Commons talk:Harassment

Proposal: remove exceptions for COI and paid editing under "Posting of personal information"

Having been copied from English Wikipedia, this new policy has some exceptions that don't really make sense here. Notably, Commons has a policy of not requiring disclosure of paid editing and no policy on conflicts of interest (COI), so it's unnecessary to have exemptions from the harassment policy to allow people to report these. So I propose that the following sentences be removed: "There are job posting sites where employers publicly post advertisements to recruit paid Wikimedia Commons editors. Linking to such an ad in a forum is not a violation of this policy. Also, if individuals have identified themselves without redacting or having it oversighted, such information can be used for discussions of conflict of interest (COI) in appropriate forums. If redacted or oversighted personally identifying material is important to the COI discussion, then it should be emailed privately to an administrator—but not repeated on Wikimedia Commons: it will be sufficient to say that the editor in question has a COI and the information has been emailed to the appropriate administrative authority. Issues involving private personal information (of anyone) could also be referred by email to a member of the functionaries team." Similarly, the words "conflict of interest or paid editing, in the previous paragraph should be removed. Would there be agreement to do that? --bjh21 (talk) 13:12, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would keep this but change it from investigation of COI to investigations of possible copyright violations. GPSLeo (talk) 13:52, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should have some kind of exception for reporting copyright violations, but I think it would be better written from scratch rather than by modifying enwiki's COI processes. Not to mention, the above text is pretty badly written. We can do better. I might suggest something once this proposal passes or fails. --bjh21 (talk) 09:46, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Contacting administrators privately

Commons:Harassment#Off-wiki harassment says "Users who experience inappropriate off-wiki contact should report occurrences privately to any administrator." Did all Commons administrators here sign up for this? It might actually be a good idea to do so, but I haven't seen it discussed as a well-established sysop duty in places like RFA. (But I can imagine such practice might exist while not being well known.) whym (talk) 10:19, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For on-wiki cases it is already a common practice to contact an admin you know and trust directly through non public channels in such cases and even more in cases of accidentally published private information. I think this is also the way to go for harassment via email. Only for offline events Commons admins are usually not the correct one to address. For offline events there are the organisers of the event or the T&S team. GPSLeo (talk) 13:20, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like we can just point readers to m:Friendly space policies for offline issues. Commons could have its own guidance on some Commons specific issues (unwanted disclosure of location information comes to my mind), but I don't think we have established one for now. whym (talk) 10:48, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that this section says that regular users are not expected to receive private communication from other users by default, but administrators are expected to do so. Don't we have to add a few words about that in Commons:Administrators, and inform (or remind?) existing administrators? I'm not sure unwritten agreement is good enough for this. whym (talk) 10:56, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think Commons:Guide to adminship adequately covers the expectation that admins will be able to receive email. Notably, it says "Make sure you have enabled email in your preferences" and "Have your email confirmed, so blocked users can contact you". I expect the guide will be updated to specifically cover private harassment reports once admins have some experience of them. --bjh21 (talk) 13:16, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Editors do not own their files"?

What possibly can this mean where it says "Editors do not own their files"? If I upload a file under a CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, I continue to own copyright on that file. I continue to have the right to be attributed if it is reused, or if derivatives are made. Commons itself certainly "owns" nothing by hosting it. We have a pretty strong statement in COM:OVERWRITE that there are few circumstances should be overwriting it with significant changes without my consent. So what exactly is it that this asserts I don't "own"? - Jmabel ! talk 18:39, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've slightly boldly updated the words "not own" to link to Commons:Ownership of pages and files rather than Commons:Licensing, which I think provides a rather better indication of what is meant. On the other hand, that page also disagrees with COM:OVERWRITE, so possibly it needs some work too. --bjh21 (talk) 20:45, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing there says the copyright-holder does not own the contents of the file. In fact, quite the opposite, in that it emphasizes the importance of keeping the original version in the file history.
I would add another thing I believe the copyright-holder "owns": the attribution that goes with a CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, or similar license. No one else is entitled to say something like "Oh, no, it's OK if you just credit Wikmedia Commons."
Yes, there are parts of Commons:Ownership of pages and files that absolutely contradict COM:OVERWRITE. I'd say COM:OVERWRITE is far closer to the policy we enforce, and Commons:Ownership of pages and files should change accordingly. I'll bring that to the Village pump. - Jmabel ! talk 21:58, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Banning

Commons:Harassment talks about banning twice. Do we have banning? It looks like we don't have en:Wikipedia:Banning policy. Is it close to something written in Commons:Blocking policy? (Maybe "controversial blocks"?) whym (talk) 11:59, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Whym: As far as I know, Commons has no community ban process, so I'd suggest just removing mentions of bans. Concretely, that would be removing "and in extreme cases, banning" and "or being subjected to a community ban". --bjh21 (talk) 20:15, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's been over a week an no-one has objected to the obvious fix, so I've updated the policy accordingly. Thank you Whym for spotting the problem! --bjh21 (talk) 22:39, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]