(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
***
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
Hi Maggie,
thanks for sharing. I think this is indeed very important.
Just to understand this better - have all administrators on all projects who reside in the Mainland China been desysopped?
If this is the case, is there a policy that no user residing in the Mainland China can become administrator on any of our projects?
If this is the case, how it is going to be implemented? As a bureaucrat on Wikidata who promotes new admins I obviously do not know where they reside.
Best Yaroslav
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:15 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi Yaroslav,
No, not all had been desysopped. Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 00:28, Yaroslav Blanter ymbalt@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Maggie,
thanks for sharing. I think this is indeed very important.
Just to understand this better - have all administrators on all projects who reside in the Mainland China been desysopped?
If this is the case, is there a policy that no user residing in the Mainland China can become administrator on any of our projects?
If this is the case, how it is going to be implemented? As a bureaucrat on Wikidata who promotes new admins I obviously do not know where they reside.
Best Yaroslav
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:15 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi, Yaroslav.
No, not all admins residing on the mainland have been desysopped, only those whose involvement with the group in question have raised significant concerns about community election processes and whose behavior has been problematic in relation largely to canvassing or demonstrated abuse of their roles. We want to work with the Chinese community on improving the community’s health, including fair election systems that are less vulnerable to undue outside influence like threatening conduct towards those who oppose elections--perhaps something like SecurePoll.
This action has no impact on admins residing in mainland China in good standing and also does not prevent other good users on the mainland from applying for such rights in proper community process.
Warm regards, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:27 PM Yaroslav Blanter ymbalt@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Maggie,
thanks for sharing. I think this is indeed very important.
Just to understand this better - have all administrators on all projects who reside in the Mainland China been desysopped?
If this is the case, is there a policy that no user residing in the Mainland China can become administrator on any of our projects?
If this is the case, how it is going to be implemented? As a bureaucrat on Wikidata who promotes new admins I obviously do not know where they reside.
Best Yaroslav
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:15 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi Maggie,
May I ask if the action is a part of a wider effort to improve community resilience (not only at zhwp, but across multiple projects)?
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 00:39, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, Yaroslav.
No, not all admins residing on the mainland have been desysopped, only those whose involvement with the group in question have raised significant concerns about community election processes and whose behavior has been problematic in relation largely to canvassing or demonstrated abuse of their roles. We want to work with the Chinese community on improving the community’s health, including fair election systems that are less vulnerable to undue outside influence like threatening conduct towards those who oppose elections--perhaps something like SecurePoll.
This action has no impact on admins residing in mainland China in good standing and also does not prevent other good users on the mainland from applying for such rights in proper community process.
Warm regards, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:27 PM Yaroslav Blanter ymbalt@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Maggie,
thanks for sharing. I think this is indeed very important.
Just to understand this better - have all administrators on all projects who reside in the Mainland China been desysopped?
If this is the case, is there a policy that no user residing in the Mainland China can become administrator on any of our projects?
If this is the case, how it is going to be implemented? As a bureaucrat on Wikidata who promotes new admins I obviously do not know where they reside.
Best Yaroslav
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:15 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Maggie,
Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our values are not respected.
Thank you again, Nathan
Maggie and William, thanks a lot for the answers.
Best Yaroslav
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:45 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Maggie,
Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our values are not respected.
Thank you again, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello, all.
A few responses.
First, Nathan and William, we will share as much information as we can, but will need to be careful about what we say about the individuals involved for legal and safety reasons. This is indeed related to increasing resilience across Wikipedias and not at all specifically for ZhWP. I do think it's important for us to offer some additional support there, given the current situation, but we are looking at increasing safety everywhere.
Leo, thank you for your feedback on the translation, which was provided by native Chinese speakers. Since I myself am completely unable to read Chinese, I don't know the nature of the issue, but I do know that in the past we have had some issues with movement-specific terms being translated. I recall once when "free in speech" was mistranslated as "free as in beer" - which we always deliberately try to avoid. :)
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Maggie,
Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our values are not respected.
Thank you again, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for the prompt response. I do not know who those ‘native speakers’ are, perhaps that’s just a way to avoid providing language proficiency certificate. I do not know. Google translation might even do better.
I am more than certain that this translation is not just faulty or unsatisfactory, but terrible if not horrifying, disastrous, or outright shocking for an acclaimed international organization. The issue for this specific translation is not with 'movement-specific' terms, but a significant lack of elementary understanding regarding the fundamental grammatical structure of the Chinese language. I will refrain from listing specific examples here (there are plenty), but those mistakes are hilarious, if not outright absurd. Whoever translated this text might barely pass an AP Chinese exam.
Please consult a professor in Chinese language at Berkeley or CCSF or even just a language school, or perhaps consult someone from ChinaSF, maybe even a Chinese speaking professional from HSBC or wherever. There are plenty, if you feel it’s necessary. I’m more than certain they will offer similar opinions.
Sincere hope for a better translation, Leo On Sep 14, 2021, 1:17 AM +0800, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org, wrote:
Hello, all.
A few responses.
First, Nathan and William, we will share as much information as we can, but will need to be careful about what we say about the individuals involved for legal and safety reasons. This is indeed related to increasing resilience across Wikipedias and not at all specifically for ZhWP. I do think it's important for us to offer some additional support there, given the current situation, but we are looking at increasing safety everywhere.
Leo, thank you for your feedback on the translation, which was provided by native Chinese speakers. Since I myself am completely unable to read Chinese, I don't know the nature of the issue, but I do know that in the past we have had some issues with movement-specific terms being translated. I recall once when "free in speech" was mistranslated as "free as in beer" - which we always deliberately try to avoid. :)
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Maggie,
Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our values are not respected.
Thank you again, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi Leo,
I think that this is a Google Translation product. But yes, it is in such bad shape where even Chinese natives can barely read. But I acknowledge the fact that the urgency and secrecy of the matter made consulting external parties, to the extent, even contractors working for WMF, impossible.
To Maggie,
May I ask if there is a certain number for the amount of users linked with the unrecognized user group being warned? There is no request for the list of users, just the number would be fine. The Wikipedia communities in Hong Kong need to access the total damage dealt to the user group who had persistently engaged in activities harassing the safety of Hong Kong Users.
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 01:58, Leo Z leo@asianmonth.wiki wrote:
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for the prompt response. I do not know who those ‘native speakers’ are, perhaps that’s just a way to avoid providing language proficiency certificate. I do not know. Google translation might even do better.
I am more than certain that this translation is not just faulty or unsatisfactory, but terrible if not horrifying, disastrous, or outright shocking for an acclaimed international organization. The issue for this specific translation is not with 'movement-specific' terms, but a significant lack of elementary understanding regarding the fundamental grammatical structure of the Chinese language. I will refrain from listing specific examples here (there are plenty), but those mistakes are hilarious, if not outright absurd. Whoever translated this text might barely pass an AP Chinese exam.
Please consult a professor in Chinese language at Berkeley or CCSF or even just a language school, or perhaps consult someone from ChinaSF, maybe even a Chinese speaking professional from HSBC or wherever. There are plenty, if you feel it’s necessary. I’m more than certain they will offer similar opinions.
Sincere hope for a better translation, Leo On Sep 14, 2021, 1:17 AM +0800, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org, wrote:
Hello, all.
A few responses.
First, Nathan and William, we will share as much information as we can, but will need to be careful about what we say about the individuals involved for legal and safety reasons. This is indeed related to increasing resilience across Wikipedias and not at all specifically for ZhWP. I do think it's important for us to offer some additional support there, given the current situation, but we are looking at increasing safety everywhere.
Leo, thank you for your feedback on the translation, which was provided by native Chinese speakers. Since I myself am completely unable to read Chinese, I don't know the nature of the issue, but I do know that in the past we have had some issues with movement-specific terms being translated. I recall once when "free in speech" was mistranslated as "free as in beer"
- which we always deliberately try to avoid. :)
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Maggie,
Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our values are not respected.
Thank you again, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Thank you Maggie, for the announcement. It's a sad day, and I'm sure there were many sad actions that resulted in this.
Two questions from my end: * Could you commit to making a better translation available (through community processes or otherwise) for the record? I think this decision may be referred to quite a bit in the future, so it's valuable to have an accurate translation available to the Chinese community. * What countries are affected currently by the NDA decision https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_information&diff=prev&oldid=21925066&diffmode=source? It is suggested that China and Iran are, but I can't find an authoritative list (but may be looking at the wrong place). This would be helpful for volunteers from countries that are wondering if they should even bother to apply for positions. The definition "blocked access" is a bit fluid. I'm assuming here that the fact that a country is on this list, is not a secret in itself.
Best, Lodewijk
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 11:06 AM William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Hi Leo,
I think that this is a Google Translation product. But yes, it is in such bad shape where even Chinese natives can barely read. But I acknowledge the fact that the urgency and secrecy of the matter made consulting external parties, to the extent, even contractors working for WMF, impossible.
To Maggie,
May I ask if there is a certain number for the amount of users linked with the unrecognized user group being warned? There is no request for the list of users, just the number would be fine. The Wikipedia communities in Hong Kong need to access the total damage dealt to the user group who had persistently engaged in activities harassing the safety of Hong Kong Users.
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 01:58, Leo Z leo@asianmonth.wiki wrote:
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for the prompt response. I do not know who those ‘native speakers’ are, perhaps that’s just a way to avoid providing language proficiency certificate. I do not know. Google translation might even do better.
I am more than certain that this translation is not just faulty or unsatisfactory, but terrible if not horrifying, disastrous, or outright shocking for an acclaimed international organization. The issue for this specific translation is not with 'movement-specific' terms, but a significant lack of elementary understanding regarding the fundamental grammatical structure of the Chinese language. I will refrain from listing specific examples here (there are plenty), but those mistakes are hilarious, if not outright absurd. Whoever translated this text might barely pass an AP Chinese exam.
Please consult a professor in Chinese language at Berkeley or CCSF or even just a language school, or perhaps consult someone from ChinaSF, maybe even a Chinese speaking professional from HSBC or wherever. There are plenty, if you feel it’s necessary. I’m more than certain they will offer similar opinions.
Sincere hope for a better translation, Leo On Sep 14, 2021, 1:17 AM +0800, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org, wrote:
Hello, all.
A few responses.
First, Nathan and William, we will share as much information as we can, but will need to be careful about what we say about the individuals involved for legal and safety reasons. This is indeed related to increasing resilience across Wikipedias and not at all specifically for ZhWP. I do think it's important for us to offer some additional support there, given the current situation, but we are looking at increasing safety everywhere.
Leo, thank you for your feedback on the translation, which was provided by native Chinese speakers. Since I myself am completely unable to read Chinese, I don't know the nature of the issue, but I do know that in the past we have had some issues with movement-specific terms being translated. I recall once when "free in speech" was mistranslated as "free as in beer"
- which we always deliberately try to avoid. :)
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Maggie,
Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our values are not respected.
Thank you again, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Hello, all.
First, our apologies for the translation. We had hoped to provide this service to make it easier for our Chinese language communities, but clearly it didn't work out as we had hoped. I'm enormously grateful to say that a Chinese translation is now available on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement/zh <3 We are actively seeking to increase our capacity in Chinese and several other languages, and I hope some people will apply! https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/3374682?gh_src=b62d5dae1us
With respect to the NDA policy change, this was indeed very obliquely addressed on September 1st here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_policy#Answers_to_some_questions_around_policy_change,[1] at which point we felt the need to be very oblique in our response because we were still actively attempting to communicate with all users impacted. We knew, of course, that experienced Wikimedians would be able to connect the dots but were hoping to avoid attracting external attention by bad actors that might put some of these people in danger. Not being a lawyer, I'm still a little nervous about saying the wrong thing (my teams were more involved in implementing than directing that policy change), but it's probably obvious to everyone by now that you have correctly named the immediate jurisdictions of concern.
I do want to say, though, that the policy was written to address a challenge which is likely to be ongoing: we are not just in danger of infiltration, but of attack through the extortion or potentially persecution of publicly identifiable people with access to personal information. The intention is not to shut down access to everyone in every such jurisdiction who has ever blocked Wikimedia sites, but to flag for the Foundation's legal department the need to review in such cases. Because of that, depending on the current risks of which we are aware, the list of impacted jurisdictions may change. I would hope that people will not hesitate to apply; rejection of a signed NDA in such cases is by no means a personal judgment and may be a step taken to protect not only our communities, but those users themselves and those they love.
Best, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic...
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 5:43 PM effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you Maggie, for the announcement. It's a sad day, and I'm sure there were many sad actions that resulted in this.
Two questions from my end:
- Could you commit to making a better translation available (through
community processes or otherwise) for the record? I think this decision may be referred to quite a bit in the future, so it's valuable to have an accurate translation available to the Chinese community.
- What countries are affected currently by the NDA decision
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_information&diff=prev&oldid=21925066&diffmode=source? It is suggested that China and Iran are, but I can't find an authoritative list (but may be looking at the wrong place). This would be helpful for volunteers from countries that are wondering if they should even bother to apply for positions. The definition "blocked access" is a bit fluid. I'm assuming here that the fact that a country is on this list, is not a secret in itself.
Best, Lodewijk
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 11:06 AM William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Hi Leo,
I think that this is a Google Translation product. But yes, it is in such bad shape where even Chinese natives can barely read. But I acknowledge the fact that the urgency and secrecy of the matter made consulting external parties, to the extent, even contractors working for WMF, impossible.
To Maggie,
May I ask if there is a certain number for the amount of users linked with the unrecognized user group being warned? There is no request for the list of users, just the number would be fine. The Wikipedia communities in Hong Kong need to access the total damage dealt to the user group who had persistently engaged in activities harassing the safety of Hong Kong Users.
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 01:58, Leo Z leo@asianmonth.wiki wrote:
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for the prompt response. I do not know who those ‘native speakers’ are, perhaps that’s just a way to avoid providing language proficiency certificate. I do not know. Google translation might even do better.
I am more than certain that this translation is not just faulty or unsatisfactory, but terrible if not horrifying, disastrous, or outright shocking for an acclaimed international organization. The issue for this specific translation is not with 'movement-specific' terms, but a significant lack of elementary understanding regarding the fundamental grammatical structure of the Chinese language. I will refrain from listing specific examples here (there are plenty), but those mistakes are hilarious, if not outright absurd. Whoever translated this text might barely pass an AP Chinese exam.
Please consult a professor in Chinese language at Berkeley or CCSF or even just a language school, or perhaps consult someone from ChinaSF, maybe even a Chinese speaking professional from HSBC or wherever. There are plenty, if you feel it’s necessary. I’m more than certain they will offer similar opinions.
Sincere hope for a better translation, Leo On Sep 14, 2021, 1:17 AM +0800, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org, wrote:
Hello, all.
A few responses.
First, Nathan and William, we will share as much information as we can, but will need to be careful about what we say about the individuals involved for legal and safety reasons. This is indeed related to increasing resilience across Wikipedias and not at all specifically for ZhWP. I do think it's important for us to offer some additional support there, given the current situation, but we are looking at increasing safety everywhere.
Leo, thank you for your feedback on the translation, which was provided by native Chinese speakers. Since I myself am completely unable to read Chinese, I don't know the nature of the issue, but I do know that in the past we have had some issues with movement-specific terms being translated. I recall once when "free in speech" was mistranslated as "free as in beer"
- which we always deliberately try to avoid. :)
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Maggie,
Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our values are not respected.
Thank you again, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Hi, again.
I just realized I failed to answer one of the questions. I'm sorry; it's rather late in my day, and I didn't mean to overlook it. In addition to what was noted earlier, I believe it was 12 other users who were contacted and asked to adjust their behavior to work within community policies, especially regarding "canvassing" and good faith collaboration with other users.
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:21 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello, all.
First, our apologies for the translation. We had hoped to provide this service to make it easier for our Chinese language communities, but clearly it didn't work out as we had hoped. I'm enormously grateful to say that a Chinese translation is now available on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement/zh <3 We are actively seeking to increase our capacity in Chinese and several other languages, and I hope some people will apply! https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/3374682?gh_src=b62d5dae1us
With respect to the NDA policy change, this was indeed very obliquely addressed on September 1st here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_policy#Answers_to_some_questions_around_policy_change,[1] at which point we felt the need to be very oblique in our response because we were still actively attempting to communicate with all users impacted. We knew, of course, that experienced Wikimedians would be able to connect the dots but were hoping to avoid attracting external attention by bad actors that might put some of these people in danger. Not being a lawyer, I'm still a little nervous about saying the wrong thing (my teams were more involved in implementing than directing that policy change), but it's probably obvious to everyone by now that you have correctly named the immediate jurisdictions of concern.
I do want to say, though, that the policy was written to address a challenge which is likely to be ongoing: we are not just in danger of infiltration, but of attack through the extortion or potentially persecution of publicly identifiable people with access to personal information. The intention is not to shut down access to everyone in every such jurisdiction who has ever blocked Wikimedia sites, but to flag for the Foundation's legal department the need to review in such cases. Because of that, depending on the current risks of which we are aware, the list of impacted jurisdictions may change. I would hope that people will not hesitate to apply; rejection of a signed NDA in such cases is by no means a personal judgment and may be a step taken to protect not only our communities, but those users themselves and those they love.
Best, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic...
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 5:43 PM effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you Maggie, for the announcement. It's a sad day, and I'm sure there were many sad actions that resulted in this.
Two questions from my end:
- Could you commit to making a better translation available (through
community processes or otherwise) for the record? I think this decision may be referred to quite a bit in the future, so it's valuable to have an accurate translation available to the Chinese community.
- What countries are affected currently by the NDA decision
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_information&diff=prev&oldid=21925066&diffmode=source? It is suggested that China and Iran are, but I can't find an authoritative list (but may be looking at the wrong place). This would be helpful for volunteers from countries that are wondering if they should even bother to apply for positions. The definition "blocked access" is a bit fluid. I'm assuming here that the fact that a country is on this list, is not a secret in itself.
Best, Lodewijk
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 11:06 AM William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Hi Leo,
I think that this is a Google Translation product. But yes, it is in such bad shape where even Chinese natives can barely read. But I acknowledge the fact that the urgency and secrecy of the matter made consulting external parties, to the extent, even contractors working for WMF, impossible.
To Maggie,
May I ask if there is a certain number for the amount of users linked with the unrecognized user group being warned? There is no request for the list of users, just the number would be fine. The Wikipedia communities in Hong Kong need to access the total damage dealt to the user group who had persistently engaged in activities harassing the safety of Hong Kong Users.
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 01:58, Leo Z leo@asianmonth.wiki wrote:
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for the prompt response. I do not know who those ‘native speakers’ are, perhaps that’s just a way to avoid providing language proficiency certificate. I do not know. Google translation might even do better.
I am more than certain that this translation is not just faulty or unsatisfactory, but terrible if not horrifying, disastrous, or outright shocking for an acclaimed international organization. The issue for this specific translation is not with 'movement-specific' terms, but a significant lack of elementary understanding regarding the fundamental grammatical structure of the Chinese language. I will refrain from listing specific examples here (there are plenty), but those mistakes are hilarious, if not outright absurd. Whoever translated this text might barely pass an AP Chinese exam.
Please consult a professor in Chinese language at Berkeley or CCSF or even just a language school, or perhaps consult someone from ChinaSF, maybe even a Chinese speaking professional from HSBC or wherever. There are plenty, if you feel it’s necessary. I’m more than certain they will offer similar opinions.
Sincere hope for a better translation, Leo On Sep 14, 2021, 1:17 AM +0800, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org, wrote:
Hello, all.
A few responses.
First, Nathan and William, we will share as much information as we can, but will need to be careful about what we say about the individuals involved for legal and safety reasons. This is indeed related to increasing resilience across Wikipedias and not at all specifically for ZhWP. I do think it's important for us to offer some additional support there, given the current situation, but we are looking at increasing safety everywhere.
Leo, thank you for your feedback on the translation, which was provided by native Chinese speakers. Since I myself am completely unable to read Chinese, I don't know the nature of the issue, but I do know that in the past we have had some issues with movement-specific terms being translated. I recall once when "free in speech" was mistranslated as "free as in beer"
- which we always deliberately try to avoid. :)
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Maggie,
Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our values are not respected.
Thank you again, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for your post; I have two questions.
1. What is the status of Mardetanha, the Iranian steward and past (even very recent) author of Wikimedia blog posts (which link his real name to his user name)?[1][2]
Judging by https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=21964430 where he says, using his alt account,
Yes, we are all locked until "voluntarily" resign to get back our account back [[User:Mard|Mard]] ([[User talk:Mard|talk]]) 12:06, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
his account must be locked. But I can't find any recent actions related to his account in the public logs on Meta.[3] What am I missing?
2. Speaking of project capture, the Kazakh Wikipedia was captured by state actors almost a decade ago (with the Foundation's blessing at the time, and public regrets later[4]).
Are there any functionaries in Kazakhstan that will be impacted by these changes?
Andreas
[1] https://diff.wikimedia.org/author/mohsen-salek/ [2] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/persian-wikipedia-in... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=&user=&page=User%3A... [4] https://eurasianet.org/wikipedia-founder-distances-himself-from-kazakhstan-p...
On Monday, September 13, 2021, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, again.
I just realized I failed to answer one of the questions. I'm sorry; it's rather late in my day, and I didn't mean to overlook it. In addition to what was noted earlier, I believe it was 12 other users who were contacted and asked to adjust their behavior to work within community policies, especially regarding "canvassing" and good faith collaboration with other users.
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:21 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello, all.
First, our apologies for the translation. We had hoped to provide this service to make it easier for our Chinese language communities, but clearly it didn't work out as we had hoped. I'm enormously grateful to say that a Chinese translation is now available on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement/zh <3 We are actively seeking to increase our capacity in Chinese and several other languages, and I hope some people will apply! https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/3374682?gh_src=b62d5dae1us
With respect to the NDA policy change, this was indeed very obliquely addressed on September 1st here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_policy#Answers_to_some_questions_around_policy_change,[1] at which point we felt the need to be very oblique in our response because we were still actively attempting to communicate with all users impacted. We knew, of course, that experienced Wikimedians would be able to connect the dots but were hoping to avoid attracting external attention by bad actors that might put some of these people in danger. Not being a lawyer, I'm still a little nervous about saying the wrong thing (my teams were more involved in implementing than directing that policy change), but it's probably obvious to everyone by now that you have correctly named the immediate jurisdictions of concern.
I do want to say, though, that the policy was written to address a challenge which is likely to be ongoing: we are not just in danger of infiltration, but of attack through the extortion or potentially persecution of publicly identifiable people with access to personal information. The intention is not to shut down access to everyone in every such jurisdiction who has ever blocked Wikimedia sites, but to flag for the Foundation's legal department the need to review in such cases. Because of that, depending on the current risks of which we are aware, the list of impacted jurisdictions may change. I would hope that people will not hesitate to apply; rejection of a signed NDA in such cases is by no means a personal judgment and may be a step taken to protect not only our communities, but those users themselves and those they love.
Best, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic...
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 5:43 PM effe iets anders < effeietsanders@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you Maggie, for the announcement. It's a sad day, and I'm sure there were many sad actions that resulted in this.
Two questions from my end:
- Could you commit to making a better translation available (through
community processes or otherwise) for the record? I think this decision may be referred to quite a bit in the future, so it's valuable to have an accurate translation available to the Chinese community.
- What countries are affected currently by the NDA decision
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_information&diff=prev&oldid=21925066&diffmode=source? It is suggested that China and Iran are, but I can't find an authoritative list (but may be looking at the wrong place). This would be helpful for volunteers from countries that are wondering if they should even bother to apply for positions. The definition "blocked access" is a bit fluid. I'm assuming here that the fact that a country is on this list, is not a secret in itself.
Best, Lodewijk
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 11:06 AM William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Hi Leo,
I think that this is a Google Translation product. But yes, it is in such bad shape where even Chinese natives can barely read. But I acknowledge the fact that the urgency and secrecy of the matter made consulting external parties, to the extent, even contractors working for WMF, impossible.
To Maggie,
May I ask if there is a certain number for the amount of users linked with the unrecognized user group being warned? There is no request for the list of users, just the number would be fine. The Wikipedia communities in Hong Kong need to access the total damage dealt to the user group who had persistently engaged in activities harassing the safety of Hong Kong Users.
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 01:58, Leo Z leo@asianmonth.wiki wrote:
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for the prompt response. I do not know who those ‘native speakers’ are, perhaps that’s just a way to avoid providing language proficiency certificate. I do not know. Google translation might even do better.
I am more than certain that this translation is not just faulty or unsatisfactory, but terrible if not horrifying, disastrous, or outright shocking for an acclaimed international organization. The issue for this specific translation is not with 'movement-specific' terms, but a significant lack of elementary understanding regarding the fundamental grammatical structure of the Chinese language. I will refrain from listing specific examples here (there are plenty), but those mistakes are hilarious, if not outright absurd. Whoever translated this text might barely pass an AP Chinese exam.
Please consult a professor in Chinese language at Berkeley or CCSF or even just a language school, or perhaps consult someone from ChinaSF, maybe even a Chinese speaking professional from HSBC or wherever. There are plenty, if you feel it’s necessary. I’m more than certain they will offer similar opinions.
Sincere hope for a better translation, Leo On Sep 14, 2021, 1:17 AM +0800, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org, wrote:
Hello, all.
A few responses.
First, Nathan and William, we will share as much information as we can, but will need to be careful about what we say about the individuals involved for legal and safety reasons. This is indeed related to increasing resilience across Wikipedias and not at all specifically for ZhWP. I do think it's important for us to offer some additional support there, given the current situation, but we are looking at increasing safety everywhere.
Leo, thank you for your feedback on the translation, which was provided by native Chinese speakers. Since I myself am completely unable to read Chinese, I don't know the nature of the issue, but I do know that in the past we have had some issues with movement-specific terms being translated. I recall once when "free in speech" was mistranslated as "free as in beer" - which we always deliberately try to avoid. :)
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Maggie,
Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our values are not respected.
Thank you again, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Hi Andres,
I am not Maggie (definitely here) but as far as I know, some members from the zhwp are also affected. If I am correct, it is their email being removed and password got reset.
William
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 16:45, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for your post; I have two questions.
- What is the status of Mardetanha, the Iranian steward and past (even
very recent) author of Wikimedia blog posts (which link his real name to his user name)?[1][2]
Judging by https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=21964430 where he says, using his alt account,
Yes, we are all locked until "voluntarily" resign to get back our account back [[User:Mard|Mard]] ([[User talk:Mard|talk]]) 12:06, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
his account must be locked. But I can't find any recent actions related to his account in the public logs on Meta.[3] What am I missing?
- Speaking of project capture, the Kazakh Wikipedia was captured by state
actors almost a decade ago (with the Foundation's blessing at the time, and public regrets later[4]).
Are there any functionaries in Kazakhstan that will be impacted by these changes?
Andreas
[1] https://diff.wikimedia.org/author/mohsen-salek/ [2] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/persian-wikipedia-in... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=&user=&page=User%3A... [4] https://eurasianet.org/wikipedia-founder-distances-himself-from-kazakhstan-p...
On Monday, September 13, 2021, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, again.
I just realized I failed to answer one of the questions. I'm sorry; it's rather late in my day, and I didn't mean to overlook it. In addition to what was noted earlier, I believe it was 12 other users who were contacted and asked to adjust their behavior to work within community policies, especially regarding "canvassing" and good faith collaboration with other users.
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:21 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello, all.
First, our apologies for the translation. We had hoped to provide this service to make it easier for our Chinese language communities, but clearly it didn't work out as we had hoped. I'm enormously grateful to say that a Chinese translation is now available on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement/zh <3 We are actively seeking to increase our capacity in Chinese and several other languages, and I hope some people will apply! https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/3374682?gh_src=b62d5dae1us
With respect to the NDA policy change, this was indeed very obliquely addressed on September 1st here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_policy#Answers_to_some_questions_around_policy_change,[1] at which point we felt the need to be very oblique in our response because we were still actively attempting to communicate with all users impacted. We knew, of course, that experienced Wikimedians would be able to connect the dots but were hoping to avoid attracting external attention by bad actors that might put some of these people in danger. Not being a lawyer, I'm still a little nervous about saying the wrong thing (my teams were more involved in implementing than directing that policy change), but it's probably obvious to everyone by now that you have correctly named the immediate jurisdictions of concern.
I do want to say, though, that the policy was written to address a challenge which is likely to be ongoing: we are not just in danger of infiltration, but of attack through the extortion or potentially persecution of publicly identifiable people with access to personal information. The intention is not to shut down access to everyone in every such jurisdiction who has ever blocked Wikimedia sites, but to flag for the Foundation's legal department the need to review in such cases. Because of that, depending on the current risks of which we are aware, the list of impacted jurisdictions may change. I would hope that people will not hesitate to apply; rejection of a signed NDA in such cases is by no means a personal judgment and may be a step taken to protect not only our communities, but those users themselves and those they love.
Best, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic...
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 5:43 PM effe iets anders < effeietsanders@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you Maggie, for the announcement. It's a sad day, and I'm sure there were many sad actions that resulted in this.
Two questions from my end:
- Could you commit to making a better translation available (through
community processes or otherwise) for the record? I think this decision may be referred to quite a bit in the future, so it's valuable to have an accurate translation available to the Chinese community.
- What countries are affected currently by the NDA decision
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_information&diff=prev&oldid=21925066&diffmode=source? It is suggested that China and Iran are, but I can't find an authoritative list (but may be looking at the wrong place). This would be helpful for volunteers from countries that are wondering if they should even bother to apply for positions. The definition "blocked access" is a bit fluid. I'm assuming here that the fact that a country is on this list, is not a secret in itself.
Best, Lodewijk
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 11:06 AM William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Hi Leo,
I think that this is a Google Translation product. But yes, it is in such bad shape where even Chinese natives can barely read. But I acknowledge the fact that the urgency and secrecy of the matter made consulting external parties, to the extent, even contractors working for WMF, impossible.
To Maggie,
May I ask if there is a certain number for the amount of users linked with the unrecognized user group being warned? There is no request for the list of users, just the number would be fine. The Wikipedia communities in Hong Kong need to access the total damage dealt to the user group who had persistently engaged in activities harassing the safety of Hong Kong Users.
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 01:58, Leo Z leo@asianmonth.wiki wrote:
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for the prompt response. I do not know who those ‘native speakers’ are, perhaps that’s just a way to avoid providing language proficiency certificate. I do not know. Google translation might even do better.
I am more than certain that this translation is not just faulty or unsatisfactory, but terrible if not horrifying, disastrous, or outright shocking for an acclaimed international organization. The issue for this specific translation is not with 'movement-specific' terms, but a significant lack of elementary understanding regarding the fundamental grammatical structure of the Chinese language. I will refrain from listing specific examples here (there are plenty), but those mistakes are hilarious, if not outright absurd. Whoever translated this text might barely pass an AP Chinese exam.
Please consult a professor in Chinese language at Berkeley or CCSF or even just a language school, or perhaps consult someone from ChinaSF, maybe even a Chinese speaking professional from HSBC or wherever. There are plenty, if you feel it’s necessary. I’m more than certain they will offer similar opinions.
Sincere hope for a better translation, Leo On Sep 14, 2021, 1:17 AM +0800, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org, wrote:
Hello, all.
A few responses.
First, Nathan and William, we will share as much information as we can, but will need to be careful about what we say about the individuals involved for legal and safety reasons. This is indeed related to increasing resilience across Wikipedias and not at all specifically for ZhWP. I do think it's important for us to offer some additional support there, given the current situation, but we are looking at increasing safety everywhere.
Leo, thank you for your feedback on the translation, which was provided by native Chinese speakers. Since I myself am completely unable to read Chinese, I don't know the nature of the issue, but I do know that in the past we have had some issues with movement-specific terms being translated. I recall once when "free in speech" was mistranslated as "free as in beer" - which we always deliberately try to avoid. :)
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
> Maggie, > > Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both > the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. > I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more > information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions > will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office > actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these > accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to > safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and > how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our > values are not respected. > > Thank you again, > Nathan > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, > guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... > To unsubscribe send an email to > wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello Maggie, hello all,
If you can communicate on the subject, when was your team first made aware of the situation ? Trying to figure out how long this has lasted. And were affected users (by which I mean users who had their emails and passwords reset) ultimately able to recover their accounts ? Or will they be ?
Thank you for letting us know of the issue.
Roger / Alphos
Le 14 sept. 2021 à 10:48, William Chan william@wchan.hk a écrit :
Hi Andres,
I am not Maggie (definitely here) but as far as I know, some members from the zhwp are also affected. If I am correct, it is their email being removed and password got reset.
William
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 16:45, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com mailto:jayen466@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Maggie,
Thanks for your post; I have two questions.
- What is the status of Mardetanha, the Iranian steward and past (even very recent) author of Wikimedia blog posts (which link his real name to his user name)?[1][2]
Judging by https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=21964430 https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=21964430 where he says, using his alt account,
Yes, we are all locked until "voluntarily" resign to get back our account back [[User:Mard|Mard]] ([[User talk:Mard|talk]]) 12:06, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
his account must be locked. But I can't find any recent actions related to his account in the public logs on Meta.[3] What am I missing?
- Speaking of project capture, the Kazakh Wikipedia was captured by state actors almost a decade ago (with the Foundation's blessing at the time, and public regrets later[4]).
Are there any functionaries in Kazakhstan that will be impacted by these changes?
Andreas
[1] https://diff.wikimedia.org/author/mohsen-salek/ https://diff.wikimedia.org/author/mohsen-salek/ [2] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/persian-wikipedia-in... https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/persian-wikipedia-independent-source-or-tool-iranian-state/ [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=&user=&page=User%3A... https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=&user=&page=User%3AMardetanha&wpdate=&tagfilter=&wpfilters%5B%5D=newusers [4] https://eurasianet.org/wikipedia-founder-distances-himself-from-kazakhstan-p... https://eurasianet.org/wikipedia-founder-distances-himself-from-kazakhstan-pr-machine
On Monday, September 13, 2021, Maggie Dennis <mdennis@wikimedia.org mailto:mdennis@wikimedia.org> wrote: Hi, again.
I just realized I failed to answer one of the questions. I'm sorry; it's rather late in my day, and I didn't mean to overlook it. In addition to what was noted earlier, I believe it was 12 other users who were contacted and asked to adjust their behavior to work within community policies, especially regarding "canvassing" and good faith collaboration with other users.
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:21 PM Maggie Dennis <mdennis@wikimedia.org mailto:mdennis@wikimedia.org> wrote: Hello, all.
First, our apologies for the translation. We had hoped to provide this service to make it easier for our Chinese language communities, but clearly it didn't work out as we had hoped. I'm enormously grateful to say that a Chinese translation is now available on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement/zh https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement/zh <3 We are actively seeking to increase our capacity in Chinese and several other languages, and I hope some people will apply! https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/3374682?gh_src=b62d5dae1us https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/3374682?gh_src=b62d5dae1us
With respect to the NDA policy change, this was indeed very obliquely addressed on September 1st here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_policy#Answers_to_some_questions_around_policy_change,[1] at which point we felt the need to be very oblique in our response because we were still actively attempting to communicate with all users impacted. We knew, of course, that experienced Wikimedians would be able to connect the dots but were hoping to avoid attracting external attention by bad actors that might put some of these people in danger. Not being a lawyer, I'm still a little nervous about saying the wrong thing (my teams were more involved in implementing than directing that policy change), but it's probably obvious to everyone by now that you have correctly named the immediate jurisdictions of concern.
I do want to say, though, that the policy was written to address a challenge which is likely to be ongoing: we are not just in danger of infiltration, but of attack through the extortion or potentially persecution of publicly identifiable people with access to personal information. The intention is not to shut down access to everyone in every such jurisdiction who has ever blocked Wikimedia sites, but to flag for the Foundation's legal department the need to review in such cases. Because of that, depending on the current risks of which we are aware, the list of impacted jurisdictions may change. I would hope that people will not hesitate to apply; rejection of a signed NDA in such cases is by no means a personal judgment and may be a step taken to protect not only our communities, but those users themselves and those they love.
Best, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_policy#Answers_to_some_questions_around_policy_change On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 5:43 PM effe iets anders <effeietsanders@gmail.com mailto:effeietsanders@gmail.com> wrote: Thank you Maggie, for the announcement. It's a sad day, and I'm sure there were many sad actions that resulted in this.
Two questions from my end:
- Could you commit to making a better translation available (through community processes or otherwise) for the record? I think this decision may be referred to quite a bit in the future, so it's valuable to have an accurate translation available to the Chinese community.
- What countries are affected currently by the NDA decision https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_information&diff=prev&oldid=21925066&diffmode=source? It is suggested that China and Iran are, but I can't find an authoritative list (but may be looking at the wrong place). This would be helpful for volunteers from countries that are wondering if they should even bother to apply for positions. The definition "blocked access" is a bit fluid. I'm assuming here that the fact that a country is on this list, is not a secret in itself.
Best, Lodewijk
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 11:06 AM William Chan <william@wchan.hk mailto:william@wchan.hk> wrote: Hi Leo,
I think that this is a Google Translation product. But yes, it is in such bad shape where even Chinese natives can barely read. But I acknowledge the fact that the urgency and secrecy of the matter made consulting external parties, to the extent, even contractors working for WMF, impossible.
To Maggie,
May I ask if there is a certain number for the amount of users linked with the unrecognized user group being warned? There is no request for the list of users, just the number would be fine. The Wikipedia communities in Hong Kong need to access the total damage dealt to the user group who had persistently engaged in activities harassing the safety of Hong Kong Users.
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 01:58, Leo Z leo@asianmonth.wiki wrote: Hi Maggie,
Thanks for the prompt response. I do not know who those ‘native speakers’ are, perhaps that’s just a way to avoid providing language proficiency certificate. I do not know. Google translation might even do better.
I am more than certain that this translation is not just faulty or unsatisfactory, but terrible if not horrifying, disastrous, or outright shocking for an acclaimed international organization. The issue for this specific translation is not with 'movement-specific' terms, but a significant lack of elementary understanding regarding the fundamental grammatical structure of the Chinese language. I will refrain from listing specific examples here (there are plenty), but those mistakes are hilarious, if not outright absurd. Whoever translated this text might barely pass an AP Chinese exam.
Please consult a professor in Chinese language at Berkeley or CCSF or even just a language school, or perhaps consult someone from ChinaSF, maybe even a Chinese speaking professional from HSBC or wherever. There are plenty, if you feel it’s necessary. I’m more than certain they will offer similar opinions.
Sincere hope for a better translation, Leo On Sep 14, 2021, 1:17 AM +0800, Maggie Dennis <mdennis@wikimedia.org mailto:mdennis@wikimedia.org>, wrote:
Hello, all.
A few responses.
First, Nathan and William, we will share as much information as we can, but will need to be careful about what we say about the individuals involved for legal and safety reasons. This is indeed related to increasing resilience across Wikipedias and not at all specifically for ZhWP. I do think it's important for us to offer some additional support there, given the current situation, but we are looking at increasing safety everywhere.
Leo, thank you for your feedback on the translation, which was provided by native Chinese speakers. Since I myself am completely unable to read Chinese, I don't know the nature of the issue, but I do know that in the past we have had some issues with movement-specific terms being translated. I recall once when "free in speech" was mistranslated as "free as in beer" - which we always deliberately try to avoid. :)
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com mailto:nawrich@gmail.com> wrote: Maggie,
Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our values are not respected.
Thank you again, Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/VOHDBMA7WWDK6TMTDZNN6B6XX7AL5J4G/ To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/IXB5VLKSTKRUZZKINOBL5G2SBFZAHQ6L/ To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/V3LWJHSR7MSXWYXIQTBMFFRVCSTYZ7HK/ To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello, all.
I have some responses to your questions posted here and elsewhere that I've just dropped on Meta on the talk page of the statement there https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Office_actions/September_2021_statement#Follow-up_to_statement:_a_mini_FAQ. I was asked to concentrate there because it can be hard for people to find answers scattered through an email thread. It's very long or I might paste it here, too. Apologies if folks wish I had; I can do that going forward if so. Also, if folks feel that statement should be moved to the main page so that it can be marked for translation, too, I'm happy to accommodate and don't at all object if somebody just boldly does it. I wanted to get some answers out quickly and thus didn't ask others on my team for their recommended approach.
Warm regards, Maggie
On Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 11:39 AM Alphos OGame alphos.ogame@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Maggie, hello all,
If you can communicate on the subject, when was your team first made aware of the situation ? Trying to figure out how long this has lasted. And were affected users (by which I mean users who had their emails and passwords reset) ultimately able to recover their accounts ? Or will they be ?
Thank you for letting us know of the issue.
Roger / Alphos
Le 14 sept. 2021 à 10:48, William Chan william@wchan.hk a écrit :
Hi Andres,
I am not Maggie (definitely here) but as far as I know, some members from the zhwp are also affected. If I am correct, it is their email being removed and password got reset.
William
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 16:45, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for your post; I have two questions.
- What is the status of Mardetanha, the Iranian steward and past (even
very recent) author of Wikimedia blog posts (which link his real name to his user name)?[1][2]
Judging by https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=21964430 where he says, using his alt account,
Yes, we are all locked until "voluntarily" resign to get back our account back [[User:Mard|Mard]] ([[User talk:Mard|talk]]) 12:06, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
his account must be locked. But I can't find any recent actions related to his account in the public logs on Meta.[3] What am I missing?
- Speaking of project capture, the Kazakh Wikipedia was captured by
state actors almost a decade ago (with the Foundation's blessing at the time, and public regrets later[4]).
Are there any functionaries in Kazakhstan that will be impacted by these changes?
Andreas
[1] https://diff.wikimedia.org/author/mohsen-salek/ [2] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/persian-wikipedia-in... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=&user=&page=User%3A... [4] https://eurasianet.org/wikipedia-founder-distances-himself-from-kazakhstan-p...
On Monday, September 13, 2021, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, again.
I just realized I failed to answer one of the questions. I'm sorry; it's rather late in my day, and I didn't mean to overlook it. In addition to what was noted earlier, I believe it was 12 other users who were contacted and asked to adjust their behavior to work within community policies, especially regarding "canvassing" and good faith collaboration with other users.
Best, Maggie
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:21 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello, all.
First, our apologies for the translation. We had hoped to provide this service to make it easier for our Chinese language communities, but clearly it didn't work out as we had hoped. I'm enormously grateful to say that a Chinese translation is now available on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement/zh <3 We are actively seeking to increase our capacity in Chinese and several other languages, and I hope some people will apply! https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/3374682?gh_src=b62d5dae1us
With respect to the NDA policy change, this was indeed very obliquely addressed on September 1st here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_policy#Answers_to_some_questions_around_policy_change,[1] at which point we felt the need to be very oblique in our response because we were still actively attempting to communicate with all users impacted. We knew, of course, that experienced Wikimedians would be able to connect the dots but were hoping to avoid attracting external attention by bad actors that might put some of these people in danger. Not being a lawyer, I'm still a little nervous about saying the wrong thing (my teams were more involved in implementing than directing that policy change), but it's probably obvious to everyone by now that you have correctly named the immediate jurisdictions of concern.
I do want to say, though, that the policy was written to address a challenge which is likely to be ongoing: we are not just in danger of infiltration, but of attack through the extortion or potentially persecution of publicly identifiable people with access to personal information. The intention is not to shut down access to everyone in every such jurisdiction who has ever blocked Wikimedia sites, but to flag for the Foundation's legal department the need to review in such cases. Because of that, depending on the current risks of which we are aware, the list of impacted jurisdictions may change. I would hope that people will not hesitate to apply; rejection of a signed NDA in such cases is by no means a personal judgment and may be a step taken to protect not only our communities, but those users themselves and those they love.
Best, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic...
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 5:43 PM effe iets anders < effeietsanders@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you Maggie, for the announcement. It's a sad day, and I'm sure there were many sad actions that resulted in this.
Two questions from my end:
- Could you commit to making a better translation available (through
community processes or otherwise) for the record? I think this decision may be referred to quite a bit in the future, so it's valuable to have an accurate translation available to the Chinese community.
- What countries are affected currently by the NDA decision
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Confidentiality_agreement_for_nonpublic_information&diff=prev&oldid=21925066&diffmode=source? It is suggested that China and Iran are, but I can't find an authoritative list (but may be looking at the wrong place). This would be helpful for volunteers from countries that are wondering if they should even bother to apply for positions. The definition "blocked access" is a bit fluid. I'm assuming here that the fact that a country is on this list, is not a secret in itself.
Best, Lodewijk
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 11:06 AM William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Hi Leo,
I think that this is a Google Translation product. But yes, it is in such bad shape where even Chinese natives can barely read. But I acknowledge the fact that the urgency and secrecy of the matter made consulting external parties, to the extent, even contractors working for WMF, impossible.
To Maggie,
May I ask if there is a certain number for the amount of users linked with the unrecognized user group being warned? There is no request for the list of users, just the number would be fine. The Wikipedia communities in Hong Kong need to access the total damage dealt to the user group who had persistently engaged in activities harassing the safety of Hong Kong Users.
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 01:58, Leo Z leo@asianmonth.wiki wrote:
> Hi Maggie, > > Thanks for the prompt response. I do not know who those ‘native > speakers’ are, perhaps that’s just a way to avoid providing language > proficiency certificate. I do not know. Google translation might even do > better. > > I am more than certain that this translation is not just faulty or > unsatisfactory, but terrible if not horrifying, disastrous, or outright > shocking for an acclaimed international organization. The issue for this > specific translation is not with 'movement-specific' terms, but a > significant lack of elementary understanding regarding the fundamental > grammatical structure of the Chinese language. I will refrain from listing > specific examples here (there are plenty), but those mistakes are > hilarious, if not outright absurd. Whoever translated this text might > barely pass an AP Chinese exam. > > Please consult a professor in Chinese language at Berkeley or CCSF > or even just a language school, or perhaps consult someone from ChinaSF, > maybe even a Chinese speaking professional from HSBC or wherever. There are > plenty, if you feel it’s necessary. I’m more than certain they will offer > similar opinions. > > Sincere hope for a better translation, > Leo > On Sep 14, 2021, 1:17 AM +0800, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org, > wrote: > > Hello, all. > > A few responses. > > First, Nathan and William, we will share as much information as we > can, but will need to be careful about what we say about the individuals > involved for legal and safety reasons. This is indeed related to increasing > resilience across Wikipedias and not at all specifically for ZhWP. I do > think it's important for us to offer some additional support there, given > the current situation, but we are looking at increasing safety everywhere. > > Leo, thank you for your feedback on the translation, which was > provided by native Chinese speakers. Since I myself am completely unable to > read Chinese, I don't know the nature of the issue, but I do know that in > the past we have had some issues with movement-specific terms being > translated. I recall once when "free in speech" was mistranslated as "free > as in beer" - which we always deliberately try to avoid. :) > > Best, > Maggie > > On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote: > >> Maggie, >> >> Thank you for taking these very difficult actions to protect both >> the members of our community as well as the values that it seeks to uphold. >> I also appreciate the degree of transparency provided and hope that more >> information will be disclosed as it is appropriate. I imagine questions >> will be asked about how these individual accounts were selected for office >> actions and the contours of the risk both to the individuals behind these >> accounts and the wider community. Any information that the WMF is able to >> safely share will help all of us understand better what the threats are and >> how we may better support the movement's goals in jurisdictions where our >> values are not respected. >> >> Thank you again, >> Nathan >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, >> guidelines at: >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l >> Public archives at >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... >> To unsubscribe send an email to >> wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org > > > > -- > Maggie Dennis > She/her/hers > Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability > Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, > guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... > To unsubscribe send an email to > wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, > guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... > To unsubscribe send an email to > wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
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Hi Maggie,
I’m not sure which translation service you’ve retained. This is a grossly unprofessional and barely intelligible Chinese translation. In the very least, I’m pretty sure there are plenty undergrads at Berkeley who you can pay minimum wage with that would do so much better than this. Please find better alternatives, otherwise you are just throwing away your money for nothing really.
Best, Leo On Sep 14, 2021, 12:16 AM +0800, Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org, wrote:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Or even Affiliates in Taiwan or Hong Kong were a better solution, as some Wikimedia Movement terms are best understood by our own members of the community.
Hopefully the Foundation would try to solve the translate issues.
(For those trying to play catch-up on the Wikipedia-in-China issue, I recommend diving into some old Signpost archives: [1] ("The BBC looks at Chinese government editing"), [2] ("Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars"), [3] ("Community View: Observations from the mainland"), [4] ("Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong"), and maybe [5] ("Chinese man detained and penalized for reading Wikipedia") and [6] ("China and the Chinese Wikipedia"). Note that the author of the community view piece and the subject of the special report, User:Techyan and User:Walter_Grassroot respectively, are both among those banned in this action. I have not found sources covering the more recent events relating to the canvassing policy.)
I'm having a difficult time understanding the notice, particularly which parts are relating to the NDA change and which are relating to the more recent actions. If I am understanding correctly, the NDA change: * was prompted by credible threats against contributors, * involved risks pertaining to private data being taken by hostile entities, * could not be communicated in advance even to stewards without creating serious risks.
Meanwhile, regarding the bans and desysoppings: * The message vaguely implies, but does not state, that "credible threats to [Chinese users'] safety" were relevant to this decision. * A second justification is similarly implied: That the actions were necessary to avoid community capture/infiltration on zhwiki, presumably by the government of the PRC. Particularly highlighted issues of relevance to this are canvassing and fraud, presumably for community manipulation. * Some relevant information on this cannot be revealed publicly ("limits to what we can reveal").
Maggie has stated on-wiki that those desysopped will be permitted to run for adminship again [7], while the WMF will "monitor the integrity of elections for those seeking sysop rights again (after this action) until we are able to help the local community adopt a more secure system." I am fairly confident that, if the desysoppings were necessary to avoid actual harm (that is, if there was a threat to safety from those users holding advanced rights), the WMF would not allow the restoring of those rights. Maggie's on-list response to Yaroslav mentioning desysoppings of those "whose behavior has been problematic in relation largely to canvassing or demonstrated abuse of their roles" seems to further support that this was not about harm.
The canvassing rationale for the desysoppings (and possibly for some of the bans, if all seven were not for the same reasons) is not sufficient to justify this action by the WMF; preventing local canvassing is not within the T&S's remit. This may not have been the actual rationale (per "limits to what we can reveal"), but there are clear indications that it was, per the posts.
This decision may have needed to be made. The decision also might not have been the WMF's decision to make.
Outside of specific limited situations, desysoppings are decisions made by volunteers. It is possible that circumstances have made functioning local discussion impossible, in which case a global discussion could take place. If necessary secrecy of certain information makes public global discussion unable to independently provide judgement, it could fall to the stewards to assist. Unless this situation relates to one of the responsibilities that the community has delegated to T&S, at no point does this fall to them.
While the lack of disclosure makes it impossible to be sure, it looks quite likely to me that the WMF has acted inappropriately in desysopping these users.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_foc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Interv... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Commun... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Specia... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-11-01/In_the... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-08-30/Commun... [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WMFOffice#Recent_desysops
בתאריך יום ב׳, 13 בספט׳ 2021 ב-12:15 מאת Maggie Dennis < mdennis@wikimedia.org>:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
No idea why it got half of the content, but what I can say, is that they removed emails and reset passwords of user accounts until they "voluntarily" stepped down. This may mean a need to dive into email logs.
On Tue, 14 Sep 2021 at 17:43, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
(For those trying to play catch-up on the Wikipedia-in-China issue, I recommend diving into some old Signpost archives: [1] ("The BBC looks at Chinese government editing"), [2] ("Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars"), [3] ("Community View: Observations from the mainland"), [4] ("Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong"), and maybe [5] ("Chinese man detained and penalized for reading Wikipedia") and [6] ("China and the Chinese Wikipedia"). Note that the author of the community view piece and the subject of the special report, User:Techyan and User:Walter_Grassroot respectively, are both among those banned in this action. I have not found sources covering the more recent events relating to the canvassing policy.)
I'm having a difficult time understanding the notice, particularly which parts are relating to the NDA change and which are relating to the more recent actions. If I am understanding correctly, the NDA change:
- was prompted by credible threats against contributors,
- involved risks pertaining to private data being taken by hostile
entities,
- could not be communicated in advance even to stewards without creating
serious risks.
Meanwhile, regarding the bans and desysoppings:
- The message vaguely implies, but does not state, that "credible threats
to [Chinese users'] safety" were relevant to this decision.
- A second justification is similarly implied: That the actions were
necessary to avoid community capture/infiltration on zhwiki, presumably by the government of the PRC. Particularly highlighted issues of relevance to this are canvassing and fraud, presumably for community manipulation.
- Some relevant information on this cannot be revealed publicly ("limits
to what we can reveal").
Maggie has stated on-wiki that those desysopped will be permitted to run for adminship again [7], while the WMF will "monitor the integrity of elections for those seeking sysop rights again (after this action) until we are able to help the local community adopt a more secure system." I am fairly confident that, if the desysoppings were necessary to avoid actual harm (that is, if there was a threat to safety from those users holding advanced rights), the WMF would not allow the restoring of those rights. Maggie's on-list response to Yaroslav mentioning desysoppings of those "whose behavior has been problematic in relation largely to canvassing or demonstrated abuse of their roles" seems to further support that this was not about harm.
The canvassing rationale for the desysoppings (and possibly for some of the bans, if all seven were not for the same reasons) is not sufficient to justify this action by the WMF; preventing local canvassing is not within the T&S's remit. This may not have been the actual rationale (per "limits to what we can reveal"), but there are clear indications that it was, per the posts.
This decision may have needed to be made. The decision also might not have been the WMF's decision to make.
Outside of specific limited situations, desysoppings are decisions made by volunteers. It is possible that circumstances have made functioning local discussion impossible, in which case a global discussion could take place. If necessary secrecy of certain information makes public global discussion unable to independently provide judgement, it could fall to the stewards to assist. Unless this situation relates to one of the responsibilities that the community has delegated to T&S, at no point does this fall to them.
While the lack of disclosure makes it impossible to be sure, it looks quite likely to me that the WMF has acted inappropriately in desysopping these users.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_foc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Interv... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Commun... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Specia... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-11-01/In_the... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-08-30/Commun... [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WMFOffice#Recent_desysops
בתאריך יום ב׳, 13 בספט׳ 2021 ב-12:15 מאת Maggie Dennis < mdennis@wikimedia.org>:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi,
1. I must say that, for those who were desysopped, there are very clear evidence and feelings from Hong Kong editors that the elections that empowered them to the positions they got came from rigged elections with canvassing being observed but never dealt due to acts to deal with them being claimed as outright hostility against the users in China. 2. I wrote the August 2019 piece. I'm not banned, I'm 1233. [1] 3. There were accounts which those admin accounts being shared upon non-admins (I don't think, imo, even account sharing between admins is right at all) 4. The Chinese community is in standstill after 2019. 5. It seems to be a preliminary conclusion of events that lead to all zhwp Checkusers deprived of such checkuser right. 6. I really hope for a global discussion, but a November 2017 discussion (initiated my me) led to nothing, then I think there's an ongoing RFC that didn't get much attention too. 7. I am quite confident that SWAN will discuss this issue and a larger open office hour is coming. 8. IMO, Techyan and Walter Grassroot deserved this. 9. Even outright fascism propaganda can't be dealt with internally till WMF g-lock [2] 10. Yes, if you get into a deeper dive on editors, you will find large, half-page political announcements are on userpages. 11. The worst part of those discussions are within QQ, off wiki plots against the safety of active, dissident (in terms of Communist party leadership) editors. 12. They did all the hostility since 2015 [3]
Regards, William Chan
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-08-30/Commun... [2]: https://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:%E5%B0%A4%E9%87%8C%E7%9A%841... [3]:https://twitter.com/Philip_Tzou/status/1437543054043275265
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 17:43, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
(For those trying to play catch-up on the Wikipedia-in-China issue, I recommend diving into some old Signpost archives: [1] ("The BBC looks at Chinese government editing"), [2] ("Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars"), [3] ("Community View: Observations from the mainland"), [4] ("Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong"), and maybe [5] ("Chinese man detained and penalized for reading Wikipedia") and [6] ("China and the Chinese Wikipedia"). Note that the author of the community view piece and the subject of the special report, User:Techyan and User:Walter_Grassroot respectively, are both among those banned in this action. I have not found sources covering the more recent events relating to the canvassing policy.)
I'm having a difficult time understanding the notice, particularly which parts are relating to the NDA change and which are relating to the more recent actions. If I am understanding correctly, the NDA change:
- was prompted by credible threats against contributors,
- involved risks pertaining to private data being taken by hostile
entities,
- could not be communicated in advance even to stewards without creating
serious risks.
Meanwhile, regarding the bans and desysoppings:
- The message vaguely implies, but does not state, that "credible threats
to [Chinese users'] safety" were relevant to this decision.
- A second justification is similarly implied: That the actions were
necessary to avoid community capture/infiltration on zhwiki, presumably by the government of the PRC. Particularly highlighted issues of relevance to this are canvassing and fraud, presumably for community manipulation.
- Some relevant information on this cannot be revealed publicly ("limits
to what we can reveal").
Maggie has stated on-wiki that those desysopped will be permitted to run for adminship again [7], while the WMF will "monitor the integrity of elections for those seeking sysop rights again (after this action) until we are able to help the local community adopt a more secure system." I am fairly confident that, if the desysoppings were necessary to avoid actual harm (that is, if there was a threat to safety from those users holding advanced rights), the WMF would not allow the restoring of those rights. Maggie's on-list response to Yaroslav mentioning desysoppings of those "whose behavior has been problematic in relation largely to canvassing or demonstrated abuse of their roles" seems to further support that this was not about harm.
The canvassing rationale for the desysoppings (and possibly for some of the bans, if all seven were not for the same reasons) is not sufficient to justify this action by the WMF; preventing local canvassing is not within the T&S's remit. This may not have been the actual rationale (per "limits to what we can reveal"), but there are clear indications that it was, per the posts.
This decision may have needed to be made. The decision also might not have been the WMF's decision to make.
Outside of specific limited situations, desysoppings are decisions made by volunteers. It is possible that circumstances have made functioning local discussion impossible, in which case a global discussion could take place. If necessary secrecy of certain information makes public global discussion unable to independently provide judgement, it could fall to the stewards to assist. Unless this situation relates to one of the responsibilities that the community has delegated to T&S, at no point does this fall to them.
While the lack of disclosure makes it impossible to be sure, it looks quite likely to me that the WMF has acted inappropriately in desysopping these users.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_foc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Interv... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Commun... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Specia... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-11-01/In_the... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-08-30/Commun... [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WMFOffice#Recent_desysops
בתאריך יום ב׳, 13 בספט׳ 2021 ב-12:15 מאת Maggie Dennis < mdennis@wikimedia.org>:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Update to this:
I can't confirm if [3] can be observed or confirmed due to the time between incident and current time, but other factual statements can be backed.
On Tue, 14 Sep 2021 at 18:06, William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Hi,
- I must say that, for those who were desysopped, there are very clear
evidence and feelings from Hong Kong editors that the elections that empowered them to the positions they got came from rigged elections with canvassing being observed but never dealt due to acts to deal with them being claimed as outright hostility against the users in China. 2. I wrote the August 2019 piece. I'm not banned, I'm 1233. [1] 3. There were accounts which those admin accounts being shared upon non-admins (I don't think, imo, even account sharing between admins is right at all) 4. The Chinese community is in standstill after 2019. 5. It seems to be a preliminary conclusion of events that lead to all zhwp Checkusers deprived of such checkuser right. 6. I really hope for a global discussion, but a November 2017 discussion (initiated my me) led to nothing, then I think there's an ongoing RFC that didn't get much attention too. 7. I am quite confident that SWAN will discuss this issue and a larger open office hour is coming. 8. IMO, Techyan and Walter Grassroot deserved this. 9. Even outright fascism propaganda can't be dealt with internally till WMF g-lock [2] 10. Yes, if you get into a deeper dive on editors, you will find large, half-page political announcements are on userpages. 11. The worst part of those discussions are within QQ, off wiki plots against the safety of active, dissident (in terms of Communist party leadership) editors. 12. They did all the hostility since 2015 [3]
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 17:43, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
(For those trying to play catch-up on the Wikipedia-in-China issue, I recommend diving into some old Signpost archives: [1] ("The BBC looks at Chinese government editing"), [2] ("Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars"), [3] ("Community View: Observations from the mainland"), [4] ("Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong"), and maybe [5] ("Chinese man detained and penalized for reading Wikipedia") and [6] ("China and the Chinese Wikipedia"). Note that the author of the community view piece and the subject of the special report, User:Techyan and User:Walter_Grassroot respectively, are both among those banned in this action. I have not found sources covering the more recent events relating to the canvassing policy.)
I'm having a difficult time understanding the notice, particularly which parts are relating to the NDA change and which are relating to the more recent actions. If I am understanding correctly, the NDA change:
- was prompted by credible threats against contributors,
- involved risks pertaining to private data being taken by hostile
entities,
- could not be communicated in advance even to stewards without creating
serious risks.
Meanwhile, regarding the bans and desysoppings:
- The message vaguely implies, but does not state, that "credible threats
to [Chinese users'] safety" were relevant to this decision.
- A second justification is similarly implied: That the actions were
necessary to avoid community capture/infiltration on zhwiki, presumably by the government of the PRC. Particularly highlighted issues of relevance to this are canvassing and fraud, presumably for community manipulation.
- Some relevant information on this cannot be revealed publicly ("limits
to what we can reveal").
Maggie has stated on-wiki that those desysopped will be permitted to run for adminship again [7], while the WMF will "monitor the integrity of elections for those seeking sysop rights again (after this action) until we are able to help the local community adopt a more secure system." I am fairly confident that, if the desysoppings were necessary to avoid actual harm (that is, if there was a threat to safety from those users holding advanced rights), the WMF would not allow the restoring of those rights. Maggie's on-list response to Yaroslav mentioning desysoppings of those "whose behavior has been problematic in relation largely to canvassing or demonstrated abuse of their roles" seems to further support that this was not about harm.
The canvassing rationale for the desysoppings (and possibly for some of the bans, if all seven were not for the same reasons) is not sufficient to justify this action by the WMF; preventing local canvassing is not within the T&S's remit. This may not have been the actual rationale (per "limits to what we can reveal"), but there are clear indications that it was, per the posts.
This decision may have needed to be made. The decision also might not have been the WMF's decision to make.
Outside of specific limited situations, desysoppings are decisions made by volunteers. It is possible that circumstances have made functioning local discussion impossible, in which case a global discussion could take place. If necessary secrecy of certain information makes public global discussion unable to independently provide judgement, it could fall to the stewards to assist. Unless this situation relates to one of the responsibilities that the community has delegated to T&S, at no point does this fall to them.
While the lack of disclosure makes it impossible to be sure, it looks quite likely to me that the WMF has acted inappropriately in desysopping these users.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_foc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Interv... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Commun... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Specia... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-11-01/In_the... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-08-30/Commun... [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WMFOffice#Recent_desysops
בתאריך יום ב׳, 13 בספט׳ 2021 ב-12:15 מאת Maggie Dennis < mdennis@wikimedia.org>:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
--
---------------------------- William Chan Education Programme Coordinator Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong User group : meta page http://bit.ly/WMCUGHK | facebook http://fb.me/WikimediaUGHK Personal : linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/the23333/ | telegram http://t.me/theonly23333 ----------------------------
If anyone wants some feedback regarding the beginning of zh.wikipedia, I can try to help.
http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail Virus-free. www.avg.com http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail <#m_3618226274263309006_DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 3:04 PM William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Update to this:
I can't confirm if [3] can be observed or confirmed due to the time between incident and current time, but other factual statements can be backed.
On Tue, 14 Sep 2021 at 18:06, William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Hi,
- I must say that, for those who were desysopped, there are very clear
evidence and feelings from Hong Kong editors that the elections that empowered them to the positions they got came from rigged elections with canvassing being observed but never dealt due to acts to deal with them being claimed as outright hostility against the users in China. 2. I wrote the August 2019 piece. I'm not banned, I'm 1233. [1] 3. There were accounts which those admin accounts being shared upon non-admins (I don't think, imo, even account sharing between admins is right at all) 4. The Chinese community is in standstill after 2019. 5. It seems to be a preliminary conclusion of events that lead to all zhwp Checkusers deprived of such checkuser right. 6. I really hope for a global discussion, but a November 2017 discussion (initiated my me) led to nothing, then I think there's an ongoing RFC that didn't get much attention too. 7. I am quite confident that SWAN will discuss this issue and a larger open office hour is coming. 8. IMO, Techyan and Walter Grassroot deserved this. 9. Even outright fascism propaganda can't be dealt with internally till WMF g-lock [2] 10. Yes, if you get into a deeper dive on editors, you will find large, half-page political announcements are on userpages. 11. The worst part of those discussions are within QQ, off wiki plots against the safety of active, dissident (in terms of Communist party leadership) editors. 12. They did all the hostility since 2015 [3]
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 17:43, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
(For those trying to play catch-up on the Wikipedia-in-China issue, I recommend diving into some old Signpost archives: [1] ("The BBC looks at Chinese government editing"), [2] ("Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars"), [3] ("Community View: Observations from the mainland"), [4] ("Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong"), and maybe [5] ("Chinese man detained and penalized for reading Wikipedia") and [6] ("China and the Chinese Wikipedia"). Note that the author of the community view piece and the subject of the special report, User:Techyan and User:Walter_Grassroot respectively, are both among those banned in this action. I have not found sources covering the more recent events relating to the canvassing policy.)
I'm having a difficult time understanding the notice, particularly which parts are relating to the NDA change and which are relating to the more recent actions. If I am understanding correctly, the NDA change:
- was prompted by credible threats against contributors,
- involved risks pertaining to private data being taken by hostile
entities,
- could not be communicated in advance even to stewards without creating
serious risks.
Meanwhile, regarding the bans and desysoppings:
- The message vaguely implies, but does not state, that "credible
threats to [Chinese users'] safety" were relevant to this decision.
- A second justification is similarly implied: That the actions were
necessary to avoid community capture/infiltration on zhwiki, presumably by the government of the PRC. Particularly highlighted issues of relevance to this are canvassing and fraud, presumably for community manipulation.
- Some relevant information on this cannot be revealed publicly ("limits
to what we can reveal").
Maggie has stated on-wiki that those desysopped will be permitted to run for adminship again [7], while the WMF will "monitor the integrity of elections for those seeking sysop rights again (after this action) until we are able to help the local community adopt a more secure system." I am fairly confident that, if the desysoppings were necessary to avoid actual harm (that is, if there was a threat to safety from those users holding advanced rights), the WMF would not allow the restoring of those rights. Maggie's on-list response to Yaroslav mentioning desysoppings of those "whose behavior has been problematic in relation largely to canvassing or demonstrated abuse of their roles" seems to further support that this was not about harm.
The canvassing rationale for the desysoppings (and possibly for some of the bans, if all seven were not for the same reasons) is not sufficient to justify this action by the WMF; preventing local canvassing is not within the T&S's remit. This may not have been the actual rationale (per "limits to what we can reveal"), but there are clear indications that it was, per the posts.
This decision may have needed to be made. The decision also might not have been the WMF's decision to make.
Outside of specific limited situations, desysoppings are decisions made by volunteers. It is possible that circumstances have made functioning local discussion impossible, in which case a global discussion could take place. If necessary secrecy of certain information makes public global discussion unable to independently provide judgement, it could fall to the stewards to assist. Unless this situation relates to one of the responsibilities that the community has delegated to T&S, at no point does this fall to them.
While the lack of disclosure makes it impossible to be sure, it looks quite likely to me that the WMF has acted inappropriately in desysopping these users.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_foc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Interv... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Commun... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Specia... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-11-01/In_the... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-08-30/Commun... [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WMFOffice#Recent_desysops
בתאריך יום ב׳, 13 בספט׳ 2021 ב-12:15 מאת Maggie Dennis < mdennis@wikimedia.org>:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
--
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Dear Maggie and all,
There have been a number of responses from the mainland Chinese media in the past week, and I found myself thinking about the two below, as well as the term "infiltration":
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1234607.shtml
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1711166904747459645
(The second of these is in Chinese; I'll append a machine translation below.)
The first article frames recent developments as a blow to Wikipedia's "neutrality". I've long wondered what neutrality actually means on a global stage, and how far the community is prepared to go in pursuing this ideal.
In the English Wikipedia, neutrality is defined as "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."
This sounds great until you come to realise that it all hinges on a single word: "reliable". If you say that certain sources – or certain countries' sources – are "not reliable", the whole edifice falls down.
Now the average reliability of academic or journalistic research can certainly vary from one country to the next. The local political and economical climate always influences what is published. Countries are also at different stages of development. In many fields, what counted as good research in a given locale fifty or hundred years ago may seem ridiculously flawed and "unreliable" today.
So different times and different locales have different standards. At the same time we can take it as a given that everyone is indoctrinated and conditioned by the environment and culture they're born into. While we're all human, human societies are inherently tribal. Everyone is made to believe to some extent that their own tribe – or at least a specific subgroup within it – "tells the truth", and that others often "lie".
Yet we know that our own politicians have also lied to us, and that the media we ourselves consume and soak up daily are subject to political and economical influence and manipulation. To some extent we are all willing victims of our own culture's propaganda.
Given that this conditioning happens and has happened in every society that has ever existed, it comes as no surprise that with a predominantly Western, Caucasian, politically centre-left user base, the sources most guaranteed to be considered "reliable" in Wikipedia are those written and published by centre-left Caucasian Westerners. A state broadcaster like the BBC is considered infinitely more "reliable" than a state broadcaster like Russia Today, or the Global Times.
If you now hear a voice in your head reflexively responding, "But the BBC simply IS far more reliable than Russian or Chinese state sources", then what does "neutrality" actually mean when speaking on an international stage? Shouldn't we be open about the way we are privileging "our" sources because we believe them to be more truthful?
This is essentially what the second Chinese article linked above is arguing: it says (somewhat polemically) that it would be better to call Wikipedia the "US State Department Encyclopedia" or something like that. And actually, many of us will recall that the Clinton State Department was indeed represented at Wikimania 2012 – and that there have been ongoing personal ties between the WMF and the Clintons, as well as the US Council on Foreign Relations, ever since.[1]
So while the Chinese editors are saying – not entirely without rational justification – that the WMF has been "infiltrated" by the US State Department, the WMF is saying that Wikipedia has been "infiltrated" – if not by the Chinese government as such (though it seems more likely than not to me that the mainland user group has government links), then by a user group that is largely sympathetic to it.
Which brings me to my main point: maybe the term "infiltration" is simply not very helpful if we are trying to build a resource that reflects all of humanity, as One Humanity. Can we find a different way of talking about this?
I don't want to be accused of being entirely lost in relativism, so I want to conclude by saying that I take a very dim view of the idea of reporting Wikipedians to state authorities for their support or opposition to any political regime in power anywhere.
Andreas
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0NsY48OQdc&t=457s https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/federal-faces-richard-boly/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-06-27/Forum
English machine translation (DeepL) of the second article:
Wikipedia, starting a "purge" of Chinese people?
Global Times Commentary
Published: 09-18 00:25 The official account of the Global Times Recently, Wikipedia, the world-renowned online encyclopedia project, suddenly did something extremely bad and politically charged - it blocked a number of mainland Chinese editors who had been building its pages in Chinese for free.
Not only that, but the Wikimedia Foundation, the administrator of Wikipedia, has used a biased tone, as if from the US government, to smear these mainland editors from the "Wikipedians of Mainland China" group as "infiltrators". The Chinese government's forces have infiltrated Wikipedia".
Now, the BBC and other Western media have also jumped on the bandwagon and are actively collaborating with the Wikimedia Foundation to "glorify" this "purge" of Chinese editors.
Although Wikipedia has never officially entered the Chinese web space, a group of mainland netizens have been building many of Wikipedia's Chinese entries on China for years, out of simple humanism, free of charge, to maintain the objectivity and impartiality of these pages and to prevent extremist political and cultist forces from contaminating and kidnapping the content.
However, in a rather biased report, the BBC quoted extensively the unilateral statement of the Wikimedia Foundation, which had brutally blocked these mainland editors, giving these mainland editors, who had never received any support or help from the organisation and who were only serious about doing a good job in the Chinese world as an open online encyclopaedia, allowing China and the world to get to know each other, a bad name. The mainland editors have been branded as "Chinese government forces that have infiltrated Wikipedia".
It is reported that the Wikimedia Foundation, which actually controls Wikipedia, has now blocked the accounts of seven Chinese editors and revoked the administrative rights of 12 Chinese editors. The reason is simply that they refuse to allow some extremists and cultists supported by anti-China forces in the US and the West to pollute the wikipedia on various topics related to China.
Moreover, as the administrator of the world's largest open online encyclopedia, the Wikimedia Foundation's smear campaign against these mainland editors, especially its use of various smear labels, is also highly consistent with the smear campaign against Chinese civil society voices in overseas Chinese circles by the US State Department and many of the anti-China media mouthpieces it supports.
In fact, the editors of the Mainland Chinese Wikipedians User Group have already issued an open letter listing the contributions of Mainland Chinese Wikipedians and the falsehoods that the Wikimedia Foundation has thrown out in its blockade of Mainland Chinese editors, in protest against the purge and persecution of them.
But the BBC did not interview the disgruntled mainland editors, nor did it give the same amount of space to these protests by the mainland editors, but simply mentioned that the editors had posted a post in response to the banning, and then nothing more.
This makes one wonder whether the BBC, which claims to be "objective and neutral", is actually acting as a mouthpiece for the US government's anti-China propaganda.
(The picture is an open letter issued by mainland Wikipedians to protest against the purging of mainland editors by the Wikimedia Foundation)
So, since the BBC has not been objective and fair in presenting the voices of the mainland editors who are now being brutalised by Wikipedia, Geng Zhi decided to use our Chinese media platform to give them a voice. Here is the latest statement sent to us by these editors about the "purge" of mainland Wikipedians and the BBC's biased reporting on the matter.
Statement from the Wikipedians of Mainland China user group on "Wikimedia Foundation's action against Chinese Wikipedia in 2021"
Wikipedia is currently the largest online encyclopedia project on the Internet. Its reputation is based on its open-editorial, free-sharing nature and the quality of its entries, which are no less than those of traditional encyclopedias such as Encyclopedia Britannica and any online encyclopedia. After the establishment of the Chinese Wikipedia, Chinese language users around the world, including people in mainland China, compatriots in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese, actively participated in this great project of human civilization. As a result, Wikipedia has become one of the most influential sites in the world for Chinese language users. As the number of entries and their content grew, editors interested in the development of the mainland Wikipedian community formed the "Wikipedians in Mainland China", a loose group of users, to develop a community and organise events in mainland China, in an attempt to add to the record and development of civilisation.
Since its inception, the Wikipedians in Mainland China User Group (WMCUG) has worked to eliminate, or at least reduce, the unjustified treatment of mainland Wikipedians who edit normal Wikipedia content, such as attacks based on political stance and regional bias, including name-calling and ridicule, misinterpretation and slander, and even physical threats and cyber violence. We have repeatedly advised the so-called Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of Wikipedia, to address the issue of the Chinese Wikipedia. However, like most bureaucratic organisations, the Wikimedia Foundation has ignored these legitimate requests. As a result, our user group has taken on the difficult job of developing a community and protecting editors, organising a wide range of editorial events, teaching novices about the language and editing skills of the wiki, improving the capacity of editors, training site experts, and providing security advice and protection for the many wikipedians (especially novices) who attend online and offline events.
We must point out that WMCUG has been in existence for four years and has received almost no help from the Wikimedia Foundation, which has done little more than monitor our actions, discriminate against our editors, ignore our demands, and fight against us. WMCUG is not an arm of the Wikimedia Foundation, is not controlled by it, is not threatened by it, and will never become its puppet. Despite the growing bureaucratic power of the Foundation and the increasing interference in the affairs of the Wikipedia community in all languages, unlike some other Wikimedia organisations, WMCUG has not tried to interfere with the decisions made by the Wikimedia Foundation by any extra-wiki actions. To date, all WMCUG members have joined and left voluntarily, and we have members from all groups of Chinese-speaking, Chinese culture-loving users around the world. We have remained true to the spirit of freedom and openness that has characterised Wikipedia since its inception. During this most difficult week, we have been deeply touched by the steady stream of editors who have been determined to join us publicly and speak out for us, despite the risk warnings we have issued.
In the BBC's report, the Wikimedia Foundation has made serious and unjust political accusations against all mainland Wikipedians by treating all the accounts of mainland editors as the Chinese government's infiltration of Wikipedia's online army, which is at odds with the Wikimedia Project's long-held position of neutrality. These bureaucrats, who share the US$100 million donation pie and suck the blood from the unpaid contributions of Wikipedians and technical volunteers around the world, are mainly from US conglomerates and "NGOs" who have not even been involved in writing Wikipedia content for as long or as often as the community of WMCUG users who have been voted in by their editors. They have been involved with Wikipedia content for less than one percent, one thousandth or even one ten thousandth of the time of the Wikipedia editors-in-chief and other senior editors voted for by the community based on their editorial contributions. Under the banner of Wikipedia's continuity and development, they beg for donations from people in Africa and South America who are already struggling to make ends meet, but do little to improve the treatment and experience of the editors of projects such as Wikipedia, while claiming to promote knowledge sharing and editing for all, extracting benefits from the selfless work of volunteers around the world, and largely failing to reward content contributors, when these bureaucrats themselves hardly ever edit Wikipedia and never make any real effort to improve the content.
In our view, the Wikimedia Foundation is more of a political mouthpiece for the Washington authorities in this case. We have to wonder if in the future some of the items, content and opinions that the Washington authorities do not like will gradually disappear and not be in their interest, and if the editors, who are seen as a thorn in the side of the Wikimedia Foundation and the US government, will be gradually ostracised and suppressed. --It would be better to change the name to "US State Department Encyclopedia" or even "US Encyclopedia" or "Anti-Chinese Encyclopedia". It would be better to call it "The US State Department Encyclopedia" or even "The Great American Encyclopedia" or "The Anti-China Encyclopedia". In the future, perhaps whenever a difficult management issue arises that cannot be resolved, the "Foundation" will ban a few more Chinese editors, pin the stigma on China, and then point a finger covered in $100 million cake cream at the Chinese users they killed and say: "Look, this is a disruptor, a spy, a tool of the Chinese government! A tool of foreign propaganda.
We must say that this action by the Wikimedia Foundation is completely wrong. This deliberate targeting of mainland Chinese editors, the mass banning and removal of community-elected administrators, will greatly undermine the confidence of Wikipedia editors and shake the confidence of readers in the Wikipedia philosophy. We are extremely saddened by this and strongly condemn it. It is not any mainland editors or group of editors who are responsible for the adverse effects of this incident, but rather the biased and unjust Wikimedia Foundation and some individual editors who have taken it personally and fanned the flames. In response to such injustice, the editors of mainland China will not sit idly by and take it lying down. We will fight back with the utmost vigour and fight to the end.
Author: Geng Jie
On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 4:18 PM ktsquare ktsquare@gmail.com wrote:
If anyone wants some feedback regarding the beginning of zh.wikipedia, I can try to help.
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On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 3:04 PM William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Update to this:
I can't confirm if [3] can be observed or confirmed due to the time between incident and current time, but other factual statements can be backed.
On Tue, 14 Sep 2021 at 18:06, William Chan william@wchan.hk wrote:
Hi,
- I must say that, for those who were desysopped, there are very clear
evidence and feelings from Hong Kong editors that the elections that empowered them to the positions they got came from rigged elections with canvassing being observed but never dealt due to acts to deal with them being claimed as outright hostility against the users in China. 2. I wrote the August 2019 piece. I'm not banned, I'm 1233. [1] 3. There were accounts which those admin accounts being shared upon non-admins (I don't think, imo, even account sharing between admins is right at all) 4. The Chinese community is in standstill after 2019. 5. It seems to be a preliminary conclusion of events that lead to all zhwp Checkusers deprived of such checkuser right. 6. I really hope for a global discussion, but a November 2017 discussion (initiated my me) led to nothing, then I think there's an ongoing RFC that didn't get much attention too. 7. I am quite confident that SWAN will discuss this issue and a larger open office hour is coming. 8. IMO, Techyan and Walter Grassroot deserved this. 9. Even outright fascism propaganda can't be dealt with internally till WMF g-lock [2] 10. Yes, if you get into a deeper dive on editors, you will find large, half-page political announcements are on userpages. 11. The worst part of those discussions are within QQ, off wiki plots against the safety of active, dissident (in terms of Communist party leadership) editors. 12. They did all the hostility since 2015 [3]
Regards, William Chan
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 17:43, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
(For those trying to play catch-up on the Wikipedia-in-China issue, I recommend diving into some old Signpost archives: [1] ("The BBC looks at Chinese government editing"), [2] ("Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars"), [3] ("Community View: Observations from the mainland"), [4] ("Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong"), and maybe [5] ("Chinese man detained and penalized for reading Wikipedia") and [6] ("China and the Chinese Wikipedia"). Note that the author of the community view piece and the subject of the special report, User:Techyan and User:Walter_Grassroot respectively, are both among those banned in this action. I have not found sources covering the more recent events relating to the canvassing policy.)
I'm having a difficult time understanding the notice, particularly which parts are relating to the NDA change and which are relating to the more recent actions. If I am understanding correctly, the NDA change:
- was prompted by credible threats against contributors,
- involved risks pertaining to private data being taken by hostile
entities,
- could not be communicated in advance even to stewards without
creating serious risks.
Meanwhile, regarding the bans and desysoppings:
- The message vaguely implies, but does not state, that "credible
threats to [Chinese users'] safety" were relevant to this decision.
- A second justification is similarly implied: That the actions were
necessary to avoid community capture/infiltration on zhwiki, presumably by the government of the PRC. Particularly highlighted issues of relevance to this are canvassing and fraud, presumably for community manipulation.
- Some relevant information on this cannot be revealed publicly
("limits to what we can reveal").
Maggie has stated on-wiki that those desysopped will be permitted to run for adminship again [7], while the WMF will "monitor the integrity of elections for those seeking sysop rights again (after this action) until we are able to help the local community adopt a more secure system." I am fairly confident that, if the desysoppings were necessary to avoid actual harm (that is, if there was a threat to safety from those users holding advanced rights), the WMF would not allow the restoring of those rights. Maggie's on-list response to Yaroslav mentioning desysoppings of those "whose behavior has been problematic in relation largely to canvassing or demonstrated abuse of their roles" seems to further support that this was not about harm.
The canvassing rationale for the desysoppings (and possibly for some of the bans, if all seven were not for the same reasons) is not sufficient to justify this action by the WMF; preventing local canvassing is not within the T&S's remit. This may not have been the actual rationale (per "limits to what we can reveal"), but there are clear indications that it was, per the posts.
This decision may have needed to be made. The decision also might not have been the WMF's decision to make.
Outside of specific limited situations, desysoppings are decisions made by volunteers. It is possible that circumstances have made functioning local discussion impossible, in which case a global discussion could take place. If necessary secrecy of certain information makes public global discussion unable to independently provide judgement, it could fall to the stewards to assist. Unless this situation relates to one of the responsibilities that the community has delegated to T&S, at no point does this fall to them.
While the lack of disclosure makes it impossible to be sure, it looks quite likely to me that the WMF has acted inappropriately in desysopping these users.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/In_foc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Interv... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-10-31/Commun... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-07-25/Specia... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-11-01/In_the... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2019-08-30/Commun... [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WMFOffice#Recent_desysops
בתאריך יום ב׳, 13 בספט׳ 2021 ב-12:15 מאת Maggie Dennis < mdennis@wikimedia.org>:
(on-wiki: ; Google translated notice that there is a professional Chinese translation of the email below - 中文翻譯見下文)
Hello, everyone.
I’m Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability.[1] I’m reaching out to you today to talk about a series of actions the Foundation has recently taken to protect communities across the globe.
I apologize in advance for the length and the ambiguity in certain areas. These are complicated issues, and I will try to summarize a lot of what may be unfamiliar information to some of you succinctly. I will answer questions to the best of my ability within safety parameters, and I will be hosting an office hour in a few weeks where I can discuss these issues in more depth. We’re currently getting that set up in regards to availability of support staff and will announce it on Wikimedia-L and Meta as soon as that information is prepared.
Many of you are already aware of recent changes that the Foundation has made to its NDA policy. These changes have been discussed on Meta, and I won’t reiterate all of our disclosures there,[2] but I will briefly summarize that due to credible information of threat, the Foundation has modified its approach to accepting “non-disclosure agreements” from individuals. The security risk relates to information about infiltration of Wikimedia systems, including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence. We could not pre-announce this action, even to our most trusted community partner groups (like the stewards), without fear of triggering the risk to which we’d been alerted. We restricted access to these tools immediately in the jurisdictions of concern, while working with impacted users to determine if the risk applied to them.
I want to pause to emphasize that we do not mean to accuse any specific individual whose access was restricted by that policy change of bad intent. Infiltration can occur through multiple mechanisms. What we have seen in our own movement includes not only people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda contrary to open knowledge goals, but also individuals who have become vulnerable to exploitation and harm by external groups because they are already trusted insiders. This policy primarily served to address the latter risk, to reduce the likelihood of recruitment or (worse) extortion. We believe that some of the individuals impacted by this policy change were also themselves in danger, not only the people whose personal information they could have been forced to access.
Today, the Foundation has rolled out a second phase of addressing infiltration concerns, which has resulted in sweeping actions in one of the two currently affected jurisdictions. We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China.[3] We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.
When it comes to office actions, the Wikimedia Foundation typically defaults to little public communication, but this case is unprecedented in scope and nature. While there remain limits to what we can reveal in order to protect the safety and privacy of users in that country and in that unrecognized group, I want to acknowledge that this action is a radical one and that this decision was not easily made. We struggled with not wanting to discourage and destroy the efforts of good faith users in China who have worked so hard to fight for free and open knowledge, including some of those involved in this group. We do not want them to fear that their contributions are unwelcome. We also could not risk exposing them to danger by doing nothing to protect them after we became aware of credible threats to their safety.
While some time ago we limited the exposure of personal information to users in mainland China, we know that there has been the kind of infiltration we describe above in the project. And we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response.
I take it as both a triumph and a challenge that in the years of my own involvement I have seen Wikimedia go from a suspect non-mainstream website to a highly trusted and widely relied upon source across the world. When I first started editing the projects in about 2007, I already believed Wikimedia had the capacity to be one of the greatest achievements of the world--collective knowledge, at your fingertips. What an amazing gesture of goodwill on the part of all of its many editors. It didn’t take me long after I started editing to realize how entrenched the battles could be over how to present information and how that can be exploited to achieve specific ends. I’m not trying to suggest that I was astonishingly prescient; I think there were many who realized that risk long before I stumbled naively on the scene. I do think that the risk is greater than ever now, when Wikimedia projects are widely trusted, and when the stakes are so high for organized efforts to control the information they share.
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4] We have also recently staffed a human rights team to deal with urgent threats to the human rights of communities across the group as a result of such organized efforts to control information. The situation we are dealing with today has shown me how much we need as a movement to grapple with the hard questions of how we remain open to editing by anyone, anywhere, while ensuring that individuals who take us up on that offer are not harmed by those who want to silence them.
With respect to the desysopping, we hope to connect with the international Chinese language community in the near future to talk about approaches to elections that avoid the risk of project capture and ensure that people are and feel safe contributing to the Chinese language Wikipedia. We need to make sure that the community can hold fair elections, without canvassing or fraud. We hope that helping to establish such a fair approach to elections will allow us to reinstate CheckUser rights in time.
I want to close this email by noting that I am personally deeply sorry to those of you for whom this will be a shock. This will undoubtedly include those who wonder if they should fear that their personal information has been exposed (we do not believe so; we believe we acted in time to prevent that) and also those who fear that further such bold action is in the works which may disrupt them and their work and their communities (at this point, with this action, we believe the identified risks have been contained in the short to medium term). I am also truly sorry to those communities who have been uneasy in the shadow of such threats for some time. The Foundation continues to build our capacity to support every community that wants or needs its support - and we are still learning how to do so well when we do. One of the key areas we seek improvement is in our ability to understand our human rights impact and in our ability to address those challenges. You have not had the service you’ve deserved. We can’t fix things immediately, but we are working to improve, actively, intentionally, and with focus.
To the 4,000 active Chinese language Wikimedians distributed across the world and serving readers in multiple continents,[5][6] I would like to communicate my sorrow and regret. I want to assure you that we will do better. The work you do in sharing knowledge to Chinese readers everywhere has great meaning, and we are committed to supporting you in doing this work into the future, with the tools you need to succeed in a safe, secure, and productive environment.
Again, I will answer what questions I can, also relying on the support of others in Legal and perhaps beyond. We’re setting up a page on Meta to talk, and I will be hosting an office hour in coming weeks.
Best regards, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
大家好
我是 Maggie Dennis, 维基媒体基金会社团及延续性的领导。[1] 今天我想和大家分享维基媒体基金会在全球保护社团采取的一系列办事行动。
我在这里先向大家说声对不起。这封信会比较长，有些方面也会比较歧义。这些事的确比较复杂，但我会尽量简化但明确的把这些资料和大家分享。我会在安全范围内尽我所能的回答问题，我也会在未来的几个星期主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。我们正在设置有关于人力资源上的问题并会在 Wikimedia-L 和 Meta 发布讯息。
相信大家已经知道基金会在几周前对 NDA 政策的改变。这些改变已经在 Meta 讨论过了，我也不必在这里重申，[2]但让我在这里简要地说明。基金会收到了有关各人威胁的可信消息并调整了接受各人“non-disclosure agreements”的姿态。这个安全风险是有关于浸入及索取基金会的系统，也包括取数个人识别资料和选举管理机构的影响。我们不能预先宣布这新的策略即使是我们最信任的团体 (stewards), 为了不触发这些风险。我们在受影响的区域限制了使用权并且和受影响的使用者讨论风险对它们的影响。
我想在这里强调不是某个受影响的人藏了恶意而是浸入发生可以有很多种。我们知道在维基百科里有不良角色和社团迎合为了就是取数和推进反开放知识的目标这也包括某人受了不良角色的影响而屈服因为他们已经是认可的知情人。这策略改变的目的是为了减少后者的风险，招募或更严重的敲诈勒索。我们相信有些受影响的用户自己有以上的风险而不限制与有可能被逼盗用有个人资料使用者。
今天，维基媒体基金会在两个受影响的区域之一，推出了第二阶段寻址浸入风险的扫荡行动。经过了深入调查非附属团体 Wikimedians of Mainland China 的活动， 我们禁止了七个用户和删除了十二个管理员权限。[3] 我们还联系了一些其他编辑，解释了有关拉票指南和人肉政策的解释，，并要求它们调整这些行为。
有关于办事行动维基媒体基金会通常不会向外公开但这个案件的范围和性质是前所未有的。在安全和隐私的范围内我们不能透露在非附属团体的这些用户，但我想承认这行动是激进的，而且做出这一决定并不容易。 我们努力地不想阻止和破坏中文真诚用户的努力，他们为自由和开放的知识而努力奋斗，包括参与该群体的一些人。我们也不想让真诚的用户觉得不实欢迎，当我们收到了对它们安全可信的威胁，我们也不能冒险采取任何措施保护他们，从而使他们面临危险。
一些时间前， 我们限制了在中国用户的个人资料暴露，也知道在中文维基百科有相似的浸入。我们也确认了有些用户为某些因故而受了身体伤害。我们别无选者必须快速做回应。
当我回顾我在维基媒体的这些年，从一个非主流的网站转变成一个全求都信任的线上百科全书，我把这个案件当作是一个挑战和胜利。 在2007年当我钢开始改编的时候我已经相信维基媒体会是全球最大成就之一， 那就是集体知识，在手指上。 不用多久时间，我就发现了许多编辑人员善意的姿态和那些用来呈现资料角度的战争。我不是在暗示我有预见性的警告，我觉得很多用户在我参与前就知道这事会发生。我不认为这个风险在这个时候比较高，当维基媒体的项目收到这么庞大的信任，还有组织的努力来控制我们分享的知识。
团体“占领” 是一个真是的风险。多年已来，基金会意识到的克罗地亚维基百科面临的挑战。我们也有进十年的文档。基金会在最近设立了虚假信息团队，但是我们还在评估克罗地亚维基百科的问题。这些问题是基金会较早前聘请的承包商来帮我们理解原因和解决办法。[4] 为了应付团体组织的资料控制，我们也设立了一组人权团队来应对紧急人权危机。我们惊天所免领的问题也让我看到了我们所需要的来应付这些困难问题，像是如何继续开放编辑给每个人，在每个地方但能够确保我们的用户在编辑中受到被封的威胁下感到安全。
在管理员权限，我们希望能够与国际华语群体链接来参与及讨论选举的方向为了避免团体占领也绕着不知让中文维基百科的用户感到安全也绝对是安全。 我们也必须确认中文项目的用户可以举办公平的选举，没有拉票或欺诈。 我们希望建设这些公平的法则来维持选举能够让我们在未来恢复 CheckUser 权利.
我想在结束这封电子邮件时指出，我个人对你们中的那些感到震惊的人深表歉意。这无疑将包括那些想知道他们是否应该担心他们的个人信息被暴露的人（我们不这么认为；我们相信我们及时采取了行动以防止这种情况发生）以及那些担心进一步采取这种大胆行动的人可能会扰乱他们及其工作和社区（此时，通过这一行动，我们相信已识别的风险已在中短期内得到控制）。我也对那些在这种威胁的阴影下一段时间感到不安的社区深表歉意。基金会继续建设我们的能力，以支持每个想要或需要其支持的社区我们仍在学习如何在我们这样做的时候做得很好。我们寻求改进的关键领域之一是了解我们的人权影响的能力以及我们应对这些挑战的能力。你没有得到你应得的服务。我们无法立即解决问题，但我们正在积极、有意识地、专注地努力改进。
向分布在世界各地、服务于多个大洲的读者的4000名活跃中文维基人，[5][6]我想传达我的悲伤和遗憾。我想向你保证，我们会做得更好。您为世界各地的中文读者分享知识所做的工作意义重大，我们致力于支持您在未来开展这项工作，并提供您在安全、可靠和高效的环境中取得成功所需的工具。
同样，我将回答我能回答的问题，也依赖于法律领域甚至其他领域的其他人的支持。我们正在 Meta 上建立一个页面来讨论，我将在未来几周内主办 office hour 在和大家更详细的研讨。
此致, Maggie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Access_to_nonpublic_personal_data_polic... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinformation_Assessment... [5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org [6] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/zh.wikipedia.org/reading/page-views-by-country...
-- Maggie Dennis She/her/hers Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Hello Maggie,
First of all, as others have pointed out, this English-Chinese translation is horrendous. I am pretty certain even Google translate wouldn't contain this much of misused characters. Please revise this translation.
Second, you have made some very serious allegations in this statement but with little substantiating evidence of any sort. I do not know what kind of organizational and administrative power Wikimedia Foundation has over the Wikipedia community, regional communities, and others; but even if the power demonstrated in this statement is correctly vetted, there is still tremendous burden of proof to explain this action. Otherwise this statement would be simply another misguided political attempt in a community that it does not belong, as well as further damaging the communities of Wikimedians in a region that really should have received much more support in order to extend the reach of free knowledge.
Hello ytcontact07
It is just like evacuating a village before a typhoon hits, or a volcano erupts. It's going to inconvenience a few people but it's better than doing nothing. Some people may not return to the village but the villagers were saved and they'll be ready if it happens again even taking proactive steps beforehand.
On Wed, 15 Sept 2021 at 16:19, ytcontact07@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Maggie,
First of all, as others have pointed out, this English-Chinese translation is horrendous. I am pretty certain even Google translate wouldn't contain this much of misused characters. Please revise this translation.
Second, you have made some very serious allegations in this statement but with little substantiating evidence of any sort. I do not know what kind of organizational and administrative power Wikimedia Foundation has over the Wikipedia community, regional communities, and others; but even if the power demonstrated in this statement is correctly vetted, there is still tremendous burden of proof to explain this action. Otherwise this statement would be simply another misguided political attempt in a community that it does not belong, as well as further damaging the communities of Wikimedians in a region that really should have received much more support in order to extend the reach of free knowledge. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello ytcontact07,
Maggie has apologised for the translation in this thread and a better translation has now been provided on meta Wiki ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement/zh ).
The translation concerns have been addressed and I believe they would be more careful in the future. It's unhelpful to continue to flog a dead horse.
Regards
Isaac
On Wed, 15 Sep 2021, 10:18 Gnangarra, gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
Hello ytcontact07
It is just like evacuating a village before a typhoon hits, or a volcano erupts. It's going to inconvenience a few people but it's better than doing nothing. Some people may not return to the village but the villagers were saved and they'll be ready if it happens again even taking proactive steps beforehand.
On Wed, 15 Sept 2021 at 16:19, ytcontact07@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Maggie,
First of all, as others have pointed out, this English-Chinese translation is horrendous. I am pretty certain even Google translate wouldn't contain this much of misused characters. Please revise this translation.
Second, you have made some very serious allegations in this statement but with little substantiating evidence of any sort. I do not know what kind of organizational and administrative power Wikimedia Foundation has over the Wikipedia community, regional communities, and others; but even if the power demonstrated in this statement is correctly vetted, there is still tremendous burden of proof to explain this action. Otherwise this statement would be simply another misguided political attempt in a community that it does not belong, as well as further damaging the communities of Wikimedians in a region that really should have received much more support in order to extend the reach of free knowledge. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- GN.
2021**Celebrating 20 years of Wikipedia*
Wikimania: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gnangarra Noongarpedia: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nys/Main_Page My print shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/Gnangarra/shop?asc=u
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On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:16 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4]
Dear Maggie - thank you for writing this, but I fear it can be wrongly interpreted *(already did to a few people who got in touch) as it was worded in a non/explicit way. I would like to point that:
#1 both WMF and Wikimedians were aware of issues with HR Wikipedia and nothing has been done for a decade, aside from handful last year to remove 4 of right-wing admins*(Wiktionary and Wikisource, are still with rightwing admin control)... WMF actions are sadly post-festum and with a very limited scope.
#2 HR was not abducted by some well organized and resourced entity, but by handful of extreme rightwingers (one unmerried couple + their closest neo-nazi friend and 3 submissive mediocrats...including 40+ proven but likely 60+ sock puppets) with silent and passive conservative 'center' majority of woters.
#3 an external researcher contractor was not really reviewing the full project, but mainly content *(very little on social dynamics and capacities) and in doing so failed to understand the challenges of under-resourced and asocial 'community'... This is why solutions suggested in findings included impossible language and project merges, rather than anything that would enable self-governance, expansion of the pool of contributors and sustainable and ambitious work *(like in Serbia for example).
Hope with these distinctions it is more obvious the difference between the two and if /how/when/where the learning is applicable or not...
Thank you for your professional work.
Best Z. Blace
Željko,
Thanks for your observations.
How do you feel things are developing in the Croatian Wikipedia now? What has (or hasn't) happened since the report was published?
Best, Andreas
On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 11:26 AM Željko Blaće zblace@mi2.hr wrote:
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:16 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4]
Dear Maggie - thank you for writing this, but I fear it can be wrongly interpreted *(already did to a few people who got in touch) as it was worded in a non/explicit way. I would like to point that:
#1 both WMF and Wikimedians were aware of issues with HR Wikipedia and nothing has been done for a decade, aside from handful last year to remove 4 of right-wing admins*(Wiktionary and Wikisource, are still with rightwing admin control)... WMF actions are sadly post-festum and with a very limited scope.
#2 HR was not abducted by some well organized and resourced entity, but by handful of extreme rightwingers (one unmerried couple + their closest neo-nazi friend and 3 submissive mediocrats...including 40+ proven but likely 60+ sock puppets) with silent and passive conservative 'center' majority of woters.
#3 an external researcher contractor was not really reviewing the full project, but mainly content *(very little on social dynamics and capacities) and in doing so failed to understand the challenges of under-resourced and asocial 'community'... This is why solutions suggested in findings included impossible language and project merges, rather than anything that would enable self-governance, expansion of the pool of contributors and sustainable and ambitious work *(like in Serbia for example).
Hope with these distinctions it is more obvious the difference between the two and if /how/when/where the learning is applicable or not...
Thank you for your professional work.
Best Z. Blace _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 10:12 PM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Željko,
Thanks for your observations.
Andreas - I really wish these were my personal observations and reality is better. It is not.
Many (if not majority) of HR Wikipedia editors who look at this have noticed that we were not approached in any way ahead, during or after the research (literally we do not know if anyone was interviewed by the researcher as claimed, as not one person confirmed this still). This is fairly disappointing and hard to imagine why.
Whoever thinks that fixing content of smaller Wikipedias is enough, without fixing the relations, resources and establishing good practices of community, is likely just focused on dodging bad PR and would not care for the Wikimedia as a whole in its full complexity.
How do you feel things are developing in the Croatian Wikipedia now?
I think very very slowly moving forward. Considering the burnouts in the past decade, exhausting work in 2020, distrust atmosphere among current contributors and lack of capacities in the community, I am not too surprised. Year ago I had a short chat with Asaf about possibilities for capacity development in HR and sadly WMF just opted then for a more specialized online training courses as a focus, so I do not expect this will change much or quickly on WMF side...
My hopes and focus is now with CEE HUB, individual and informal efforts, but it is an uphill (technocratic) struggle to get support for too many things.
What has (or hasn't) happened since the report was published?
There was no quality discussion of collaborating across projects. There was no influx of new users to HR. Few of us make very strong efforts right now. There was also no return of expert users that burned out in the past decade. Maybe they await an official apology or something more specific from Wikimedia as a reassurance that this will not happen again and technocratic excuses for passivity will never be the norm? I was not part of this generation - just guessing. There was no follow up step by WMF to explain what, why and how to maybe act in future in regards to HR.
Maybe we really were just a case study of 'capture' situation...lets see if the new CEO is more eager to de-center focus and hopefully resources, as well as to work with and for new generations (and other axes of difference) of potential Wikimedia contributors.
Best, Z. Blace
Best, Andreas
On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 11:26 AM Željko Blaće zblace@mi2.hr wrote:
On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 6:16 PM Maggie Dennis mdennis@wikimedia.org wrote:
Community “capture” is a real and present threat. For years, the movement has been widely aware of challenges in the Croatian Wikipedia, with documentation going back nearly a decade. The Foundation recently set up a disinformation team, which is still finding its footing and assessing the problem, but which began by contracting an external researcher to review that project and the challenges and help us understand potential causes and solutions for such situations.[4]
Dear Maggie - thank you for writing this, but I fear it can be wrongly interpreted *(already did to a few people who got in touch) as it was worded in a non/explicit way. I would like to point that:
#1 both WMF and Wikimedians were aware of issues with HR Wikipedia and nothing has been done for a decade, aside from handful last year to remove 4 of right-wing admins*(Wiktionary and Wikisource, are still with rightwing admin control)... WMF actions are sadly post-festum and with a very limited scope.
#2 HR was not abducted by some well organized and resourced entity, but by handful of extreme rightwingers (one unmerried couple + their closest neo-nazi friend and 3 submissive mediocrats...including 40+ proven but likely 60+ sock puppets) with silent and passive conservative 'center' majority of woters.
#3 an external researcher contractor was not really reviewing the full project, but mainly content *(very little on social dynamics and capacities) and in doing so failed to understand the challenges of under-resourced and asocial 'community'... This is why solutions suggested in findings included impossible language and project merges, rather than anything that would enable self-governance, expansion of the pool of contributors and sustainable and ambitious work *(like in Serbia for example).
Hope with these distinctions it is more obvious the difference between the two and if /how/when/where the learning is applicable or not...
Thank you for your professional work.
Best Z. Blace _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hello, all.
First, Yiufamily, sorry for not defining that term! An "office hour" is an informal chat (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours) - I've been doing these about once a quarter with a twist, as they are video calls that are broadcast afterwards with notes of what was discussed. You can read more here. ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resilience_and_Sustainability#Offi... )
We're not sure when we will be able to do it. Now that our incoming CEO has been announced, I can say that we are trying to coordinate both that meeting and parts of her listening tour, and I want to make sure that I do not overwhelm anyone - staff who support these events or community who attend them. That said, right now we are hoping for October 7th.
I know not everyone will be able to attend in person. We will be accepting questions in advance. Details will be out as soon as the date is confirmed.
I also want to note that I have answered a few more questions here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Office_actions/September_2021_statement
Best, Maggie
On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 8:32 AM yiufamily.hh@gmail.com wrote:
What does "Office Hour" means? and when will it be hosted? _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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