Policy:Office actions

This page is an official policy on the English Wikipedia. It was put forth by Jimbo Wales as a necessary policy for the running of Wikipedia at the Foundation level. If you wish to propose changes, please talk to him.

Office Actions is an official policy created by Jimbo Wales, President of the Wikimedia Foundation. The policy allows Danny Wool to temporarily protect or modify an article. Such actions are performed for a variety of issues, including prevention of potential legal problems, removal of libel, and responding to verifiability issues and other formal complaints. Danny has stated that he'll use a separate account, User:Dannyisme, when acting in his offical capacity. Undoing an Office action will almost always result in an instant block and probably desysoping. If you are unsure whether an action by User:Dannyisme or User:Danny is performed under this policy, contact him privately to confirm.

When an article previously closed to editors under an Office action is conditionally re-opened to editing in order to meet standard Wikipedia guidelines on NPOV and attribution, the template {{Reset}} will be placed on the interim article and the talk page will be blanked. This does not remove the status of Office protection from the page and the requirements set out in the header must be followed by all subsequent editors.

Danny Wool is a Steward, elected Administrator on the English Wikipedia, and a longtime Wikipedian. He is in charge of the Wikimedia Foundation Grants Committee and is one of three paid Foundation employees. Danny deals with some of the communication from dissatisfied organisations and people, and does his best to protect the interests of the Foundation in conjunction with Brad Patrick, legal counsel to the Foundation.

Original message

Please note that this is official policy, and reverting a WP:OFFICE may be grounds for blocking. I do not recommend that admins block for this, I'm just saying... don't revert a WP:OFFICE edit unless and until you've asked and know what you are doing. There may at times be legal reasons for this.

The Wikimedia Foundation receives an increasingly large number of phone calls and emails from people who are upset about various things on the site. Sometimes these complaints are valid; more often they are not. However, in most cases, even with the invalid complaints, there is a short-term action which can and should be taken as a courtesy in order to soothe feelings and build a better encyclopedia in the long run.

A typical example: someone creates a vanity bio in Wikipedia, which is quickly nominated for deletion. The comments which ensue, even when they are completely courteous, can hurt the feelings of the person being discussed. The sort of person who is vain enough to create an autobiography in Wikipedia is also the sort of person who doesn't take well to being described as 'non-notable'.

When such people call the office, it can be the best approach all around for us to simply speedy the article, blank the deletion discussion, and all get on with our lives. This quick action is in no way meant to override or replace the process of community consensus. There is still plenty of time, and there are still plenty of places, for the community to discuss and replace articles in due course.

I have created this page for Danny to use to signify why he is deleting or blanking something per my authorization. This does not signify any authoritarian top-down action without approval, but rather signifies a temporary action to allow us to be kind while we sort out the encyclopedic way forward.

If this works out, I may authorize other people to use it as well (people handling OTRS email queues, people on the legal team, etc.)--Jimbo Wales 21:43, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Pages under protection

• Full protection
  The following pages are currently under full Office protection and must not be edited by anyone not explicitly authorised to do so.
  • Crystal Gail Mangum
  • Bob Cornuke

• Semiprotection
  The following pages are currently under Office protection but conditionally open to editors. The protection status must not be changed by anyone not explicitly authorised to do so. The requirements set out in the header must be followed by all subsequent editors.
  • Christopher Ruddy
  • NewsMax.com

All other pages may be unprotected as per normal adminstrative practice.

See also

• Category:Office protected

External links

Mailing list messages

• [WikiEN-l] I am Danny Danny says:

I thought I would introduce myself for those who do not know me, and tell you a little bit about what I do. My name is Danny Wool [...] my job is the first level of triage. In most cases, I will call or email our attorney and provide him with as much information as I can, including name, phone number, contact info, etc. He then responds accordingly, sometimes with instructions for me as to what should happen next.

• [WikiEN-l] Phone calls Danny says:

I spend at least one-third of my time just answering the calls. It is very time consuming, and they come in at all hours of the day, interrupting what I am otherwise doing (donor management, for instance). I CANNOT spend another one-third or more of my time explaining every phone call to the community.

• [WikiEN-l] Apology Jimbo Wales says:

1. This policy merely extends longstanding practice, previously not questioned, because I did it myself.
2. Nothing about this policy changes anything about our NPOV policies for any article in Wikipedia. WP:OFFICE in no way implies that some articles or some people are given any special treatment in the handling of their biography.
3. WP:OFFICE is intended to be used only temporarily as a courtesy in certain highly delimited circumstances. In some cases, this will be cases involving a threat of legal action, but in other cases it may be simply as a courtesy while we sort something out.
4. In all cases, we will communicate the maximum possible information in the shortest possible time period, subject to legal constraints and also time constraints.
5. Danny has, in my own opinion, formed in long experience, excellent judgment.
6. In some cases so far, WP:OFFICE was used for a longer period than I would have liked, due to various circumstances. I'm sorry about that. However, I remind everyone that Assume Good Faith is absolutely important to our community.

• [WikiEN-l] Libel chill Jimbo Wales says:

1. WP:OFFICE is always temporary, an emergency action, an action of goodwill, thus far used exclusively (or almost exclusively) for biographies of living persons. The issue is NOT "a tradeoff between NPOV and risk of being sued".
2. Let me repeat that, the issue is NOT "a tradeoff between NPOV and risk of being used". The issue is responding quickly and effectively to cases where we have a very strong indication from someone that an article is egregiously in violation of NPOV.
3. If the topic is Carbon Tetrachloride and we receive a strong complaint that the article is biased, then sofixit can be a fine response. If the topic is a real live human being about whom someone has written something egregiously false or mean spirited, and the person calls up in hysterics, then the right answer is: stub and rebuild with strong verification. The right answer is: temporary protection of a safe version while good editors take the time to figure out what the heck is going on.
4. It is very deeply confused to view WP:OFFICE as some kind of rollback of the neutrality policy. It is a means of working towards neutrality. It is the morally right thing to do when we are faced with a serious issue.
5. Since WP:OFFICE is done publicly and under intense scrutiny from the community and the external world, I hardly see any need for a special narrow committee to be specifically tasked with overseeing it.
6. What should people do when they see a WP:OFFICE action? Treat it as a call for attention from the absolute best within ourselves, the absolute best within our community. Here we have an article which has gone horribly wrong in some way, and sometimes it can be a mystery as to what exactly the problem is. Why is someone upset? Which claim in the article is false or overstated or biased or hostile? I think dozens of people should swoop in and start working really hard on a temp version (usualy protected or semi-protected, depending on the exact nature of the situation), with extreme hardcore attention paid to sourcing, to neutral phrasing, etc.
7. In this way, WP:OFFICE articles can become models of good behavior by Wikipedia, can show the world how seriously we take our mission, our responsibility.