This essay is about dealing with offsite harassment. The intention is to explore the possibilities for a consensus position on how to deal with such links in order to protect editors from harassment, keep Wikipedia safe to document contentious concepts, while preserving the ability to debate legitimate criticism and good faith efforts by non-members of the Wikipedia community, to improve the encyclopaedia.

It is an extension of the rationale that lies behind Revert, Block, Ignore, Wikipedia:Deny recognition and Wikipedia:Don't feed the trolls; it recognises that some things may be added in good faith, even though they are inappropriate.

Harassment is a complex problem. This is not a simple solution. Some of the views on external links are excessively simplistic and lack nuance. Hopefully this does not fall into that trap.

Background

Wikipedia is the top .org site on the internet, one of the top ten sites overall, probably the largest single content site, and is increasingly cited as a reference. Neutrality and verifiability are core policies.

Wikipedia does not shy from documenting contentious subjects. At our best, we can do this very well. Our coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been praised by independent sources as exemplifying the Wikipedia ideal of documenting all significant views, in proportion, and documenting the basis of contention in neutral terms.

Some editors find that the Wikipedia article on a given subject is not acceptable from their point of view, even though it may represent a consensus position formed after long and detailed debate. Proponents of one or other side of a debate may fall prey to a number of failings, including perceiving their own bias as neutrality, falsely perceiving that neutrality is the average between two positions (the "false middle" fallacy), ascribing motives, and considering that opposition to their proposed edits equates to support for the opposite view. Most editors are able to rise above this, but some are unable to work in a collegiate manner, and the worst of these may end up being excluded under Wikipedia's banning policy.

There is a tendency for some groups in particular to harass those they perceive as opponents. In the case of Wikipedia articles, the definition of opponent has in several cases included those who enforce Wikipedia's policy of neutrality, and resist attempts to skew content to be more overtly favourable to one side of an issue. Several victims of such harassment have no provable connection to either side of the external conflict, and have been cast by one side or the other as opponents as a result of attempting to enforce core policy. This is particularly unacceptable.

The bigger Wikipedia gets as a site, the higher the stakes, and the more likely such disputes are to escalate beyond mere name-calling into concerted attempts at harassment. Wikipedia has an absolute prohibition against harassment, and very strongly discourages attacks of any sort. Such behaviour will usually result in a swift exit from the project. Wikipedia does not permit groups to bring their battles to Wikipedia.

In some cases banned users may continue a campaign of harassment on external websites. In other cases the harassment may originate there and spread to Wikipedia. Neither is acceptable. At least two arbitration cases, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Attack sites, have addressed this. At the periphery, however, there have been several good-faith attempts to enforce these findings beyond their true scope, and this has caused unnecessary drama.

Many editors feel that any links to sites which contain significant amounts of harassment, particularly privacy violations, is unacceptable. Others feel that this may risk suppressing legitimate criticism. A strong consensus exists on Wikipedia that harassment is unacceptable, and some feel that linking to harassment sites is in breach of this. Others feel that links may be appropriate to sites that contains significant harassment, provided the links are not to the harassment itself.

First and foremost, we need to keep Wikipedia as a place where it is safe for people to work to document contentious subjects in keeping with core policy. A situation where resisting attempts by one side or the other to skew content towards their point of view, results in harassment from that side, is pernicious, actively damaging to the encyclopaedia, and cannot be tolerated. This does not mean we cannot review contentious and even combative sites when considering content changes, if they have some evident authority. However, where such sites focus on personalities or on the content debate itself rather than the issues being documented, then linking is generally inappropriate.

Consensus positions

There are several areas that have widespread consensus.

• Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a social networking site, a battleground, an outlet for advocacy, a place to promote a view: WP:NOT, WP:SOAP, numerous other policies.
• Wikipedia follows a neutral point of view: WP:NPOV
• Harassment is unacceptable: WP:HARASS.
• Linking to some external content is inherently unacceptable: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Attack sites.
• Wikipedia is not a free-speech zone: WP:FREE clarifies several policies on this.
• Wikipedia reserves the right to ban any individual. Banned means that they are no longer at liberty to contribute to Wikipedia: WP:BAN.
• Wikipedia does not allow posting for and on behalf of blocked or banned editors: WP:SOCK.

Concerns

Attempts to blanket ban links to sites that contain harassment have failed to achieve consensus. Not all those opposing such policies were active members of such sites.

It is asserted by some that Wikipedia is not censored means we should not remove links to offsite criticism. This is a contentious view; that policy as written refers to the removal of images and other content which some religious or other groups find morally offensive, there is no evidence it was intended to cover meta-debate.

There is some disagreement as to what constitutes legitimate criticism. There have also been Wikipedia content disputes that have spilled over to external sites whose main focus is not harassment or criticism.

Proposed plan of action

• Banned or blocked editors are not welcome to contribute while banned or blocked. They are free to appeal banning or blocking, but may not contribute to or attempt to influence content unless and until such an appeal is successful. Links to offsite campaigns by banned or blocked editors should be removed, with an explanation, from article talk pages, and are deprecated everywhere.
• Continuing to post links to offsite advocacy by banned users may be interpreted as acting as a proxy for those banned users, and is not appropriate.
• Harassment is not welcome. Links direct to harassment of any editor, especially where that harassment is part of a campaign to advance an agenda within the content of the encyclopaedia, is unacceptable. Such links should be removed wherever they appear.
• Where the presumption against linking certain kinds of content conflicts with the goal of building a neutral encyclopaedia, for example where a credible allegation is made by a banned user of inappropriate actions by an individual, several channels are open to bring this to the attention of the community:

• If the allegation is based on cited evidence from independent reliable sources, then the independent reliable sources themselves should be referenced. An independent, neutral and factual statement of any dispute is always preferable to a partisan one.
• Wikipedia:Mailing lists, specifically WikiEN-l, which is an officially supported channel for meta-debate, and is at one remove from the content of the project, thus allowing discussion with much less risk of inflaming already tense situations.
• Email to the arbitration committee, who investigate and discuss privately or in public, as appropriate, credible and supported allegations of abuse of the project.
• OTRS, which is a back-channel open to article subjects and those affected by content issues, where independent trusted Wikipedians can review the basis of the case and make a decision as to whether, and how, it should be raised. Editors can email the OTRS queue at info-en-q@wikimedia.org.

• If an allegation is investigated and no action deemed appropriate, for example if it is found by arbitrators to be baseless, or is considered by consensus to be an unprovable conspiracy theory, editors are expected to respect that decision and get on with building the encyclopaedia. Continuing to pursue a campaign after it has been appropriately investigated may be considered disruptive.