Hi Raul and Dimi,

Thanks for raising this issue. As you know, we’re constantly monitoring developments on the GDPR and other laws and policies that could affect the projects. We’re concerned about efforts to remove biographical information from the projects, as Raul describes, or attempts to make it more difficult to find such information.

For instance, the French Data Protection Authority, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) has recently ordered that Google’s Right to be Forgotten delistings be made on all domains globally. Google had offered to delist results from all domains when the person making the search was located in the same country as the person who made the RTBF request. However, the CNIL rejected this suggestion, and ordered that delisting uniformly take place across all domains.

Any action that could potentially make it harder for users around the world to find project content causes us concern. We understand that there may be times when someone wants changes made to the projects, but we believe that in those cases, three factors should come into play:

• Community Decision-making. The communities create and upload content for the projects. They should determine what belongs on the projects, and make decisions about what information may be irrelevant or outdated. If someone has concerns about information on the projects, we encourage them to work with the communities to find a solution. Simply delisting articles from search results, or demanding that we remove information from the projects not only threatens free expression and free access to information, but also attempts to bypass the communities’ involvement.

• Transparency & Due Process. Efforts to remove or affect access to information should be done in the open, with transparency and due process afforded all parties affected. If authors and publishers are not given a chance to express their opinions, or appeal decisions to delist or remove information, their voices are effectively silenced.

• Courts, Not Companies. If any external bodies, who are not part of the communities, are granted the authority to affect access to information on the projects, they should be neutral courts, not tech companies. Companies may choose to delist or remove information in order to avoid a lawsuit, because they may not be concerned first and foremost with freedom of expression and access to knowledge. Only courts should have the power to make decisions of this importance.

We post the delisting notices we receive, so that members of our communities can be aware when access to their work is affected. Some of the articles that have been delisted are very broad and include a lot of information, such as this lengthy German Wikipedia article about scientific fraud from Galileo’s time to present day; or deal with issues of public concern, such as this English Wikipedia article about a 2007 court case and this French Wikipedia article about a political scandal involving arms dealing.  

Not all search engines send these notices, so the page is very likely incomplete. If anyone becomes aware of delisted articles that are not indicated on this page, please let us know!