. One insight which a reader would gain from seeing the Wikipedia article would include that a lot of journalists have already written about this court case. Observing that, a reader should then wonder why the court feels that it is problematic for Wikipedia editors to summarize and that journalism, when the information in Wikipedia originates from external journalism.

The Signpost is an independent newspaper and has no special private access to anything in the Wikimedia platform. There are bureaucratic processes for publicly asking for such things. The Signpost made requests to see the deleted text with permission from Wikipedia Administrators and Wikipedia Oversighters, who are volunteer community moderators with specific and different user permission. Administrators do not have access at all due to the black lock. Oversighters have access, but are bound by a non-disclosure agreement to only share content at the direction of the Wikimedia Foundation. Neither of these groups could share the text, so no reviewers in the Wikimedia community have access to the deleted text through the Wikimedia platform.

Questions arise: our Wikipedia editor colleagues whose privacy is under threat seem to be in danger. To what extent should the Wikipedia user community of editors support them? When organizations are sued, they typically do not publicly discuss their court cases. The Signpost does not have access to the inner workings and thoughts of the Wikimedia Foundation, and while the Wikimedia community generally trusts the Wikimedia Foundation for protection, the community and the foundation are different entities and have different values, objectives, and motivations. When the Wikimedia community of editors organizes its own advocacy and responses, then we need our own sources of information, our own conversations, and our own leadership.

A number of Wikipedia editors contacted The Signpost to recommend that journalists here not produce journalism about this story without permission of the Wikimedia Foundation, and that the lack of access to this article through the Wikimedia platform was the Wikimedia Foundation's way of ordering the volunteer community of editors to avoid discussion of the article within the Wikimedia platform. The end result is that now Wikipedia editors turn to anonymously-run third party websites like archive.today to access a copy of the deleted article. The Signpost would like to clarify its understanding that accessing this article, discussing it, and producing journalism about it is aligned with Wikimedia community interests, and not contrary to any Wikimedia Foundation rule. There is no conflict here. It just happens that in this case, part of the Wikipedia community and Signpost technology workflow includes a third-party archive run by a mysterious anonymous Internet entity.

PLANO, TEXAS — Hoping that nobody would notice, electrical engineer and Wikipedia editor Randall Pickenplace deleted his half-written comment and removed Talk:Miffeplatz-Helmkraupft interference from his watchlist Thursday, following the crushing realization that his argument was both incorrect and stupid.

"I really thought I had something there", said Pickenplace, 35, of his aborted attempt to add several paragraphs on turboencabulator leakage to the "Causes" section of the article.

For the previous six days, Pickenplace had been engaged in a vigorous back-and-forth with the article's creator, Gretchen Fairchild, on both the sourcing for the passage and its dueness in the article. Pickenplace provided citations to IEEE publications about turboencabulation-induced interference, and cited several textbooks that mentioned the effect. Fairchild responded by pointing out retractions and errata that cast doubt on the phenomenon.

"At first, I got the revert notification, and I was like 'how could someone be such a dumb jackass?' and undid the edit", Pickenplace said. "But now I'm thinking that someone might actually be me."

Pickenplace began to have doubts around the third day of the argument, when he noticed several journal articles had Fairchild listed as a coauthor. A subsequent attempt to find more publications about Miffeplatz-Helmkraupft interference turned up nothing relevant to winning the argument, although it did turn up https://prestigiousham.ac.uk/faculty/~gqfairchild/index.html (last updated in 2005). "That was when I kind of started to see the writing was on the wall," said Pickenplace. "Next to the PhD in digital signal processing."