Dear all,Has there been any comment at all from the Wikimedia Foundation about the two former Saudi Wikipedia admins who were sentenced to 32 and 8 years in prison respectively?[1] (I say "former" admins because both were desysoped for lack of admin activity years before their 2020 arrests.[2][3] They remained active as editors though.)These are horrifying sentences. (Note that the 32-year sentence was only imposed in August of last year in an appeal process.)Other than a very tangential mention by Jimmy Wales that really did not do the subject justice[4] I have not seen any comment from the WMF on these prison terms.This is in marked contrast to the case of Bassel Khartabil a few years ago – the WMF campaigned for his release.[5] Will there be any WMF communications on OsamaK's and Ziad's heart-breaking plight forthcoming? I understand one of the two had recently married. :(It is also worth noting that two of the Arabic Wikipedia admins banned by the WMF a month ago had bureaucrat and checkuser rights.[6][7] In that sense, they were "high-ranking" – quite apart from the fact that if a Wikipedia only has 26 administrators in total, every one of those 26 is "high-ranking" from the point of view of the average person in the street.The most glaring gap in WMF communications on this matter to date is that there is a confident statement from the WMF that "users with close connections with external parties were editing the platform in a coordinated fashion to advance the aim of those parties" but no information whatsoever on who these confidently identified "external parties" are – there is only a now very prominently disseminated statement that the Wikimedia Foundation "has denied claims the Saudi government infiltrated its team in the Middle East".[8]Whatever merits this approach may have, it will leave many people niggled by unanswered questions. The Arabic Wikipedia community, meanwhile, speaks of the event as a "disaster" and formed a committee last month to obtain more information from the WMF. Are these talks ongoing?Anyone with further information on any aspect of this affair please check in with the Signpost news team in the Signpost Newsroom in the next few days.[9]Best,AndreasOn Sat, Jan 7, 2023 at 11:12 AM Nanour Garabedian <garabedian.nanour.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:I hope that this statement and clarifications will be translated to Arabic by the Foundation and published on the Foundation's social media pages._______________________________________________On Fri, Jan 6, 2023 at 8:58 PM Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com> wrote:It's interesting to see the lack of transparency attributed to the fact that Wikimedia editing against ToS isn't akin to a crime. That juxtaposes in a strange way with the news stories claiming that what drove Wikimedia's action may be two members of the Wikimedia community who have been sentenced to very long prison sentences for their contributions to Wikimedia projects.For those who hadn't seen the press stories, see here for the article in Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/wikipedia-admin-jailed-for-32-years-after-alleged-saudi-spy-infiltration/I agree with the criticism in the Ars article of Wikimedia's response - the objection to use of the phrase "high ranking" to describe admins, and the claim that Wikimedia can't possibly know where any of these people live. I don't see the value of including these in Wikimedia's response. These are the types of distinctions that have some meaning inside our little bubble, but very little outside.Lastly, I find the link in WMF's statement to the Board's BLP resolution inapposite. As all editors will recognize, the resolution and its related policies are entirely focused on project content and protecting the subjects of that content from the messy process of editing._______________________________________________On Fri, Jan 6, 2023 at 1:27 PM Wikimedia Trust and Safety <ca@wikimedia.org> wrote:Hello everyone,_______________________________________________
Over the last couple of days, there have been several media reports about the Foundation’s most recent office action, taken on December 6. More are certain to follow. These media reports are based on a release from SMEX and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) that contains many material inaccuracies. Some of the errors will be obvious to our community - for perhaps the most obvious, the report states that the 16 users are all based in Saudi Arabia . This is unlikely to be the case. While we do not know where these volunteers actually reside, the bans of any volunteers who may have been Saudi were part of a much broader action globally banning 16 editors across the MENA region. Indeed, many of them are not active in the Arabic language projects. These organizations did not share the statement with the Foundation, and “sources of knowledge” as cited in their release can get things wrong. In addition, we do not have staff in the country named and never have, contrary to a message put out by the same groups on social media.
As we noted in December in our statement, we are unable to discuss Foundation office actions in detail. The Foundation always lists accounts banned as a result of its investigations. It is our goal to be as transparent as we can be within essential protection policies, which is why we do not ban in secret, but instead disclose accounts impacted and (when large numbers are involved) have disclosed the rationale.
The roots of our December action stretch back over several years. We were initially contacted by outside experts who made us aware about concerns they had about Farsi Wikipedia. We can’t comment on that report right now, but it will be published by that organization soon. This report not only contributed to our August 23, 2021 modification of our non-disclosure agreement to make it harder for rights-holders to be coerced, but led to further evaluation of issues across MENA. The December bans were the culmination of those evaluations.
Wikimedia is, as mentioned above, an open knowledge platform, and it thrives on open participation. Investigations and global bans are not things that any of us take lightly, but the Foundation is committed to supporting the knowledge-sharing models that have created so many valuable information resources in hundreds of languages across the world. Our first line of defense of our Terms of Use are our volunteers themselves. Where issues present a credible threat of harm to our users and to the security of Wikimedia platforms, we will do the best we can to protect both.
We trust and hope that our communities understand that misinformation about this action has the potential to cause harm to the individuals involved. We believe in the incredible value produced by our volunteers across the globe, but even so we recognize that being found in contravention of a website’s Terms of Use — even in a manner that organization finds serious enough to warrant a ban — is not the equivalent of being convicted of any crime. Accordingly, we ask you to please be conscious of the real people involved, in the spirit of our long established respect for living people on our sites. We realize that it is tempting to speculate, but we do ask you all to recall that people’s employment options, their relationships, and even their physical safety may be compromised by speculation.
If anyone feels unsafe on Wikimedia projects, please use the local community processes or contact us. The Foundation and community will work together or in parallel to enhance the safety of all volunteers. To contact the Trust & Safety team please email ca@wikimedia.org .
Best regards,WMF Office/Trust and Safety
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