Dear Brock and all,
You mention academic standards. In academic contexts it is perfectly normal to level personal critiques at opposing scholars. And naming the institutions where scholars with opposing viewpoints teach is arguably essential, as well as a matter of professional courtesy.
But the Wikimedia movement is composed of amateurs, not scholars. As such, it has generally insisted that editors' real-world identities or professional qualifications are irrelevant to any critique of their participation.
It is true that the contributors whose workplaces the essay's authors chose to divulge in their essay are themselves academics. But they are not scholars in the discipline that this argument is about (historiography and Holocaust studies). They might as well be car mechanics, shopkeepers or dentists, as far as academic expertise in this subject area is concerned. (I wouldn't be making the argument I am making here if all the people concerned knew each other in an academic context, i.e. if they were all historians having regular scholarly arguments across different publication venues, one of which happened to be Wikipedia.)
The Universal Code of Conduct introduced a couple of years ago and endorsed by the community for enforcement requires "explicit consent" from Wikimedians before their personal data can be shared. This requirement, which arguably makes the Code even more stringent than traditional English Wikipedia policy, was not met.
Now, the essay in question here is currently being promoted internationally at academic conferences as a model for other scholars to follow.[1] Its methodology relied on interviewing editors contributing to a contentious topic area that had been subject to multiple on-wiki arbitrations before. It ended up endorsing one side of the conflict, and "naming and shaming" editors on the other side.
The authors are correct that this model could be applied to other on-wiki conflict areas. An Indian scholar writing about the India/Pakistan conflict, for example, could review past on-wiki dispute resolution proceedings, identify interested parties and banned editors whose views they find sympathetic, and use opposition research gathered from their interviewees to expose Pakistani editors – and vice versa. The same goes for the China/Taiwan/Hong Kong topic area, the Israel/Palestine conflict, pro-Russia/anti-Russia disputes, and so forth.
Do we really want to normalise editors' workplaces being disclosed in such academic writing?
I am perfectly aware that ultimately there may be little that can be done about unwanted workplace disclosures. Laws differ from country to country, but many forms of doxing are not actually illegal. Indeed, some are morally justifiable, or even a legitimate part of law enforcement. But as far as I can see the doxing done in this essay was gratuitous. The essay would not have lost any of its academic integrity and significance if it had refrained from disclosing editors' legal names and workplaces.
In formulating the Universal Code of Conduct, surely the Board had an idea in mind of protecting volunteer contributors from external harassment, as far as possible. External harassment is different from on-wiki criticism of someone's contributions or participating in on-wiki dispute resolution (an avenue that is available to scholars just like it is available to anyone else). Every editor should be open to having their contributions criticised, but external harassment is a different matter.
As I see it, the Board of Trustees decided to make observing the Universal Code of Conduct the "price of admission", as it were, for active participation in the Wikimedia movement. There may always be scholars who are unfamiliar with the Code, or decide to ignore it even though they know that the code requires them to obtain Wikimedian's explicit consent before sharing their personal information.
But the Wikimedia movement is not completely powerless here. We can certainly say to academics, Don't divulge people's identities – especially if, as in this case, they are already targets for harassment – unless you have a very good reason to do so, and their real-life identity is of direct relevance to the issue you are reporting on.
The Universal Code of Conduct is new. I am not saying that academics who make a mis-step should have the book thrown at them. But ArbCom should not overlook obvious violations either.
Ultimately, I think there are good chances that – once aware of the issue – academics will by and large do without doxing contributors.
Regards,
Andreas