Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard

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Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Transgender healthcare and people closed

Original announcement

• It's worth noting that the "AE participation may be restricted by an administrator" remedy applies to all AE threads, not just those relating to the GENSEX topic area. Thryduulf (talk) 09:33, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Tangential: Do these user talk page notifications normally ping every user targeted as part of a remedy every time they sent? I got, like, ten red alerts from this, one for each party sent to and two on my user talk. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:03, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

I notice that the banned users are invited to "Discuss this at...", which they can't, obviously. I know that this is not intentional but it does seem gratuitously insulting to add that invitation. DanielRigal (talk) 11:17, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Notifications were a bit odd, yeah. I (not sanctioned, party to the case) don't seem to have gotten one, but as far as I can tell all the sanctioned users have --Licks-rocks (talk) 11:30, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Interesting. I was a non-sanctioned party to the recent Article Titles and Capitalisation 2 case, and I got a talk page message about most stages of the case, including closure (and I was somehow subscribed to some of the messages posted to other party's talk pages for reasons I never got round to looking into). Thryduulf (talk) 12:38, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I'd leave a message to @Bradv, the operator of @ArbClerkBot, about this, but he seems pretty inactive. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:14, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

• I suggest that "indefinitely banned from Wikipedia" be amended to specify "English-language Wikipedia". RoySmith (talk) 11:51, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  That’s a good idea. But would people mix it up with Simple English if such were the case?

  we should post this to a more appropriate forum and not stray from the topic at hand however 176.227.41.171 (talk) 15:32, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  I think this is splitting hairs. We have a Wikipedia namespace and not an English Wikipedia namespace, and in a similar vein, it's pretty obvious that ArbCom only have remit over the wiki they're elected on/edit on/etc. Giraffer (talk) 16:02, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  As Giraffer says. It would be very odd if ArbCom started handing out bans for fr.wp, and vice versa in re the fr.wp Arbitration Committee for en.wp. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{threads critiques} 16:04, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  Never been done before. The case occurred on only English Wikipedia, therefore it covers only English Wikipedia. Doesn't need any elaboration or clarification. GoodDay (talk) 16:08, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

• I want to thank the drafters for trying out something new with the FoF for this case. I would be curious to hear their (or other arbs) reflections. I think it's really important that ArbCom continue to try new things like this out, to better serve our current needs. To be honest, while I appreciated what it offered, if I hadn't been primed for something new I'm not sure I would have registered it as something new. I am also not sure that it substantially changed how the PD decision went, such that it would be worth doing again if it meant another extremely long delay to post the PD. To be clear, I think the new format is an improvement, I just don't know if it's such an improvement that it would justify extending the timeline in the future. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:37, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  A large part of the motivation for using this format is to give guidance as to how the community can present evidence in a more clear and compelling manner (both during the evidence and workshop phases)—if that succeeds, using this format will not require nearly the same delay in the future. Elli (talk | contribs) 21:41, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  I'm proud of the format change and think it was a significant positive – for guiding the community on presenting evidence of battleground editing here and at other venues, for giving the people up for sanctions due process, and for transparency. In future cases, those factors will need to be weighed against complexity and expediency, but I skew towards more transparency in general. So, as far as the formatting goes, I'm very happy with the work and results. I think we've produced something the community can make real use of, with the help of community members that provided evidence and feedback. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 21:46, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  I was not so thrilled about it. An expanded FoF has some benefits surely, but those must be weighed against the increased effort and the downsides of trying to be comprehensive. While the expanded FoFs weren't the only aspect of the delay, they surely delayed it significantly--so much so that I was required to come in and put things back on track. I also think being comprehensive has some practical downsides. When we don't list all examples of bad conduct, folks can treat our list as complete even when it isn't. Also, getting a majority of Arbs to agree on the characterization of evidence gets harder the more evidence we try to present. FoF comprehensiveness is a scale. I support doing more than we have at times done, but this was perhaps too much. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 23:20, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  I'd say it depends on the case. For omnibus-style cases such as SCI or EED more comprehensive FoFs may be necessary to show the disruption across multiple articles in a topic area writ large. But for something much narrower in scope such as YSK or this case, it's a lot more work for no practical benefit. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{threads critiques} 23:29, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  Although I'm fine with the outcome, and I recognize that it's more important to get things right than to get done quickly, I think ArbCom needs to take a serious look in the mirror, as regards that delay in posting the PD. This was a seriously long delay, and I feel sorry for named parties who had to wait for it. I take what CaptainEek just said here very seriously. Being more comprehensive is fine, but simply doing that should not have taken so long. There was some sort of failure of human workings, behind the scenes. The Committee certainly knows what that was, but the community does not, and the community is tasked with reelecting, or not reelecting, Committee members. Obviously, it's up to ArbCom how much of this they do, or do not, choose to make public, and I'm sympathetic to how difficult that is. Some editors pointed out on the PD talk page that, in the future, when a case looks complicated to sort out, the drafters should set a later deadline for PD posting, from the start. That might be part of the solution, but I really think that ArbCom owes it to case parties not to delay things so badly, at all. One way or another, ArbCom should deal with this. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:57, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  We hadn't tried drafting in this format before, so we weren't able to properly estimate how long doing so would take (and of course, the first time doing something often takes longer). The evidence presented in the case also made drafting something comprehensive rather difficult, as most of the evidence was not presented in a clear enough manner to justify immediate sanction, requiring further investigation (often across multiple extremely long and dense threads). As the drafting phase went on, we also got busier, so it was harder to find time to draft (as we hadn't expected the case to take so long, other time obligations in our lives came up).

  I greatly appreciate Eek stepping up to help get this finished. It wasn't our intention to take this long, of course, and I'm cognizant that being a party to a months-long ArbCom case would be unpleasant and stressful for most people. Elli (talk | contribs) 00:23, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  The evidence presented in the case also made drafting something comprehensive rather difficult, as most of the evidence was not presented in a clear enough manner to justify immediate sanction, requiring further investigation (often across multiple extremely long and dense threads).

  I think this get's to my problem with that method. Along with being "judges", we're also a jury of sorts. We look at the evidence presented, the discussions around that evidence, and anywhere else we're led while reviewing evidence. Trying to distill the totality of what we've read into a handful of diffs doesn't capture the way each individual arbitrator reads, analyzes, and weighs the evidence and context. I think this is demonstrated with my comments at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Transgender healthcare and people/Proposed decision#Sweet6970. Trying to wrangle the views and weighting of the presented evidence of up to fifteen individuals into nine links doesn't really work well, in my opinion. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:46, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  re the evidence being unclear, would there maybe be benefit from having interim phases where arbcom can go "we are considering X Y and Z, and need A B and C" and offload some of that further investigation onto the people presenting evidence? In effect, I suppose that would effectively mean an "Evidence", or Evidence-adjacent phase would remain open until arbs are confident they have all the information they need, and I guess it might just push the delay into that phase instead. Alpha3031 (t • c) 05:32, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  That's part of what the workshop should be being used for. Thryduulf (talk) 09:40, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  Hmm, I do see the § Questions to the parties exists in the workshop page, but it wasn't used. Maybe the workshop phase should be extended if arbs still have questions then, whether or not the committee adopts special procedures to avoid too much non-arb-question related discussion. Probably won't help much with the "long dense threads" part of it though. Alpha3031 (t • c) 10:28, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

  I agree with Elli's comment here. For me, I think that the delay was not in the format of the "extended" findings: rather, issues inherent with the case were a bigger factor (long and unclear evidence and workshop with many parties, which also psychologically made it more daunting). Perhaps the extended format should have been used in a less complicated case before trying it in a sprawling case like this, though when debating whether such a format should be used, I pointed out that the 2023 Committee tried something similar at Scottywong. Sdrqaz (talk) 01:35, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

• Just wanted to point out, on the main case page, the This case is currently open, so no changes may be made to this page, and unauthorised edits may be reverted. If you wish to submit evidence in this case, go to the evidence page. Proposals for the final decision may be made at the workshop. box should probably removed now right? As above _{so below} 20:01, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for noticing;  Fixed. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 21:12, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

• What am I missing about YFNS? The FoF don't seem nearly bad enough to justify the remedy. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:32, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  For the short version, see the votes on the five proposed remedies that started with a 8, starting from Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Transgender healthcare and people/Proposed decision#Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist indefinite topic ban (healthcare). Aaron Liu (talk) 22:59, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  I read the FoF and the PD. I still don't understand how this conduct warrants such a broad TBAN. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:12, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  Indeed. I'm especially surprised by @HJ Mitchell's statement in #9, which implies that merely being brought to a case or a noticeboard is a sign of a problem. This appears to be, basically, a statement that "the nail that sticks up gets pounded down", which I certainly hope was not the intent, and which is particularly worrisome to me given the frequency of tendentious filings in CTOP cases. Harry, I hope you might be able to clarify your intent, which right now appears to be at least partly in conflict with your attempts to find a more tailored topic ban than the ones initially on offer. -- asilvering (talk) 00:03, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  @Asilvering On the contrary. Perhaps what I should have said is "if there is evidence of disruption in another topic area"; I wouldn't assume that every complaint had merit. I was recently reminded of a vote of mine in the article titles case where I said "the last thing we need is the caravan packing up and moving on to [an adjacent topic]"—site bans for single-topic disruption are rare, but ArbCom has historically taken a dim view of editors who, banned from one topic, repeat the same conduct in a different area (a good recent example is AndreJustAndre in PIA5, where a site ban was under serious consideration and suspended site ban broke the tie). I think a large part of the reason we couldn't find a more nuanced topic ban for YFNS was that the current culture war permeates so deeply that it was difficult to define a scope that was easy to understand and left no (or minimal) grey areas. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:23, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

  I’m completely baffled that the evidence against YFNS seems to be things like “they called Kenneth Zucker a supporter of conversion therapy”. Zucker is infamous for his long time support of conversion therapy for trans children. He has quite literally written papers on it. 173.177.179.61 (talk) 00:18, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  I disagree with the remedy and reasoning as well. But the link shows the perspective of the Arbs: an interpretation of the FoF as intractable recidivism. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:57, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  My honest answer here is mostly that YFNS has very bad luck around topic bans.

  Namely, she caught a topic ban here mainly, AFAICT, because she had a previous topic ban. But her previous topic ban was quite controversial at the time: consensus was very split and the thread was started by a malicious sock. (It also directly referenced off-wiki evidence at ANI in a way I've never seen elsewhere.) I don't think she should ever have been topic banned, now or then. Loki (talk) 23:10, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  While I haven't reviewed the evidence for this case, my view that these sort of comments while well meaning, are unfortunately part of why YFNS is now again topic banned. While YFNS is ultimately the only person responsible for their conduct, people have continually excused it so that I don't think they even really accepted that they were rightly topic banned before, and their behaviour at the time BLP-wise was atrocious. And even when they were unbanned way too many people were telling them they did nothing that wrong. We've seen in the past with some other infamous users similar situations where their supporters kept telling them they weren't doing anything that bad until the community's patience finally ran out and they ended up site banned. I'd strongly urge YFNS's supporters to consider whether they're similar setting YFNS up for a similar end if they keep telling YFNS they were hard done by instead of telling them the hard truth namely that they need to change or they're eventually going to end up in even worse trouble. To be clear, I don't question that editors are entitled to their own views of any sanctions, and to disagree with the merits of a sanction. But I think caution is needed in how this is expressed especially in any suggestions that something was wrongfully imposed when I'd note that none of this is new, it was considered and the community did not accept that the ban was wrongly imposed whatever the unfortunate flaws in the editor who initiated the discussion. I'd also note that for the claim that we've never considered offwiki conduct in a similar way before, there was just a second failed appeal on AN 15 days ago from an editor who's BLP topic ban was imposed in no small part IMO due to concerns of what they did on Twitter. (I'm intentionally not naming them since they have nothing to do with any of this.) It's rare for community bans because it's rare they can be considered due to WP:OUTING. Even if Nil Einne on Twitter or whatever says stuff which causes concern this cannot be considered in a community ban since AFAIK I have intentionally never linked anything external about myself onwiki. But if editors have chosen to link it themselves then it can be considered and is if it is enough to cause concerns. Edit: For clarity I mean I'm not naming them publicly. Anyone with email open is free to approach me on my talk page and I'll email them who I'm referring to. Nil Einne (talk) 11:46, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  I'd add that I would consider such an end for YFNS very unfortunate. We clearly need editors who care about trans rights etc who are willing and able to put their own rightful disgust at transphobes etc and able to approach this from a balanced perspective rather than a RGW perspective, to help ensure our articles on trans topics are in great shape. If this doesn't happen because rather than being guided into improvement, an editor is guided into continuing their misbehaviour, it's Wikipedia's loss. Nil Einne (talk) 11:52, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  I agree with that last bit, rather more so than the previous bit, but I'd go significantly further than that. The project has failed to make Wikipedia safe for women and, particularly, for LGBT editors. It allows them to be goaded to the point where they either remove themselves from the project or the pressure piles on until they eventually fail to act with perfect grace. As soon as they do, their indiscretions are judged in a vacuum. This case has caused me lose all confidence in Wikipedia as a project. Similar sanctions have been handed out almost equally to the egregiously guilty and to the mostly innocent. That might look like even handedness from some angles but they are not angles that I can contort myself into. I have a feeling that we will regret what happened in this case over the next decade or so but I won't rant here. Those who are interested can read my ramblings in progress at User:DanielRigal/My Doubts and, to be fair, I don't have answers to the questions raised either. --DanielRigal (talk) 21:27, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  1. I don't think YFNS did anything that wrong and I think the remedy here is for the community to be, frankly, less tolerant of transphobia.

  2. Yes, the WP:OUTING issue is exactly why CBANs almost never consider off-wiki evidence and I don't see why that wasn't immediately used to discard the off-wiki evidence that was the basis of her first topic ban. Frankly I don't see why the thread wasn't closed immediately as it was started by a clear sock. The first topic ban was the clearest example I've ever seen of ANI being a simple popularity contest. Loki (talk) 16:21, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  I think patterns of Synth, creating a near-attack BLP, plus making RGW statements is enough for a topic ban in a contentious topic. It's not outing if it's disclosed by the editor in question.

  it was started by a clear sock

  I don't think that matters. The participants in the ensuing discussion were 60 non-socks. In general I dislike calls for invalidation based on procedural errors. But that might be just me. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:36, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

  when they were unbanned way too many people were telling them they did nothing that wrong. Couldn't that be an indication that the original TBAN was no good? Don't get me wrong, I personally hope that YFNS "plays the game" if only to avoid more sanctions, but that doesn't mean I think she deserved the sanctions she's gotten.

  Idk, as someone following along from the sidelines it just looks like YFNS is held to a higher standard than everyone else CambrianCrab (talk) please ping me in replies! 00:16, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

  Couldn't that be an indication that the original TBAN was no good? it's not impossible, but it is a pattern that has repeated other editors over time - BrownHairedGirl and Dicklyon come to mind as examples. They too had people telling them time after time that, pretty much no matter what they did or how they did it, they were in the right and any community consensus to the contrary was obviously an error and could be disregarded. I am nowhere near familiar enough with YFNS' editing and haven't followed this case closely enough to know if that is a relevant comparison, but everyone should be open to the possibility that it is. Thryduulf (talk) 01:59, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

  This feels to me very similar to the response often seen at AE in GENSEX cases by a party's/"side's" supporters. Just the phrase "infamous for his long time support of conversion therapy for trans children" ignores every possible nuance. That feels like the underlying problem in this entire case in a nutshell. Valereee (talk) 12:11, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  Oh I’m sorry, let me put this in a format that the transphobic Wikipedia NPOV agrees with. Kenneth Zucker is a proponent of putting children through therapy to “cure” gender dysphoria. This includes letting them play with only toys designed for their birth sex. What part of this doesn’t count as conversion therapy? 173.177.179.61 (talk) 20:17, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  Vitriol like the first sentence of the above very frequently leads to blocks. Please keep the tone civil. Thanks, QuicoleJR (talk) 20:22, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  I strongly disagree that NPOV is transphobic. And as said by User:QuicoleJR lets keep things Civil. GothicGolem29 (talk) 21:30, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  IP, maybe we discuss. Happy to do so on my talk. Valereee (talk) 23:38, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  Don't bother the IP only contributes unproductively to project space in culture war topics. He has an account too but that also has failed to make a contribution outside project space. Traumnovelle (talk) 00:09, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

  (It also directly referenced off-wiki evidence at ANI in a way I've never seen elsewhere) - it is worth pointing out that one other editor in this case was just banned from Wikipedia as a whole due to comparable off-wiki evidence. It took more time, but it did happen. I think that, given that there is some disagreement even among the arbs about how to handle it, we might want to consider the more general case of how such things ought to be handled. --Aquillion (talk) 03:29, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

  This is an issue that has come up a lot recently. Our rules around off-wiki coordination are groaning under the weight of increased attention and attempts at manipulating our articles and coverage. ARBPIA has seen significant coordinated editing on both "sides", and there's not a whole lot we can do about it without clear evidence. The OUTING rules are also due for a hard look by the community. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:06, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

  The issue of off-wiki coordination is indeed complicated. Over the past few years, a number of wiki-adjacent forums (i.e Discord servers) have grown up, with varying degrees of official status (for example, Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Discord). Sometimes the line between "Hey, let's all work together to improve Article X" and "Hey, those evil people want to delete Article X, let's vote-bomb the AfD" can get kind of squishy. Many of these forums are well known, publicised on wiki, and open to anyone. While the conversations that take place there are not "on-wiki", they certainly are "within the wiki community". It might make more sense to start thinking more about how open and public a forum is than to worry about what technology is used to move the bits around. Even in the primordial days, there were bitnet-uucp gateways so people could use whichever technology worked best for them. RoySmith (talk) 11:45, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

  I don't disagree with that, but it would also need a pretty hard look at CANVASSING. I don't know what the best answer or path forward is, but I know how we're trying to do it now is untenable. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:51, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

  Alright, I started a discussion here. This exception may be too narrow but it would address a lot of the stuff we've seen without, I think, opening the door to actually harmful outing. --Aquillion (talk) 16:56, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

  I mean, it was unusually close for an ArbCom tban. And I think the fact that it was only an arb going inactive that put it over the top is interesting; there was a noticeable reluctance to be the seventh vote. It obviously wasn't as clear-cut as some of the others. That said, as one arb said, when someone has previously been let back in on appeal and ends up before arbcom again, there's an expectation that their behavior needs to be spotless; arbcom really dislikes any hint of recivitisim. --Aquillion (talk) 20:24, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

• I want to thank ARBCOM for handling this situation. I share some of my colleagues hesitations above about the expanded FoFs. I appreciate the intent behind them, and also the potential utility of being able to signpost misconduct in greater detail. But the cost of producing this goes beyond time alone, as I see it: there's also an expanded need for precision and fairness when writing a paragraph instead of a sentence about a single editor's conduct. There were several remedies that I agreed with wherein the underlying FoFs had clearly fallen short, which suggests to me the problem is with the format. I think there's a genuine use for establishing the details of conduct when possible, but also situations where less is more. Vanamonde93 (talk) 00:20, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
• It's unfortunate that any editors had to be site-banned. GoodDay (talk) 14:20, 24 October 2025 (UTC)
• Echoing Vanamonde93 in thanking Arbcom for wading into this mess. I don't know much about the topic area other than it's perennially filled with over-the-top acrimony, in real life as well as on wiki. One small-ish thing that resonated was Arbcom's noting users' editing of other users' talk page comments. I've always found that conduct particularly annoying, so I'm glad it provoked a reaction. 2601:644:8581:75B0:72D:D862:D4DE:4823 (talk) 17:05, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee seeking new clerks

Original announcement

• I strongly encourage anyone who is even potentially interested to reach out – I'm personally more than glad to talk it out. I first became a clerk more than nine years ago, and it has been a remarkably fulfilling experience even having returned to the work after concluding my stint as an arbitrator. ArbCom needs folks who will step up and make Wikipedia's most complicated (yet remarkably important) process more approachable, user-friendly, and easy to interact with, not just for the folks who participate in cases or requests, but also for the many people who edit CTOPs and engage at AE. There are currently only three active clerks, so if you've ever considered it, this is the time to reach out! Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 00:00, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  +1 Also happy to chat via email or Discord (where I am house_blaster). Best, HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 00:23, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

• This is cross-posted at AN, but note that we're looking for clueful editors, not necessarily admins. All three of us started clerking before we ran for adminship. (Personally, I became interested in arbitration from helping out with requested move discussions in topics where an ECR prohibits non-EC participation.) ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 02:48, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• I enjoyed my three stints as a clerk and would like to add my voice to the chorus of people encouraging admins and non-admins with a year of experience on the project, or more, to apply --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 07:23, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• We'll announce new clerks soon. We heard from many great applicants. Other interested editors are welcome to reach out at any time. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 01:25, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Statement from SFR on the incident at WCNA

Original announcement

Community reactions

• Thank you ScottishFinnishRadish and the rest of the committee. As one of the people who was in the room where this happened, I think this is important for us to know. Thank you all. Guettarda (talk) 20:35, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• Thank you for posting this - I am hoping that the WMF and WMNYC take more accountability, and I think that publicly highlighting what happened (and what should have been known to those responsible for our safety) is a good way to encourage that. There was no reason for the individual in question to be present at the conference, and no excuse for this situation to happen again. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 20:43, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• I agree with Ajraddatz that this person should not have been in the audience. I understand how the WMF is pressured by other communities who take a different stance on child protection than we do. But with all the information (some of which, as my edit history notes I've suppressed as a measure of first resort while hoping the OS team will affirm it was OK to post) available to them, I think they got this decision wrong or at least we need a full accounting of the risk assessment systems the WMF had and whether they were appropriately calibrated or whether the risk assessment systems need adjusting. For instance, at minimum, I think there should be a script run by the WMF provided to large event organizers that scans the usernames of all participants and highlights any that are blocked (and in this case blocked on multiple projects) so the organizers can decide if there is no issue (as often there would not be - indeed there were other blocked users at WCNA) or if there is an issue that needs addressing in some form or fashion. I feel like if that had been done, there's a very real chance the organizers don't allow this person to be a registerd participant. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:54, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• Yes, thank you, Radish. Bishonen | tålk 20:58, 22 October 2025 (UTC).
• As a functionary who attended WCNA and subsequently learned the background, I wholeheartedly co-sign this statement and commend Arbcom for their extraordinary bravery and commitment to the community, especially SFR. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 21:00, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• Well, that was horrifying to read. Thank you, SFR, for your diligence and transparency. 28bytes (talk) 21:05, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• Thank you. Toadspike [Talk] 21:08, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• You must be livid. It's unbelievable that they wouldn't ban a self-identified pedophile when children participate here and likely elsewhere. Would this have happened if we had actual community representation in positions of authority? Kowal2701 (talk) 21:11, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
  • @Kowal2701: I have long noticed the near-contempt that some within the WMF have for "the community." There's a huge disconnect out there. Too many in the WMF who have never edited a single article and know nothing of our world here. You nailed it. Montanabw^(talk) 21:28, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• Wow, what a shit show. Thanks SFR for all you did to try to prevent this from happening, and to those who leapt into action to protect others once it did. Generalrelative (talk) 21:13, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• Irrespective of whether the ban should have been assumed by the WMF, there definitely needs to be a safeguard against allowing editors who have issued threats of in-person confrontation to attend events. And given the political climate in the US in particular, maybe just more security at events full stop. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:20, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• As someone else who was also in the room when the incident happened, I am stunned. I personally need to process this information before I offer further thoughts, but someone, somewhere, seriously needs to get to the bottom of this. Montanabw^(talk) 21:21, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• I appreciate the transparency shown here (especially given the constraints of the WP:ANPDP). I can only assume the WMF's caution stems from maintaining their legal safe harbor status as a hosting provider rather than a moderator; being a pedophile is not illegal until an actual crime occurs, however morally bankrupt it may be. I attended WCNA in 2016 and actually planned to attend this year as well (flights were cheap, but general attendance tickets were sold out). With the level of foreknowledge described, event security should unquestionably have been much stricter. It’s difficult to overstate how serious that lapse was. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 21:26, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  their legal safe harbor status as a hosting provider rather than a moderator. This is a legal myth, and a surprisingly persistent one given that we're all aware of lots of websites that heavily moderate content using paid staff. See "Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act" by Mike Masnick. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 21:40, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for the link and clarification, Tamzin. I stand corrected on 230 deets. That myth does seem persistent! (The More You Know) Still, it's frustrating to see the WMF's hesitation in cases like this, they might still be overly cautious due to other legal risks, such as potential defamation claims, but...meh. Just infuriating to read about the inaction regardless. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 21:46, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, what I've heard before, from WMF(-adjacent) people, is that concern about defamation is the main impetus. Even a frivolous lawsuit costs donor money to fight, and may well come from someone who is judgment-proof with respect to any fee-shifting statutes.^{huh, redlink} The thing I don't really understand, though—and I mean that non-rhetorically, maybe a WMFer can clarify—is that the ban process already doesn't specify any reason publicly. I used to assume there was some private explanation, but then a globally banned user showed me the email they'd gotten, and no, it was entirely boilerplate, no mention of their specific offense, not even the kind of threatening language I'd expected would be there about how socking could be a CFAA violation or something. Is there really that great a risk of defamation suits in cases where the WMF isn't even saying what the person did wrong? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 21:53, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  Just Googled and found out about the Lomax v. WMF case from 2020 where a globally banned user sued over the public ban logs on Meta, claiming they made the block look too harsh. The court basically said "nope, stating a ban isn’t defamation". So- if even that's legally fine, the WMF's ultra-caution here really does feel like...overkill? Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 22:01, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  Well, they did presumably have to pay a fair bit for that. I doubt Abd ul-Rahman Lomax had much money even if there was fee-shifting, and as it happens he died a few years after that case was dismissed. So it's... I honestly don't know what to think. I get why the WMF doesn't want to just burn money to fend off that kind of suit, but at the same time, crazy and/or bitter and/or evil people will file vexatious lawsuits no matter what you do; at a certain point it's part of the cost of doing business, like shrinkage. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 22:14, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  I would guess that it's probably more about keeping internal records free of defamation; the community, I think in general, prefers that the WMF only ban for unequivocable TOU violations, right? To issue a ban of the sort SFR/Arbcom appears to have been campaigning for, it's likely that somebody, somewhere, would have had to written down something to the effect of "this non-public figure had advocated or engaged in some form of child sexual abuse",^† or look like they were agreeing/disseminating that statement, which puts us straight into defamation per se territory - re-reading SFR's announcement, the Aug 11 correspondence really implies to me that this was the sticking point. And yes, internal documents are meant to be private, but they can still be discovered or, as SFR just showed, leaked. Now, would a plaintiff in this hypothetical case even win? I'm not the WMF's legal counsel, I don't feel comfortable answering that question. Would it take a lot of time, money, and cause stress to the people involved? My personal experiences with the US Court system w.r.t .to defamation cases over accusations of child sexual abuse says yes, and I'm a bit confused why people think that "stating somebody is banned from a private website" is comparable to "stating somebody encourage illegal activity" in terms of defamation.

  ^† could they have found a workaround? Probably. I'd guess that global bans for other issues (ie. vandalism, spamming, making the WMF deal with too many DMCA takedown requests) aren't quite as fraught, but from the sounds of it there was a certain degree of tunnel vision. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 17:29, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

  Would an accusation of pedophile advocacy/attraction to children—a wider net than encouraging child sexual abuse—result in the same sort of acrimonious defamation lawsuit? Aaron Liu (talk) 19:56, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

  If by "same sort" you mean just unpleasant for both parties, then possibly - "same sort" as in the cases themselves would have a similar chance of success- that's really a question for lawyers, but to the best of my recollection, saying somebody committed a crime is a bit different from saying what you think their beliefs are. But I wouldn't gamble on any that. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 09:03, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for the link @Tamzin. While I knew some of that, my understanding of Section 230 was still embarrassingly full of flaws (and things I'd just never thought about). Guettarda (talk) 14:20, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

• Transparency? Transparency?? SFR's statement has been suppressed. (It still appears on the page, with a little information redacted. I've copied it, for when it disappears completely.) Bishonen | tålk 21:33, 22 October 2025 (UTC).
  • It was live when I started writing my comment. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 21:37, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

    Assuming you finished writing yours in 41 minutes, Bishonen saw the same thing you saw: The statement with the contents of the April 25 email redacted. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:55, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

• Thank you SFR for posting this. As someone who hasn't attended any meetups, I'm deeply shaken to what happened in NYC. Its great that no one was (physically) hurt but things could've gotten much worse. There should be increased safety/security at events, whether or not by WMF. JuniperChill (talk) 21:35, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  Agreed. If there's one thing we've learned from this incident, it's that we need to have better security procedures at meetups, especially high-profile ones like WCNA. QuicoleJR (talk) 21:37, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

• I understand the WMF's hesitancy to pass out site bans willy-nilly; but if that's the tact they're going to take, in-person events cannot just ban globally-banned users and no one else. I don't see why users who have been indefed on one of the main projects relevant to the conference should be allowed to sign up anyway. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 21:38, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  It is possible for users blocked on one project to be users in very good standing on another project. Whether such people should be at a specific conference will depend on the nature of the conference and why they are blocked. For example someone blocked on a language-specific project (e.g. English) for lacking competence in that language should not banned from a multi-lingual conference, even if one of the conference languages is e.g. English. Thryduulf (talk) 21:50, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  Agreed, but in this situation I'd like to give discretion to the conference organizers so that they can weed out cases like this. He never should have been permitted to attend. QuicoleJR (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  I agree that we should not blanket ban folks with blocks. An editor may be a very positive contributor on one wiki and have a block on a different wiki. However I do think these editors should be flagged for further nuanced discussion. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:28, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  It seems clear to me that the WMF needs to do more screening of folks that sign up for conferences. Perhaps the list of conference attendees needs to be shared with anti-abuse groups such as the stewards and enwiki ArbCom, who can investigate anyone suspicious and provide recommendations to the WMF about who should be declined/refunded. I absolutely do not want to be rubbing shoulders with WP:LTAs at conferences. These folks should never be able to get a badge. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:26, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, Wikimedia events should definitely consider having more eyes from trusted on-wiki groups to not just help review registrants, but be a part of the conference T&S discussions when possible. No one person or group knows all the disputes, bad actors, and community issues. Expanding the list to more folks who have ears to the ground and work on anti-abuse on the daily provides more coverage to detect and share concerns. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 02:03, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

• Thank you, ScottishFinnishRadish, for both trying everything to protect us and for levelling with us. This WMF inaction—and mendacity over security at the conference—is outrageous. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:39, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• It sounds like T&S/Legal may have been technically correct that the edits here and on Wiktionary didn't quite meet the standard for a ban under the global child protection policy, which is a bit higher a standard than is found in our local policy. But the threat to show up to headquarters in person (worded in a way that made clear the interest was in anywhere that Wikimedia could be interacted with in the real world) absolutely should have changed that analysis, and banned or not, there should have never been a way for him to attend a WMF-affiliated event, especially when (AFAIK) he wasn't even hiding his damn username. False promises of event security just compound that already blatant error. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 21:45, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• I learned (the hard way) years ago (after countless death and rape threats, and "outing"-attempts), that WMF's Trust and Safety is not the least interested with the safety of us "ordinary" editors; it is only interested in the safety of the WMF. I welcome the rest of you to the club. Huldra (talk) 21:45, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• As Yngvadottir says, thanks for both the work you guys have done on this, and the transparency. Probably the wrong place to ask, and IANAL, and maybe I misunderstood, etc, etc, but could someone please explain why T&S has to be able to "legally justify" an SF-ban? Nobody has a legal right to attend WMF functions, right? My understanding has always been that, if they wanted to, they could ban me because I'm not a Giants fan, and I'd have no legal recourse. I think they can ban anyone for any reason, as long as it isn't related to the person being in a protected class. Right? Even if the WMF has a policy about not banning people who aren't Giants fans, couldn't they still prevent me from attending anyway? What right would I be suing to protect? Or what contract would have been broken? What am I not understanding? --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  No one has a legal right to attend our community events, or any event. No justification is needed beyond community norms, which this obviously satisfied. – SJ + 00:14, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

• Well this is extra unsettling when I consider that I was one of the few editors to interact with the account in question at WT:CHILDPROTECT and was in the room that day when he walked in with the gun. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 22:03, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  I'm also going to express some more shock in retrospect because all this happened right after Maryana Iskander was explaining that certain safety measures had been taken at the conference. I wasn't the only one who initially thought it was some sort of demonstration of what to do in situations like these before the guy started giving his speech... Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 10:24, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

• Metal detectors should have been the bare minimum even without the message from Weston. The fact that someone getting a gun into an event and brandishing it has not happened sooner, is miracle. LakesideMiners^{Come Talk To Me!} 22:09, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• As someone you discussed this with onsite after the incident, I'm glad 1) nobody was injured, and 2) you are able to relay this information to the community. BusterD (talk) 22:25, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• I was one of the organizers of the 2016 WikiConference North America in San Diego. There was an attendee who threatened to disrupt the conference and we worked closely with James Alexander and his team at Trust and Safety. As a result, we had a plan in place for when he arrived (complete with code words so we could alert other organizers discreetly) and were able to intercept him at the registration desk without incident.
  This is what should have happened in New York City this weekend. Given the professionalism of 2016 Trust and Safety I’ve long been an advocate of the professionals taking over these issues and not leaving them in the hands of untrained volunteers, some of whom have in the past put my personal safety and privacy at risk either through malice or incompetence. However, I’m rethinking that stance since here we have an example of an untrained volunteer who has acted in an exemplary manner and paid professionals who have proved themselves incompetent.
  From what I observed that day, Maryana Iskander and the WMF employees who were there in person acted in an equally exemplary manner in the wake of the incident in NYC. The WMF is certainly not perfect, but it has been the recipient of much undeserved criticism from the community over the years that has been hyperbolic and sometimes downright unhinged. However, in the case of their failure to alert the conference organizers of this man’s threats, those responsible at the WMF are deserving of all that criticism and more. I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say this should be a fireable offense for whoever is responsible for this failure. Gamaliel (talk) 23:05, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

  Maryana Iskander and the WMF employees who were there in person acted in an equally exemplary manner in the wake of the incident in NYC - I am so grateful for Maryana at the conference. I've often been a WMF-skeptic, but I have nothing but praise for the folks who where there, especially her. Guettarda (talk) 13:54, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

• Oh, how awful, and I don't have much to add, to what has already been said. But I cannot help but note how this appalling situation coincides with the controversy of the BoT removing candidates from the ballot. Maggie says, below, that WMF is doing some self-examination. I hope that's for real, and not just boilerplate. And it needs to be some very deep examination. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:53, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
• How awful indeed. This sort of clarity should have come from T&S in their own swift post-mortem. Both community arbs & event organizers should have access to the event-ban list to help flag concerns. Thank you SFR for the persistent efforts throughout, and for sharing details now. – SJ + 00:14, 23 October 2025 (UTC) I appreciate Rhododendrites' thoughts below on threshold questions, and second Guerillero's caution that security ratchets generally only work one way. 18:48, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
• Deep respect and thanks to SFR for handling the original case (I wondered about making the block myself but decided to leave the decision for a higher-up), and for the full report. Wikipedia attracts all kinds and some are deeply disturbed. Johnuniq (talk) 00:58, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
• I'm perplexed that the same WMF that gave us the WP:FRAMBAN refused to take action in this circumstance. TarnishedPath^talk 01:08, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  One note is that today's WMF is clearly a different WMF than the one that gave us FRAM. When I was on ArbCom, a principal worry on our WMF colleagues' minds was avoiding another FRAM issue. There were times that I wish WMF was more willing to take an office action, and you can bet that one reason why is that there are many layers of organizational scar tissue at WMF resulting from FRAM. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 01:12, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  That's something I hadn't thought about, thanks Kevin. Explanations aren't excuses, but they're helpful tools to understand. Guettarda (talk) 13:19, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  It makes perfect sense to me, actually. From my experience with T&S, that situation caused them to become much more conservative wrt issuing global bans, for better… or for worse…. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 01:12, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  There's a huge difference between blocking a well-known admin globally for only a year (which was a very unusual course of action for T&S to take) and banning someone who has made a handful of edits, violates the child protection policy, and threatens to show up to in person events. Your lack of faith in the T&S as an arb is concerning to me because it makes me wonder how they've reacted in other scenarios that I don't know about as an ordinary admin. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 01:42, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  • I mean the obvious difference between this and FRAM is that that ban was imposed from above, without warning and in a highly unusual manner, after Wikipedia's community governance had specifically declined to do anything; whereas this was requested, repeatedly, by Wikipedia's elected representatives after they took action via the normal policy-based route and the WMF refused to take action. If ArbCom had banned Fram locally and then asked WMF to take further action (and it did so), people might still have been mad at ArbCom but I doubt they'd have been mad at WMF, and even objections to ArbCom probably wouldn't have been very severe provided the ban was done in accordance with policy and ArbCom's existing procedures. If the WMF doesn't understand that difference then they didn't really learn what they needed to learn from WP:FRAM - the reason it got a backlash was because it felt like a threat to Wikipedia's model of community governance, not because the community is intrinsically opposed to the WMF doing anything at all. --Aquillion (talk) 03:33, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

• I'd like to express my deep appreciation to SFR and ArbCom for having proactively followed up on this user for many months, and join those calling for process improvements for event screening. We should not need to count on our luck and the heroism of our community members to protect us, and I hope that we will see the significant process improvements that Maggie Dennis says below that the WMF is reviewing.
  One thing I would like to ask of WMF is to more properly resource Trust and Safety. Someone mentioned to me the other day (and I don't think this is private in any way) that T&S Operations (which is the unit that does all of the sanctions and enforcement and evaluation and so forth) is literally four people. And each case disposition then needs to be so well documented that it goes through many layers of review and approval, spending yet more of T&S's limited capacity. I think one reason we're likely to hear from WMF that the screening process was not as comprehensive this time is that they just don't have the staff time to resource more thoroughness. And that's something I hope that the Foundation will better invest in during the next annual planning process. I bet that even a modest increase of 4 additional FTEs would do wonders; this would be money well spent.
  I do want to express my concern that ArbCom here has revealed too much information publicly here. While I appreciate the transparency, I think it may have been unwise to have quoted a VRTS system email (for which the Committee acknowledges breaching an NDA in this announcement) and referenced oversighted information in this announcement, when we as a community could have gotten the Committee's overall narrative without ArbCom members having to breach any NDA. When I was an ArbCom member, having access to nonpublic information and collaboration with the WMF was key to fulfilling my role successfully on behalf of the community. I think the cavalier "breaking the ANPDP" in this announcement would affect WMF's willingness to be as open. In other words, if I were to be joining the WMF today, I'd have to think very carefully about revealing any private information with enwiki ArbCom, which in turn would reduce ArbCom's ability to serve the community.
  All in all, I want to express my thanks again to the Committee for its efforts to keep us safe as a community, all while I'm sure many of you are also still processing Friday's events yourselves. It is much appreciated. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 01:56, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  It's incredibly funny to suggest that it's a resourcing issue when Wikimedia Foundation Inc. has tens of millions of dollars to spend per year on the most frivolous bullshit. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:27, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

• I am someone who was in attendance, seated in the third row for the keynote, and someone who has had to report harassment and threats to T&S and law enforcement. I have many thoughts about the events of last Friday and about this statement. At lot of things need to be taken seriously going forward, and we will need to have some difficult discussions, both the community of editors and the foundation, jointly. No one was hurt, this time. This is the second conference impacted by outside threats to our safety. A good friend who knew of unrelated threats to me nearly a year ago cautioned me to deeply consider my participation in WCNA given the severity of those other threats. Sadly, for different reasons, she was almost proven right. Imzadi 1979 → 05:11, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
• I am really surprised (hear shocked) to read that there were no physical and metal check at the entrance of the conference. All the last ones I attended had this type of screening, which seems to me to be more or less mandatory once we get over 50+ attendants, or as soon as we have « notable » and extended-rights people attending. And this in particular in a country were so many citizens are armed. Anthere (talk) 08:05, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  This was my first thought as well. Where I live in California, the public libraries have security officers and metal detectors at the entrances. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:30, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

  Are those metal detectors, or are they book detectors to verify you're not walking out with a set of books? At least in a few of the libraries in California I have visited, it was the latter (e.g. walking through it with metal objects wouldn't set it off). effeietsanders 16:49, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

• I appreciate SFR's explanation but I'm really at a loss as to how a WMF ban could have changed anything for the better. Nardog (talk) 10:20, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  A WMF global ban prohibits individuals, either in their own capacity or as agents of others, from all editing or other access privileges in Wikimedia Foundation websites, platforms and activities. This includes, but is not limited to, any site listed at www.wikimedia.org, mailing lists hosted by the Foundation, Wikimedia Cloud Services and Wikimedia technical infrastructure such as Phabricator as well as any in-person events hosted, sponsored or funded by the Foundation. They would have been on the "not allowed" list that Pacita references below, Prior to the start of the conference, we requested and received the WMF global ban list from WMF trust and safety and reviewed all registered attendees against it. We now know that the person we needed to look out for hadn't received a global ban so they weren't on the list. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:59, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for this important context, I was not aware that was one of the implications of a WMF ban. Although I'm not sure how effective it would be in practice in general since AFAIK those who get WMF-banned are typically sockpuppets who take pains to evade scrutiny, it seems it was the exact thing that would have prevented this incident as the identity behind the username was already known. Nardog (talk) 11:19, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  Sock will sock, even for offline events. But it helps when there are people around who recognizes such banned individuals and give them a boot. – robertsky (talk) 12:35, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

• Since suppression of the userpage was removed, I wonder if it might be wise to also remove suppression of the page creation log for the user page which still seems to be suppressed Special:Log/Gapazoid. At least I'm fairly that's what the suppression there is, I was wondering if there was still something which couldn't be talked about but then it occurred to me this was just suppression of the user page creation log which is needed when what's being suppressed shows up in the edit summary. While it might seem insignificant, since this may have external attention there's a risk it will confuse people into think there's still something kept secret. Nil Einne (talk) 11:08, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

  Sorted. Just to be clear, my original oversight was over concern it was a joe job to label someone as a pedophile, and all of the wild off-wiki shit could have been part of a harassment campaign rather than what it turned out to be. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:05, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

• Thank you SFR (my one and only RfA nomination, so of course I take credit for this!), and to the others—especially the heroes in the field—for your righteous fight in the face of an aloof and kafkaesque WMF. Do their shamelessness know no bounds? (rhetorical: it knows no bounds.) This is infuriating! El_C 12:49, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
• I was at the event, and have also organized many, many wikimedia related events (starting before there even was a Wikimedia Foundation). I want to reiterate what Gamaliel said above, staff and volunteer organizers at the event acted in an exemplary fashion through what is any organizer's worst nightmare and through calmness, organization and communication were able to make sure that we had a rewarding event despite everything. I want to offer them my praise and thanks, and I also want to say to all attendees who were there - I recognize many of you - that I am proud of all of you, too. Thank you SFR for posting this, even though it is hard, and I am sorry that you have had to struggle with such weighty decisions. As others have said, for all attendees, witnesses and those affected, be gentle with yourself, take time, and know that you might become angrier or more upset as days pass and the event sinks in. I am happy to talk to anyone who wants someone to talk to, and I also encourage us all to get some professional support if possible. For everyone else who wasn't there, please be gentle with those of us who were; it was a shocking event. And finally, as a member of the formal and informal network of "people who organize events" in this movement -- yeah, we are going to have a big rethink about how to do trust and safety well (know that we do have many procedures now - it is not nothing - but there is more to be done). Knowing when someone is all talk on the internet versus might show up in person has always been tough, but this weekend showed us the stakes are high. My best to all. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 13:36, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I think we need to be incredibly clear-eyed about the second order implications of what we are asking for and seem to be okay with. Many of these are things that are probably good ideas, but security ratchets tend to only go in one direction.

1. We can ask the WMF to make bag checks mandatory for all events with more than a certain number of people. If we want this, we need to all be on the same page that "looking for guns/knives/pipe bombs" can quickly turn into looking for other things as well. Especially in countries where possessing the recreational substances that some editors use come with harsh, and even deadly, consequences. Further, this only partly mitigates violence concerns. I was at a WMF event in a fairly secure facility and a fellow arb, who was standing next to me, was threatened in retaliation for how they voted. The Transportation Security Administration has a ... spotty ... track record of success.
2. We can ask the WMF to make ID checks part of attending in-person events over a certain size. This means that usernames and PII are going to be forever intertwined in at least one database. Even if deleted at the end of the event, the chances of leaks is infinitely higher than when some information is optional.
3. We need know that asking for our child protection policy to be a global one, probably via the board, is going to set the WMF up for a very painful slugfest with several Continental European communities. That is the reason I was given the last time I was in discussions on the topic.
4. We can ask for an indef block on one project causing a global event ban. There is an English Wikipedia LTA who is extremely active in an affiliate and is valued by a sister project. That will exclude them from attending events. There are also sister projects with much more questionable histories of blocking people. Do we want to cede event attendance decisions to the next project that has the issues of the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias?
5. We can ask the WMF to be more muscular about global actions. They have been wary about acting in gray areas post-Fram. While this case is one that is nearly universal to get behind, more global actions increases the chance that a rod from god takes out someone who is much more well-connected in the community. Particularly because it can be easy to justify actions in another area (harassment for example) when the brakes are taken off in others.
6. We can be okay with one arb, not the committee, releasing information that is covered under our NDAs. As someone who has read the arbcom archives and lived through several eras of the committee, I can tell you that there is a plethora of stuff arbs have access to that is radioactive. Much of the job happens in silence because it has to.

I don't have a strong option on bag and ID checks. I think that the slugfest with sister projects is a worthwhile one. I would need guardrails around it, but I could see a Wikipedia library-like policy around attending IRL events working well. I think, with other lessons learned from Fram, the WMF has the ability to decrease the bar of WMF bans somewhat and it would be good for the communities. I think the redacted message strikes a much better balance than the original one. --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 13:50, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

It is been 2 months since my comment. Nemoralis (talk) 14:15, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I think there needs to be a global in person event ban list. Cocoaguy (talk) 15:20, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

One already exists -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 17:18, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Tom, I think this is a very rare example of a good use of IAR, even when the rule being ignored is such a big one. The statement isn't what I would have written but I was one of the arbs who consented to its publication. The community needs to know that what happened at WCNA was not a freak, unavoidable incident if they are to participate in the discussions that follow with eyes open. SFR's statement lays out the sequence of events to make clear that that was not the case, which I believe is absolutely vital but can't be done with information that is publicly available. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:48, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I disagree that you can IAR give arbcom the extraordinary authority of the VRT admins, and then IAR decide to disclose it. Especially when the statement is from a single arb and not the committee as a whole. I accept IAR-ing releasing a summary, such as the one in the current redacted version. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 17:28, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Reasonable minds can differ on the exactly what disclosure was necessary but I'm firmly of the opinion that some sort of disclosure was necessary. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:00, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

• Thank you SFR for the transparency, as always. What a massive display of ineptitude by WMF, with nearly horrifying real-world consequences. The Kip ^(contribs) 17:37, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
• Very scary incident. Wikipedia has so many underage and/or impressionable young editors, and this situation could have been so much worse. Months of messages threatening suicide should have been enough for something more to have been done before it got to this point. jolielover♥talk 18:10, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I sort of implied this elsewhere, but with regards to WP:FRAM and this - my feeling is that the WMF's takeaway is that they should be more responsive to ArbCom. A WMF ban at ArbCom's request, building on an existing policy-based sanction, is very different than a WMF sanction that comes out of nowhere and bypasses enwiki's community entirely. Really, there ought to be a more formal method for local wiki community governance to request a WMF ban, for reasons that this incident has made painfully clear. --Aquillion (talk) 20:32, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Whether there needs to be a (more) formal way for arbcom to request the WMF ban somebody is something only arbcom can speak to, but I don't know that it would have helped in this case. Based on SFR's statement, Arbcom asked the WMF to consider a ban and the WMF did seriously consider a ban but ultimately concluded not to ban. The reason they apparently gave for not banning was that they have to consider different factors, one of those being whether they would be likely to win in court if the ban were challenged that way. The conclusion was that when all those factors were considered that a ban was not justified. It would not be appropriate for me to comment on whether that was the right decision or not - I do not have all the facts, I'm not a lawyer and I don't even know what all the relevant laws are (at least in this case it's clear that only American law is relevant, if the person in question were of a different nationality and/or based in a different jurisdiction it might be even more complicated - but this is also something I don't actually know). A different method of asking for the ban seems unlikely to have resulted in a different outcome unless something about the information available to the WMF or the interaction between those facts and the relevant laws also changed. In the light of this incident it's very likely that the WMF will look again at that decision, but if the answer is different that doesn't necessarily mean that the previous answer was wrong based on the information available to them at the time - for instance they now have evidence that someone taking this extreme action is actually possible, previously it was just a hypothetical at best (and possibly even an unknown unknown). Thryduulf (talk) 22:33, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I wear multiple hats: I’m a checkuser on enwiki, a member of the Ombuds Commission, a member of the safe space subcommittee for WCNA 2025, and a member of the wikipedia community. These hats all pull me in different directions and while each has given me some insight into various aspects of this, there is much that I’m (appropriately) still not privy to. In any case, I’m writing here in my individual capacity, not on behalf of any of those entities.

I was disappointed to see the post from ScottishFinnishRadish (SFR), and surprised that arbcom approved its publication. To be sure, there are some things that needed to be said, and I’m glad they were, so let me start there.

As somebody who was involved in organizing the conference, and specifically in keeping the venue a safe space for all the participants, I’m shocked that we didn’t know about any of this. We were aware of several other possible threats, i.e. people who had been blocked or otherwise sanctioned in various ways for on-wiki behavior who we had reason to believe might show up and cause trouble. You never really know how things will go down until they do, but at least in those cases we were familiar with the threats and had some plans for what to do in each case. But not a hint about Weston.

To be honest, while we talked about active shooter scenarios in our meetings, I didn’t personally think that was a realistic concern. Others on the committee did, however, and we treated it that way. My biggest worry was how we would deal with government agents showing up demanding access to the space and/or information about attendees.

So, yes, for all those reasons I’m glad SFR brought this issue into the public view.

But, I’m also concerned about the release of private information. We count on arbcom to be a safe steward of highly confidential information. It is distressing to see that trust broken. In the past, we’ve had examples of a single rogue arb making disclosures on their own. That’s bad enough. In this case, we apparently have these disclosures being made with the consent of the committee (or at least some of them; I’m still a bit hazy on how the approval process worked). That is deeply disturbing for many reasons.

For one, people will now be less willing to share private information with arbcom, knowing that the promise of confidentiality isn’t worth as much as they thought it was. Trust is something that takes a long time to build but can be shattered in an instant. And once it is lost, it takes even longer to regain.

But the thing that really has me worried is how this will affect the already rocky relationship between the WMF and the global wikipedia community. We’re still working to digest the news that two candidates in the ongoing Board of Trustees election were removed from the ballot at the last minute. I’ve been reading as much about this as I can (and attended the ElectCom session at WCNA to learn more) and I still don’t fully understand everything that happened. I’m reading in the Signpost’s October 20th Special Report a quote from board member Victoria Doronina talking about the decision to remove Lane Rasberry: “To me, it looks like he's going to disclose the non-public information”. Whether Lane actually had any intent to disclose non-public information is immaterial; the board (or at least one member) believed he did. And here we go, one week later, handing the board further evidence that our most trusted community members are indeed willing to publicly disclose non-public information. No good can come of that.

This is already longer than I expected it to be, so I’ll sum up by saying that while I’m glad SFR brought this to light, I’m disappointed in the way he did it, and disappointed in arbcom that they supported it. Surely there could have been a way to raise the very real issues that needed raising without violating the trust we have placed in these people to protect the sensitive information they are given in confidence.

RoySmith (talk) 23:00, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Surely? How so? The "rocky relationship between the WMF and the global wikipedia community" doesn't exist in a vacuum. Nor should that longstanding tension serve to mute criticism of the WMF (and its largely self-selected board), and not least out of fear that they'll use their executive power irrationally and/or self-servingly again. Which is how your comment reads to me, sorry. El_C 02:33, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

To be honest, while we talked about active shooter scenarios in our meetings, I didn’t personally think that was a realistic concern. I'm sorry, Roy, but that is an utterly terrifying thing to read from someone working on a Safe Space Subcommittee for any mass gathering in the U.S., let alone one for a community that frequently deals with explicit threats of violence and faced a bomb threat at the same event two years ago. If you went on a cruise and a senior crew member said "We've talked a bit about what we'll do if the ship sinks, but personally I don't think that's a realistic concern", would you feel confident in the soundness of their lifeboats and evacuation procedures? If this is really the view of anyone involved in the conference' security planning, honestly that's much scarier than anything SFR has said about T&S' failures here. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 05:53, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

What kind of new world is this where protecting personnal data from potential criminals takes precedence over the physical safety of individuals?

In what universe can one justify, after the fact, the rejection of an admin candidate requesting financial transparency by the denunciation made by an unrelated third party of the mishandling of a critical incident? --Pa2chant.bis (talk) 07:20, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@Tamzin: Something can be unlikely yet still planned for and taken seriously. When I was doing Proficiency in Survival Craft and Rescue Boats, all that training was to prepare you for what might happen. There's a reason you go through it every five years and why there's regular drills on ships required by Canadian law. That said, I can understand your concern that what people consider adequately prepared wasn't good enough here and why that attitude could be worrying. But I'm hoping what Roy meant was something along the lines of we haven't dealt with someone actually showing up and doing something this bad before so it probably won't happen again but we'll still prepare just in case. I also agree that people's physical safety takes precedence over rule-following to the extreme. This information is vital for whether or not people feel safe attending other meetups in the future and adds a hint of skepticism to what exactly is considered "safe" by T&S. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:25, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: Really grateful to have the perspective here of someone who works in a blue-collar field with a very direct connection to emergency preparedness. I don't think I'd be as worried here if Roy had just said that an active shooter scenario is unlikely. That's objectively true, and it's similar to what gets said to passengers on watercraft and aircraft: "in the unlikely event of an emergency...". What makes me really worried here is the framing that an active shooter scenario isn't a realistic concern. Passenger ships sinking in the developed world is very rare, but I hope you'd agree that it's very much a realistic concern; that's why your government requires you to have the certification you have. Active shooter situations in the U.S. are, while not as common as sometimes sensationalized, still much more common than passenger ships sinking, and so definitely a realistic concern, both in the abstract and in this particular situation.

Part of this, I think, is the difference in how amateurs and professionals do risk assessment for physical security. And I say that as someone who is, like Roy and most (all?) of the people he was working with, also not a security professional. But I find the study of safety and security very interesting, from event security to aviation and maritime disasters to product safety regulation, and a basic principle is that, when you're dealing with risks to life to a lot of people, the threshold at which something becomes a reasonable concern gets much lower. For instance, cell phones interfering with other electronics is so minor a concern that, in making basically any decision in your personal life, you never need to give it any weight. But if the potential cost of interference is that an airplane goes down and kills a few hundred people, then it's a risk one has to take seriously, even if it's extremely unlikely to happen, and that's why phones are supposed to be in airplane mode on take-off and landing. In other words, it's a reasonable concern. So, similarly, the odds of someone showing up to my home with a gun are quite low (even when I lived in the U.S. at a findable address); even there I would say that possibility would have been a reasonable concern, but it was also reasonable for me to say ehhh, it's pretty unlikely and I'm not going to go through the trouble of sleeping with a gun under my pillow just because I sometimes get death threats. But when you're dealing not just with your own life, but with the lives of potentially dozens of people, suddenly that's a very reasonable concern, and one that needs to be taken as seriously as a ship sinking, plane going down, or government agents trying to use the event for a free-speech crackdown (which is another great example of something that is unlikely but, at that scale, still a reasonable concern to prepare for). -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 13:59, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@Tamzin: Well, I wouldn't say I'm a "professional". I've only worked on ships for about six months so there's definitely people more experienced at this than me. But I was trained for the sake of prepardeness and regulation. I'm more comparable to Moss Hills as someone working in the galley than an experienced AB. A lot would have to go wrong for an emergency response to become my sole responsibility even if I'd always be involved on some level (in "ordinary" disasters I'd be counting passengers and calming people down). I suppose where our opinions differ is that something doesn't have to be "realistic" (I perceive that similarly to unlikely) for it to be a threat worth preparing for. The risk of something happening may indeed be small but when it's a matter of life and death for everyone involved, of course you'd want to be prepared for that, and I think our perspectives on that are aligned. One of the biggest lessons I've learned about safety is actually that because of how vital it is, you don't want to "go through the motions". It can easily become more of checklist of theory rather than actually being prepared. I don't know how organizers go about these things but I'd hope they'd involve some element of doing. There's a reason we didn't just read our textbooks and say "okay, we're good now". You do the drills. You practice using the equipment. You make sure everyone is on the same page about what to do. Given that we tend to use different venues each year, I'd hope everyone on the team knows information like entrances/exits, unique safety risks, etc. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 15:31, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: Yeah, I agree we're mostly on the same page here. The point that I'm trying to make is that people involved in safety and security situations need to be worst-case scenario thinkers. If you watch any of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board's videos on YouTube, for instance, you'll see that a whole lot of the disasters they cover come back to someone squinting at a problem and saying "Eh, that probably will never actually happen". It sounds like the Safe Space Subcommittee was trying to do worst-case scenario thinking, but if "One of the people who we know are mad enough at us that they might show up and cause a scene could bring a gun with them" wasn't taken seriously, that's a serious failure to understand the threat profile, even just based on known knowns and known unknowns, not unknown unknowns like things specific to Gapazoid, and strongly calls into question whether these kinds of decisions should be being made by people with little to no professional experience in security. Just like I'm sure you wouldn't want me setting your ship's evacuation protocols based only on what I've learned from YouTube videos. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 16:03, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with pretty much everything you said there. If there is minimal professional involvement and volunteers are taking on that role, the volunteers should be trained to think/react to those scenarios. Part of the reason I'm required to know things like what I do is because if absolutely everything does go wrong (insanely low chances but that sinking was covered in the curriculum for a reason), I need to know what to do to keep others and myself safe. I agree that "One of the people who we know are mad enough at us that they might show up and cause a scene could bring a gun with them" is one of the more common dangerous scenarios you would want to prepare for in a conference like this, especially in a country that's as armed as the US. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:17, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@Tamzin I quite like the CSB's work. You mentioning it gives me the thought that a positive outcome here would be the creation of an after-action report identifying failure points and suggested reforms. I don't think the community should hold its breath on it being public (much of the processes involved are purposely secret; the foundation wisely doesn't advertise how to get around its security). But even a private report would be of great value. I will suggest as much to the foundation. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:20, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@CaptainEek: I think that's a great idea. But I'd encourage you to encourage the Foundation to at least release a redacted version if they do do this. The SRE team has ample experience determining how much to publicize when they do after-action reports about site reliability issues, and I trust that T&S could do the same. I imagine that most of the "mistakes made" part could be public, and at least some of "lessons learned", plus any planned changes that will be overt, like if they plan to always have bag checks and metal detectors. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 19:36, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

• (This is just from myself). I think that we are treading into new territory with this statement as it is kind of quasi-official: it was written from a single member's perspective but was also approved by a majority vote. If the statement had been written from the entire Committee's perspective (one that is on behalf of it instead of one with the consent of it – I know that some may view this as splitting hairs), I think that similar objectives (informing the Community, holding T&S to account, calling for better security work) could have been achieved without the drastic privacy disclosures. I really wish that they hadn't been included: I think that if we had worked more deliberately with a view to means rather than ends, it could have been avoided.
  From what I've seen in the past two years, the Committee's relationship with the WMF has changed since the Fram incident and it is one borne from mutual respect and trust, even when we drive each other up the wall and even when I find parts of the WMF to be intensely disappointing. I hope that T&S and the Committee will be able to work well together in the future because I believe that it benefits the entire movement when we do so. Yours, Sdrqaz (talk) 09:12, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

  Just from you? So, you didn't sign, refused to sign, wasn't aware of there being anything to sign? I mean, you, ArbCom member Sdrqaz, open those questions up when you qualify it like that, not to mention comment, per se. Anyway, while less sprawling and convoluted (and frankly puzzling) comment as Roy's–and one that even offers (vague) criticism of the WMF—like Roy, the focus seems fixated on the disclosure. Drastic and unnecessary, you say. How so, I ask, again? Here, the (means to the) end is the preservation of life. So I find this being your focal point to be poor form. Though granted, not phrased as poorly as Roy's comment, where I ended up neutering my own original reply significantly because it read as too scathing (perhaps a mistake). But it's a traumatic incident so I tried to tread sensitively, which I feel you've fallen short of; even if it might be mostly in the subtext and in the omission. I don't like it. El_C 12:22, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

  It's standard practice for individual members to provide commentaries from their perspective after announcements, such as at the WMF CheckUser announcement. I said "just from myself" so that my message here wouldn't be misinterpreted as being from the entire Committee.

  I was aware of the statement before publication but did not vote for it. I supported its purpose (informing the Community, holding T&S to account, calling for better security work) but I disagreed with how it was done: I think that we could have gotten that message across without quoting emails and I expressed concerns, but it was published soon afterwards – the time from proposal to publication was very short. The Committee and its members are entrusted with private and sensitive data and I take that and the NDAs I signed seriously, so if we can provide sufficient transparency without compromising private data, I think that that would have been a better alternative.

  I wasn't at WCNA, so I can't say that I completely understand the trauma and distress that people went through. But I am sympathetic to it and we're all trying to ensure that this doesn't happen again. Sdrqaz (talk) 01:35, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

  Both the WMF and the volunteers here should consider their legal risk when they make statements or disclosures, the WMF is structurally and institutionally required to, but volunteers here should consider this for themselves, too. Perhaps, that is a disconnect. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:41, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

  Is the information whose disclosure is being objected to present beyond the redacted section? Aaron Liu (talk) 12:36, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

  Yes. During this process, on April 25th, Weston sent an email to the info queue saying they were going to travel to the WMF offices to protest my block. I read the email before it got pulled. It doesn't really say much more beyond that, so I'm puzzled by all the hullabaloo surrounding its disclosure. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:21, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

  (Assuming that this was directed at me) I think that the statement would have achieved the same effect without quoting T&S's reply to the Committee as well; as I said above, I think that a good working relationship between T&S and the Committee leads to a better result for the Community, even when we disagree strongly and hold the WMF to account. Sdrqaz (talk) 01:35, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

This is the second time within a week that the WMF Board has shown that it cannot be trusted to serve the interests of the communities of editors. (The editors of each project are a community. The community of editors of the English Wikipedia is a large community.) The WMF Board has disqualified two qualified candidates from the ballot for the Board, and now has failed to protect the public attending a gathering. It appears the Board is more concern about preventing the leaking of secrets than about effectively working with the communities of editors. The apparent connection between the two failures by the Board may be an excessive or extreme fear of disclosure of private information. The Board disqualified one of the candidates for an open Board seat due to fear that he might release confidential data to the public. Then, after a safety failure in which the Board failed to exclude a dangerous mentally ill person from a gathering, the Board apparently tried to withhold. I am not entirely sure what it was that the Board was trying to conceal from the public, but the Board may not understand the extent to which their focus on preserving the secrecy of their business is giving the communities reason to distrust them.

I can only speak for myself, and cannot say that the Board has lost the confidence of the communities; but I, unfortunately, hope that the Board has lost the confidence of the communities. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:43, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

I would be incredibly concerned if the board was mucking around in decisions about global bans. The decision about the candidates is on the board, the professional staff deserve no blame because it's not their place to weigh in on that. The decision to not ban this user is on the professional staff, the board deserve little blame (as they could conceivably advise about policy). Let's make sure we get who is responsible for decisions right because we have no chance of improving these things if we misapportion blame. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:47, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

• I only just discovered this statement now, several days after learning about the incident that took place (note: I was not an attendee). Upon reading what ScottishFinnishRadish had to say about it, the only response I can give is... wow.

  In the interests of transparency, I'd like to state that I haven't had much confidence in the WMF for a very long time. This goes back years and years—the most egregious incident, prior to this one, was the whole kerfuffle surrounding their unilateral desysop and (later vacated) 1-year ban of Fram in 2019, an act of office overreach that was so outrageous, it nearly led me to declare myself done with Wikipedia altogether. While Framgate and the WCNA are events that showcase two diametrically opposite extremes—the former taking too much action, the latter too little—they are continuations of a longer-term pattern of disconnect between the WMF and the volunteers who make its various enterprises possible. As far back as 2013, I signed a petition requesting the WMF to improve communication with the community insofar as it pertained to interface changes. I'm not sure if there has been improvement on that front in the twelve years that have elapsed since, but it illustrates that this pattern of neglecting to take the interests and perspectives of WMF volunteers sufficiently into account is a longstanding one. For many years, the damage this disconnect had wrought was local, and in the greater scheme of things, insignificant beyond our online community. A week and a half ago, it culminated in a real-life incident where people's lives were potentially in danger. An incident that, if SFR's word is to be taken completely at face value (and I see absolutely no reason for us not to do so), was entirely preventable.

  I'm not saying that the WMF is a complete and utter failure, or that it doesn't have good people working for it. But there has always seemed to be a deeply-engrained mindset, expressed through both its actions and inactions over the span of two decades, that they are not accountable to us. But in reality, they are. We don't have to edit. We do so of our own volition, and we can just as easily pull that support if we feel that the company running the websites that we contribute to doesn't have our best interests in mind. At a bare minimum, I think we can all agree that the physical safety of our editors and volunteers is important, and that the WMF shouldn't be hand-waving concerns about potential in-person violence while evidently not doing enough to prevent it. Kurtis ^(talk) 23:10, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Foundation response

Hello, everyone. I’m Maggie Dennis, the Vice President who oversees the Trust & Safety teams, the Human Rights Team, and the Committee Support team (who liaises with EnWP ArbCom, among other committees). I want to acknowledge what was shared here. What happened on Friday at Wikiconference North America was awful. I know I speak for far more than myself when I say we remain deeply concerned for all impacted, especially those who were present at the event.

After the incident, the Foundation immediately began a review of its protocols related to event security, including procedures for screening event attendance. We also started revisiting the standards for Office Actions such as bans from the Foundation.

In terms of event security, there is a process already underway within the Foundation to revisit and review event security measures for upcoming conferences in other locations. We will be working closely with event organizers for upcoming community events that are scheduled in the coming months and will increase joint communications about security measures that are being implemented. We will continue to work with Conference Organizing Committees (COTs) on-the-ground to jointly protect Wikimedia events, which will include assessing, revising and implementing improved processes for screening event attendees.

In terms of office actions, we are already in active conversations with English Arbitration Committee members about improving our approach and will be inviting the views of others, such as the U4C, and broader community as well as those conversations evolve. Some changes can be implemented swiftly, while others may need a careful eye towards maintaining community independence. It’s always been a balance, and we are committed to working with ArbCom, the U4C, and others to figure out how to strike the balance better. We need to respect the autonomy of communities and avoid overreach from a central governance standpoint. At the same time, we need to provide the support needed by volunteers, especially functionaries and users with extended rights who put themselves on the line by enforcing policies.

I understand that there will be questions that we can’t answer to everyone’s satisfaction, particularly about case specifics. But I want you to know that we are taking this very seriously

Maggie Dennis –Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Two things to consider in your active discussions -- not only for events. Plenty of self-examination is in order, and not just from the WMF -- also ArbCom and T&S might re-examine. 1) My local police were absolutely wonderful in giving me round-the-clock protection, but I got nothing from T&S in the way of help. Most of the help I got was from a former arb. 2) I am not of the opinion that ArbCom is always sufficiently concerned about the safety of Wikipedians either, and would be interested in being part of any private discussions on that matter. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:09, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Instead of trying to involve specific editors in private discussions, I would like WMF to host a space where all Wikipedians could publish or submit their thoughts on this issue. I am personally disappointed that this hasn't been announced yet. This is me speaking in an individual capacity, not on behalf of ArbCom or WikiClubs I am part of. Z1720 (talk) 01:13, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

That would help also, but there is very little I could say publicly that I haven't already said here. In one case, my own safety. In the second and third cases, the safety of others regarding two different arbcases. I feel fairly confident that Maggie would listen, but less confident that ArbCom will welcome public examination, nor would a public examination help the victims. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:23, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Maybe Mdennis (WMF) can suggest some places where Wikipedians can speak privately with a WMF staff member, if they want. Z1720 (talk) 01:34, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia I'm sorry you feel let down by ArbCom but I want to clarify that ArbCom is 15 Wikipedia editors. Outwith the English Wikipedia, our status on this website means nothing. We have no more standing with the police (for example) than anyone else, especially if we don't live in their jurisdiction. And of course we're volunteers who do this in our spare time with no formal training. That's where we have to pass the buck to the Trust and Safety team. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:22, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, HJ Mitchell; I appreciate the thought. I'm not personally let down in cases I wasn't involved in, but I think when the Committee allows editors to be falsely labeled on ArbCom talk pages, and by editors hiding behind anonymity no less, and in cases likely to draw media scrutiny -- considering the amount of politically-generated violence that is "out there" now -- you have to recognize that Committee decisions could be furthering the very thing SFR is pointing out. Editors should also be protected by BLP policy, and certainly on arbcom talk pages. As to being personally let down, I don't think ArbCom's rightful concern about the safety of some editors has been equally applied to all editors. And on a fourth case, NYB may be the only one around to remember what I went through in 2007 to 2008. My point is that ArbCom, too, needs to examine some of their most recent positions in terms of safety of all editors. Re my personal experience with T&S, I was lucky to have a former arb helping out, and an excellent local detective, who took what I showed him very seriously even though T&S wouldn't help him. Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:43, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I want to second what a recent commentor said in response to Maryana Iskander's comment on the mailing list [1]. I'm paraphrasing a bit here but they basically said that the statement about not sharing details about what happened comes across in a slightly different light in hindsight. I remember a brief speech being given about how we shouldn't talk to the press while we were at the event as well. I hope SFR was not pressured to act a certain way because the WMF was concerned about reputational damage. I wouldn't have nearly been that cynical a few weeks back but the recent events surrounding the board of trustees (and this situation in particular) has really diminished some of the faith I previously had in the WMF. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 00:42, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Let me start with saying that I am not blaming anyone, but I would deal with this differently. I have no pointers for what happened on stage. The thing is, anyone that is suicidal is that way because they have grown to hate their own lives. Something happened in their own lives and now they would like nothing more than to start over from day 1 of the first year of their lives. Their reason for being suicidal can be as simple as that they have troubles of getting friends, or something more serious. Either way, a person that says that they are suicidal are giving society a chance to change their minds. I want admins, U4C Committee, Arbitration Committee and T&S to start recommending that these non-LTA people contact suicidal hotlines and start collecting places that offer that kind of service. Also, if any of these people agree to contact a hotline they should be unbanned. Let me go first. In Iceland, where I live, the Icelandic Red cross provides a suicidal hotline. Snævar (talk) 20:42, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't support automatic unbans for suicidal people if they contact the hotline, of the block was not related to their suicidal thoughts. I would support giving them the hotlines for their area, but automatically unblocking them is liable to be abused. QuicoleJR (talk) 20:46, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

We (admins, functionaries, the community generally, the WMF, etc.) already refer people to m:Mental health resources all the time. It's also very rare that enwiki admins block someone for suicide threats; obviously we want to avoid antagonizing someone who's already in a dangerous place, so it's really a last resort. In the rare cases where it does happen, it's generally an {{oversightblock}} (since someone in that state of mind can't meaningfully consent to publicizing their own medical information), and most blocks I've seen like that have been reversed usually in just a few days once the person has gotten the help they need. (Anecdotal; maybe an OSer can provide harder data.) There are some people who've engaged in some pattern of indeffable disruptive editing and then threatened suicide as part of that (especially in response to a block or warning), and who have been indeffed and stayed indeffed, but the staying indeffed usually has more to do with the other underlying conduct. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 21:12, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Speaking as an oversighter, when we come across threats of harm (including to the editor themselves) that are plausibly serious, we revdel or oversight and make the WMF emergency team aware. We will also place an oversight block if we believe that is in the interests of the project, but this is very rare for threats of self harm - at absolute most we're talking 1-2 a year (all oversight blocks of registered accounts are peer reviewed). Unblock requests following an oversight (or checkuser) block are handled by ArbCom rather than functionaries so I can't say anything about them. Thryduulf (talk) 23:33, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for this, SFR. To preface, I've had a lot of praise for many of the people involved, including some of the organizers and WMF staff. In general, I'm hugely impressed with this community for the way everyone handled a terrible situation. This is, however, an important "how to do better next time" thread. So some comments/questions for folks:

1. I agree with Tamzin that even if the initial block didn't rise to the level of the global child protection policy, the communications after the ban sound like they warranted global action. That said, without seeing the content of those communications, it's hard to say. i.e. "I would be happy to set up a meeting with you at your offices if possible" vs "if you don't unban me I'll come to where you work". It sounds, from SFR's description of the events, that not listening to arbcom was a substantial blunder here, though.
2. But if a global ban were issued, would that have actually affected his attendance? Presumably any search that would turn up a global ban would also turn up a child protection block, right?
3. I do not think the WMF does the screening for Wikicon; rather, I think it's typically a volunteer job. Is it something staff should be doing? Is it something volunteers want the WMF to be doing? Are there tools the WMF could build to simplify the process for volunteers? What would prevent someone from just giving a different username? We don't require attendees to have any username at all.
4. Should any indef on any project affect someone's in-person attendance at such an event? What about indefs for specific offenses (child protection, but also perhaps harassment, stalking, doxing, or other behaviors that target a person)?
   The question of what to do with blocked users who want to come to in-person events has been a tricky question for many years now. I can think of a few users who have been indeffed on one project or another and attend in-person events. Sometimes it's because they haven't been problematic in person, or are even highly constructive, but I think it usually does involve some assessment of the block reasons. I don't know of any affiliate (among the few where I'd be aware) that has a blanket policy about blocked users, but they really should, even if it's heavily qualified in case-by-caseness.
5. How much security do we really want at these events? Having a lot of security sure does change the tone of the event. Wikipedia is more "serious business" and less "DIY encyclopedia" as of late, but I worry -- echoing many people who made this point at the conference -- that having a ton of security could signal things about the community (that it is a dangerous place, that we are doing controversial things, that we are viable targets, etc.). I am torn, and do not know the answer to this.
6. I see some claims above about security being promised but not there. I looked for where this came from, since I was surprised, and found this line: There will be professional security guards present at Civic Hall as well as both evening receptions at Prime Produce and Hyatt Place.. Were they there, and perhaps just not enough to stop this from happening, or was security not present on the first day? Putting aside how much security there should be, it is important to set expectations properly, as this is a detail that will be very important to some people's feeling of safety. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:09, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Just adding to the above a +1 to Phoebe's comments as well as Guerillero's, who does a better round-up of the "How much security..." concerns. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:14, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

On your (Rhododendrites') last point, I wonder if there are different cultural perspectives on what "normal" security looks like, and if so whether that is impacting perceptions on what was promised and/or what was provided? I wasn't there, and I've never been to New York so I can't speak from a personal perspective, but I'm currently reading a novel (very well researched and based in part on the author's personal experience) where the difference in attitude to security at police stations in different neighbourhoods of the same California city forms a minor plot point. This makes me suspect that someone from one cultural background could easily understand the term "enhanced security" very differently to someone from a different cultural background. I appreciate this is starting to veer away from the primary point of this discussion though. Thryduulf (talk) 02:34, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

The cultural expectations sure do differ. I attend a lot of conferences professionally, and even when federal elected officials attend, there are no bag checks or metal detectors. So there is certainly a difference depending on context. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 04:14, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Quick clarifying note for point 3: having helped screen registrants in the past in the capacity of a WCNA organizer, the registrants have typically been reviewed by both a subset of volunteer WCNA organizers and WMF T&S staff (but I do not know the screening details for this year). Having WMF T&S be part of the registrant review is vital IMO, given their privileged information on banned individuals, on an international scale over time. Novem's suggestion above about including members from other trusted groups who work in this space (e.g. ArbCom, Stewards) is also good IMO. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 02:47, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I want to clarify the point about security since there has been a lot of misinformation floating around. To be clear, Wikimedia NYC did hire professional security for the conference. Of course we knew nothing about any of the history surrounding the perpetrator otherwise we would have taken more advanced precautions. There were three security guards that day, one at the front door security desk and two security guards who started on the first floor making sure all attendees getting into the elevator had a conference badge and then they floated amongst the floors of the conference. We also had one professional security guard at the evening reception at Prime Produce the day before. After the incident we increased the number of security guards to five, began implementing bag checks, and asked for NYPD to be stationed outside. Prior to the start of the conference, we requested and received the WMF global ban list from WMF trust and safety and reviewed all registered attendees against it. We now know that the person we needed to look out for hadn't received a global ban so they weren't on the list. We are not taking any of this lightly and this incident will definitely help shape how we do things differently in the future. There are lots of lessons to be learned here. But I wanted to clear up the question about security because it's important for folks to share accurate information and recognize that the organizing committee for the conference was thinking about it and tried our best to plan for safety concerns with the knowledge we had at the time. Pacita (WikiNYC) (talk) 02:52, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, Pacita. That clears a few things up. On the "for next time" list, it does seem like it would be good to look beyond the global ban list. That's something I supported before this incident (long ago, and unrelated to wikicon, to be clear), but we could never quite settle on a threshold/criteria for non-admittance. It would be fairly easy to create a script which takes a CSV of registered usernames and generates a table of username, project where they're blocked, block duration, block reason, and blocking admin. That would make it easy to catch things like blocks for threats, child protection, harassment, doxing and other things that might be enough to get kicked off one project but not quite enough for a global ban. A user friendly tool rather than a script would be better, of course, but a script would be pretty easy. That said, none of this addresses the obvious reaction to screening: don't use your blocked username. I don't think we want to prohibit all non-Wikipedians and new users from attending. I'd imagine those signing up with a child protection-blocked account are the exception among potentially problematic attendees. FWIW. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:11, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, dealing with people who admit to being users with active serious-bad-stuff blocks is a necessary element of security, but far from sufficient. As to what would be sufficient, I think most of us would agree that, like, full professional background checks of every attendee would discourage an unacceptably large number of people from participating. But I think the downsides of requiring verification of an account with nontrivial editing history, while real, are small enough that the security upsides are worth it. There could be some alternate procedure to verify with T&S for someone who doesn't have an account but is active in or adjacent to the Wikimedia community, and users with accounts could still bring +1s. That still leaves open windows for social engineering, but much narrower than the current wide-open door. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 04:29, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Alternatively, bag/metal-detector screening at entry points, as highlighted by Risker below, is relatively unobtrusive, isn't contingent on a complicated calculus of community status, and would keep out the more dangerous end of threats that personae non gratae might pose. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 04:33, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes and no. A dangerous person without a weapon is a greater threat than a safe person with one. I'm not against bag checks and metal detectors, but they're not particularly difficult to evade, there's lots of things a weapon can be improvised out of, and even a totally unarmed person can be very physically dangerous. You can't make an event like this safe(r) without making the guest list safe(r). -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 04:51, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. Consider, for example, sexual harassment and assault. I would be greatly displeased to find that someone who had sexually harassed a Wikimedian was admitted to an event, and sexual harassment is in no way impeded by bag checks, nor has anyone managed to develop a detection wand for this purpose. -- asilvering (talk) 07:09, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Agreed that a wand and a bag check would be a good way to improve security. It would also have a deterrent effect. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:48, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't disagree but it's also worth noting not all venues are set up for this. We like to have events in universities, for instance, which by design have multiple entries and are porous. I do not know how we might have had the conference at MIT in 2019, for instance. It would make me sad to never use a venue like this again. phoebe / (talk to me) 05:37, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Or implement airport-style security (but allow liquids even if over 100ml), which people should be familiar with. I think I recall having security when entering The Shard, London's tallest building. JuniperChill (talk) 11:14, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

But I think the downsides of requiring verification of an account with nontrivial editing history, while real, are small enough that the security upsides are worth it. - We've historically welcomed Wikipedia-focused academics who aren't otherwise involved, amateur and professional journalists, people who participate in other free culture projects, and people who just saw there was a Wikipedia-related conference in town and got curious. Speaking as a dork, there are many websites I don't participate in where, if I saw there was a conference for only $25 nearby, I'd consider attending. That said, maybe it's [give us your ID] or [give us your established username] -- less of a reason for folks coming off the street to remain pseudonymous, after all. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:21, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I think something like "verify an account with 100 global edits (which, if blocked anywhere, will be assessed for whether the block indicates a risk to others), or be such a person's plus-one, or verify your IRL identity (which will be given a very basic background check for violent crimes or sex offenses in addition to being compared against the names of WMF-banned users, where known)" would be a reasonable compromise between the rival interests here. With human judgment being applied—we don't want to ban someone from a conference because some tiny-wiki admin made an involved indef and stuck "harassment" in the summary, or because they were convicted of battery 30 years ago in a bar fight, but T&S professionals can handle those nuanced situations as needed. Similarly they could take note of obviously suspicious behavior like someone racking up a bunch of minor edits on a brand-new account before registering under that username. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 19:59, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

having a ton of security could signal things about the community (that it is a dangerous place, that we are doing controversial things, that we are viable targets, etc) – The problem is that all of these statements have become increasingly true, especially within the last year. The key is that we've mostly seen it play out in politics, the courts, and the media, and real-life threats have historically been caused by personal grudges instead of aggression toward the community as a whole. I don't hold Trust and Safety or any other part of the WMF responsible for what happened at the conference, but I believe they have a duty to respond to these issues and to explore how they can improve editor safety, which has not been one of the WMF's strengths to this point. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:31, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

having a ton of security could signal things about the community (that it is a dangerous place). I think this is a reasonable argument to make before something happened. But now that something has happened, I think we should react to it by increasing security. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:50, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites Were they there, and perhaps just not enough to stop this from happening, or was security not present on the first day? They were there from the start, and when everyone was streaming downstairs security was running upstairs towards the room. I was impressed, because security guards unarmed security guards who definitely aren't paid enough to risk their lives were running towards a room where everyone was telling them there was a man with a gun.

I haven't seen anyone say this, but I think it's worth mentioning that what security did immediately after the even deserves recognition as well. Guettarda (talk) 14:11, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:51, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say this, but if the security professionals employed were unarmed, there should have been much better control of admission. Instead it was below the level of an urban high school in the US. I would have expected the professionals to point this out. Also, to have the opening plenary address with the head of the organisation scheduled to speak take place with none of the three security professionals present—not even on the same floor—relying instead on the designated volunteer monitors (presumably their duties were supposed to be on the level of dealing with people talking in the audience or passing out) is culpably poor planning or execution, way below the level attendees would have been entitled to expect. (In the ordinary course of events; and we've been informed that attendees were actually assured of tighter than normal security.) That's a show of security, and a not very convincing one. Was the placement of the security guards planned, or did they just wind up being so completely ineffective through some distraction or misunderstanding? Yngvadottir (talk) 16:54, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Armed security wouldn't have made anyone safer. Especially not in a room with the amount of hard surfaces (a concrete ceiling, floor and pillars) that the auditorium has. I'm thankful there was none in the room. Guettarda (talk) 17:33, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

And not everyone is a sharpshooter nor that shots are always 10/10 on point. – robertsky (talk) 18:01, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Trigger warning: hypothetical discussion of displays of armed threat.

There's a wide range of options between having Uzi-toting goons in kevlar standing in front of the dais—or even a visibly armed security person present in the session—and a total lack of effective controls on entry to the event (no bag checks; no metal-detecting; and inadequate screening of attendees by username or wallet name), compounded by having none of the professionals even on the right floor during a plenary event. Pretty much everyone would agree that it would have been suboptimal to engage in a gunfight in the meeting room. Most would also agree that the presence of a guard with a gun on their hip in the session, while having deterrent value, would have intimidated some participants; many people have good reason to not feel safe around armed cops, and some are probably not even accustomed to seeing them. That's why you seek to prevent access in the first place, so that if things do go pear-shaped, the confrontation occurs at the screening point, not inside the event; and if the decision is to use unarmed security personnel, it's all the more important for everyone's safety that they be the ones to do any rushing and disarming.

Yngvadottir (talk) 21:07, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Having attended many, many Wikimedia-related events on four continents, and being fairly well-informed of practices at other regional events, it sounds as though there is a disconnect with respect to security across these events. Security screening (bag checks in particular) are fairly normalized in many European settings and have been for several years. Even more in-depth security screening (metal detectors, bag x-raying) is normalized in just about every public building in the African cities where I have been in the last few years, to the point that one goes through such security measures to go to normal shopping malls, any hostelry, any museum, and so on. I'm at a bit of a loss as to why bag checks (at minimum) have not been instituted for Wikicons in North America, especially after a bomb threat at the venue in 2023. Statistically speaking, the United States has a notably higher incidence of violent situations than almost all of the other countries that provide more extensive screening.

Whether or not the person involved in this incident was office-banned by the WMF (which includes attendance at WMF-sponsored off-wiki events), all it would have taken for them to be allowed to attend was giving a fake name; I cannot recall IDs being verified on check-in to any event anywhere. Having a security officer somewhere on-site is not the same as having security actively present in a room, or actively carrying out screening activities.

I did not attend this event, but believe me I have heard so much about it from so many people through many channels. I believe strongly that some of the actions and reactions we have been seeing in the last several days are perfectly within the expected range of responses to what has been a very traumatic event. There has been a lot more anger, a lot more introspection, a lot more discourse that is out-of-character from many of the people who have gone through this experience. Those who were there may well not realize that they have been exhibiting these changes; people tend to have a "keep calm and carry on" attitude. I do urge the WMF to hire a team of counsellors and debriefers and make them available to all of the attendees of this conference. As I recall, counsellors were made available at a previous conference when a scholar unexpectedly passed away during the event weekend, so this is not unprecedented.

It is clear that Trust & Safety has already initiated its review of this event and related actions, and I encourage them to be bold and to make it really clear what they need: more staff, more input into security requirements for events, changes to the risk management matrices for "problematic" users, whatever it is. Having been to the WMF offices with their attendant security processes, I think they may have developed a bit of a false sense of security that doesn't apply outside of the parameters of that security system. Institutional memory reminds us that they have had people show up in a threatening way before, and have had staff walk in during a carefully planned heist, and that is exactly why the office is now in a high security building. Risker (talk) 03:13, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I think you make a really good point about counselors, Risker. I was talking to one person who was at the conference but not in the room at the time of the incident, and they said something to the effect of "It sounded a lot scarier till we learned no shots had been fired". Well I wasn't at the conference, but I have been in a situation where someone, face-to-face, threatened to shoot me, and I'll tell you, the fact that no shots were fired in the end really did not change my sense afterward of having almost been shot. And that shit took me a good while to work through. It's only in the past couple decades that the mental health establishment has started to understand just how central trauma is for our psychologies. A big part of that is that trauma isn't deterministically predictable based on input. Two people can experience the same trauma, and one shrugs it off and the other needs years of therapy; those can both be healthy responses, and it's not like the first person is callous or the second is weak. For attendees who are closer to the second category, it will likely take many of them a while to even process how they're feeling. As I recall, when I was almost shot, even though I did talk to my therapist within 24 hours of the event, it took me maybe 3 months to be able to talk about it without getting caught up in flashbacks. I hope the WMF will be able to provide resources going forward to people who need to work through anything.

On that note, @Ocaasi, I hope you don't mind if I drop you a ping here? Stephen Harrison describes your "mental health first aid" toward the would-be shooter, which is really admirable and deserves mention alongside the heroism of Pharos and Fuzheado's tactical response, and you've done some of the most effective writing I've seen on mental health in the Wikimedia movement. So, if you're able, I'd love to hear your perspective. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 04:46, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi Tamzin. I'm going to repost what I wrote on Facebook, because you are absolutely right that trauma responses immediately and and especially post-event can catch people off guard:

Friday morning a gunman entered the Wikimedia North America conference. No one was hurt, and the particular details aren't really the point of this post.

The point is that Friday afternoon I sobbed for 2 minutes straight. Really ugly crying right into my bed. It was the release of trauma, and I NEEDED it. But it caught me by surprise, unguarded in my hotel room.

The following two days, as the conference bravely resumed, my attention to my surroundings was alarmingly hyper-sensitive. Every conversation, sharp noise, or sudden movement registered intensely.

I'm not looking for sympathy or concern: I have an army of medications and therapists.

What I want to be very clear about for the attendees of the conference is that this kind of response is entirely perfectly NORMAL, and even HEALTHY.

That's the message. If you were there and you are now--or later--anxious, vigilant, scared, sad, guilt-ridden, exhausted, or even unusually "up", it's ok. You're going to be ok.

There are people in the movement who you can talk to, hotlines you can call, and of course professional counselors. If you want someone to just listen...reach out. We're here for you. We're here for each other.

I've also published a draft guide on mental health first aid, which any editor but especially T&S and organizers may find useful: https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/mental-health-first-aid-a-compassionate-guide-c1a8cdfe42d4

I think it's essential that we respond to what happened as a major psychological event as well as a security lapse, neither eclipses the other to me in importance. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 05:55, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I recall there were security checks at the 2015 event in the National Archives building. [2]. That felt perfectly fine. Should be standard. Andreas JN466 05:42, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

A bag check and/or a metal detector at the entrance is the level of security I would expect at a big WMF conference. I've never been to a WMF event, but I understand that those in San Francisco or Silicon Valley are always held in secure buildings, requiring wallet ID checks at a minimum. I think Risker is right about a disconnect, "a bit of a false sense of security", if neither of these is the norm in other US cities. With a bomb threat in the past, I consider that unacceptable. Quite apart from the fact that this person should not have been admitted to the venue in the first place, it isn't a safe space if it's easily infiltrated with a loaded gun. Why did the security guards not stop this guy? Yngvadottir (talk) 06:25, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I think there's also a breakdown in understanding between the foundation and the community, and even the different silos of contributors. Those of us who work primarily in anti-abuse receive threats of harm and death threats as a matter of course, and those threats come from anti-abuse actions in almost any topic. People are saying that things should be safer in Canada next year but I know that, aside from myself, many admins and editors have received threats from editing and working abuse prevention in the Khalistani topic area. This movement is active in Edmonton, and adherents toopponents of the movement have assassinated an adherent in Canada, possibly with Indian government support or involvement.
This is the world we live in and we need to understand the risks at play to make decisions about our own safety. The foundation, affiliates, and community have to come together to decide how best to address security and safety, but that can only happen when all the cards are on the table. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:56, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Canadian here. Your two articles about the Khalistani movement are about very different things. One is an opinion piece from an Indian newspaper about an attack on a Hindu temple by a Khalistani group. The other is about a Canadian citizen and Khalistani supporter being assassinated with support from India. Saying that "adherents to the movement have assassinated opponents in Canada" thus has it backwards. There is Hindu aggression and Khalistani aggression, not just the latter, and the Khalistanis are most certainly not backed by India, or by its terrorist groups. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 21:22, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

You are obviously correct, I got my who did what and who's supporting who mixed up there. I've struck and corrected. To be clear, this isn't to claim that Canada is some unsafe, violent place. It's to demonstrate that there are a lot of issues (especially those that they're not familiar with) that editors have to deal with that may have real world repercussions where they may not expect them. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:57, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Why is security normalized in Europe and Africa but not America? Because of List of unarmed African Americans killed by law enforcement officers in the United States. Police sometimes mistake phones for guns. I'd be comfortable with increasing security in Canada but fear increased security in America. 172.97.220.91 (talk) 17:39, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

A guy with a gun who threatened to bring it with him to a Wikimedia conference was not deemed as dangerous?? Does the WMF even give a fuck about the reports that they receive? How many of the reports submitted to the Trust and Safety (T&S) team were deemed serious after they "carefully weighed the evidence"?

Genuinely, I've stopped reporting the death threats that I've been receiving for the past year because of how little they seem to care, and I'm pretty sure that telling someone who's from a country where people who commit politically-motivated assassinations are let loose easily (or are sometimes not even caught because the government couldn't care less, unless that they're put pressure by some influential human rights org), AND that his grandfather was a victim of such atrocity (assassinated in 1992 by Ali Salem al-Beidh himself btw) that the death threats that he received were not deemed dangerous was the right thing to do by them. After all, what could they have done, right? I'm nowhere near the WMF ig. But allowing someone who could have potentially massacred many of the volunteers who keep this project alive to go unchecked, especially after the WMF was warned about him, is simply unacceptable. This is pure incompetence, and the entire T&S team should resign in shame. 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 Abo Yemen (𓃵) 08:03, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

A guy with a gun who threatened to bring it with him to a Wikimedia conference. Unless I missed something, the person never mentioned a gun before the actual incident. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:45, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae no you're right. I misread SFR's statement 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 Abo Yemen (𓃵) 08:56, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

@Mdennis (WMF):, thank you for sharing this. I appreciate the transparency and I will not be criticizing any person in particular who worked on the risk assessment for this event, as I still don't know (nor particularly want) enough details to do that. Our risk is on the rise (and I've seen security become ever more strict at our cons throughout the years). Yet, I personally think we entered a new era. The tensions in the world are palpable. Look no further than the political violence in the USA in the last year.

At the same time, I do not think that more security personnel or more metal detectors are the solution to this problem. Let's also look at something like TwitchCon this year, with the Emiru incident. Twitchcon also has a high approachability of people and a high risk of internet loonies mixing with very normal and genuine people just wanting to have a good time. There the security wasn't even up to previous years standards, even though it was supposed to be higher than in years previous because people were so concerned. Particularly the hired security there did not seem to understand the risk profile of some of the creators being at a specific spot at a specific time.

There, from a glance, I think the event organizer, T&S and the hired security team created a somewhat mixed responsibility that I think is ... problematic for events like this going forward. Cyber security and online security is not the same as in-person security and personal protection. In person security is a speciality. Security for events like this is best done with very good information sharing, proper planning and briefing of hired security personnel beforehand and then ensuring that the experience is forwarded to future instances of such events.

I think the Foundation should consider hiring a fulltime person in charge of organizing safety for in-person events. This person should have a background in Executive personal protection (instead of cyber and online security, moderation etc) and can be in charge of handling this information, selecting and briefing hired security personnel, ensuring a consistent and risk appropriate approach for the event and the attending crowd (incl screening process), with knowledge of Wikimedia specific context. I think we cannot afford to be naive on this, and hiring out this responsibility per event any longer. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:51, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks TheDJ, I agree that we have often conflated online moderation and awareness with in-person T&S and they are not the same, though they intersect in several ways in our community. One thing I've been thinking about is how to strengthen our best practices for handling any emergency at any event and making sure that any organizer of events large or small has a game plan for things like medical emergencies, fire alarms etc as well as disruptive participants. That gets into more of what we have historically thought of as "logistics" but is a dimension of course of T&S. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 13:48, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Risker wrote:

I encourage [Trust & Safety] to be bold and to make it really clear what they need: more staff, more input into security requirements for events, changes to the risk management matrices for "problematic" users, whatever it is.

TheDJ wrote:

I think the Foundation should consider hiring a fulltime person in charge of organizing safety for in-person events.

I'm not sure this can or should be fixed by encouraging the Foundation's T&S team to hire more staff, or to add more layers of centralized secrecy and bureaucracy. This event was an example where more coordination and collaboration with our existing, global, multilingual, safety-conscious community, with ears and hands on the projects and on the ground, could have averted the problem. These matters require prudence, but there is currently an element of cloak-and-dagger secrecy that seems sub-optimal and is poorly suited to our distributed context. – SJ + 19:05, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

If it's true what someone said earlier about how T&S only has four people, I think there should probably be some extra hires. That's not really enough people for a global movement, especially not in a world with increasing worrying rhetoric targeting Wikipedians. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 19:10, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

The community has good reason to mistrust T&S, and not just because of Framgate. T&S should be a lot more responsive to community experts on issues such as child protection and threats of harm. But face-to-face conventions are a core service of the WMF and planning and providing security for them is a discrete function of T&S that those who choose to attend them are trusting will be adequate. I agree, that function should be performed by one or more dedicated staffers. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:34, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

The community has good reason to distrust the WMF, not only T&S, but for reasons too numerous to list here. Ironcally, T&S despite its name is the least trustworthy department in the WMF and certainly when it concerns 'safe spaces'. I was ringing warning bells seven years ago but unsurprisingly, as usual the WMF did nothing. Time for the Foundation to divest itself of its dozens of sinecures and hire proper professional services as and when needed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:12, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I worked on the Trust & Safety team for over a decade. It is a very difficult job. It certainly did not feel like a "sinecure" to me. I can assure you that the people on that team are caring, hard-working, and trustworthy folks. I’m also sure that they are horrified by the events in NYC, and as Maggie says, will be working to figure out improvements. I worked event safety many times, and it is a very complex thing to establish blanket policies and practices that can mitigate all possible issues and threats, especially across different jurisdictions, often working with different organisational partners. Some of the more thoughtful comments above, and below, highlight the tradeoffs that must be considered when working in this area. But please remember, these are real people you are referring to, real people who care very deeply about the volunteer community. They are volunteers themselves outside of their work. They are hurting as well.The Interior (Talk) 15:31, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@The Interior: I sympathise with Roy Smith above, who didn't have vital information because (someone else in) T&S declined to SanFranban this individual and because (a different?) someone in T&S didn't include that individual on the list of known threats, despite ArbCom's best efforts. Those were bad decisions. They were more than dropped balls; both of them together endangered lives at the event. But there were other bad decisions that endangered those people's lives. Roy Smith and the others decided an "active shooter" scenario was too unlikely to prepare for (the fact that this incident was not an active shooter scenario but had the potential to become one merely underscores the folly of that decision, for which he's getting flak above ... because you do indeed design streets, and security, to mitigate deadly effects of human folly, and bad luck too). They engaged professional security, but either they largely wasted that safety resource by having them be a mere hovering presence, not even having them carefully check what people brought into the event, or the security guards got their wires crossed or made a serious mistake by having no one at that first big session. The final line of defence, the only one that held, was the volunteer event T&S people in the audience. They were put in a position they should never have been in, and everybody—including the gunman!—was extremely lucky that they managed to disarm and hold him. We are all human beings. But multiple people bear responsibility here for a traumatic occurrence that could easily have resulted in deaths of people who are just trying to produce a reference work for the public. People I care about. People who trusted the WMF. Who were let down by people who are paid professionals (T&S HQ staff and quite possibly the paid security guards too; all paid for with donations from the public for the encyclopaedia writers, moreover). This is not "forgive your fellow human beings" territory. This is "You're damned lucky your goofs didn't get people killed" territory. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:00, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@Sj "more coordination and collaboration with our existing, global, multilingual, safety-conscious community, with ears and hands on the projects and on the ground, could have averted the problem." It could have, but I think that it is extremely naive to RELY on that. In any cooperation, there are going to be mistakes, Security (in-person and even in software) is like streetdesign. You design the street to account for the fact that people WILL make mistakes, and that people are as safe as possible even when those mistakes occur. You lay out the system to avoid crossing wires. To have a multi angled and multi layered approach, yet clear and separate responsibilities and then you apply that design by default. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:58, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@TheDJ, You design the street to account for the fact that people WILL make mistakes, and that people are as safe as possible even when those mistakes occur. An excellent analogy, and one which professionals generally implement, but sadly <redacted>.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:28, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Statements like this are unnecessary and unprofessional. Assume good faith applies to WMF employees as well. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:45, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Sj, the Road safety audit is a standard part of street design in various places. Do Wikimedia organisers conduct a formal and comprehensive Safety Audit as an necessary part of each event's organisation? NebY (talk) 13:37, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

Section break

Hi everyone, Maggie Dennis, again, following up here with a few updates on some of the work that’s underway across the Foundation as we’ve gotten helpful feedback and had more conversations with volunteers, each other, and external groups in the past week.

We are in the process of updating several of our internal and public-facing safety policies and protocols, including the ways that we implement our Office Action policy and updates to the global child protection policy. We are also continuing our close coordination with the Arbitration Committee to benefit even more from their insights on safety and security across the board and find ways to support the appropriate implementation of their decisions on individual users. If there are additional suggestions that should be considered, you can certainly share them with ArbCom, with whom we are meeting more often than usual right now, or send them directly to cawikimedia.org We have already been working, and will continue to coordinate closely, with the Conference Organizing Teams (COTs) for upcoming events—including GLAM Wiki, WECUDI, and Wiki Indaba—to ensure safety planning is comprehensive and proactive. Some of this includes:

• Strengthening attendee screening processes, incorporating new Trust & Safety protocols to help ensure ongoing investigations are not overlooked,
• Working with local venues and security partners to develop clear on-the-ground protection procedures, and
• Consulting with both security experts and the COTs to to review our existing security standards and protocols and build stronger frameworks for future events

We know this work, both the updates I’ve shared today and those which have started for the longer term, is critical to ensuring our community spaces—online and offline—remain safe and welcoming for everyone.

We’ll continue to share as we progress. – Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Amendments to Palestine-Israel articles 4

Original announcement

• Once added by any editor, any marking, template, or editnotice may be removed only by an uninvolved administrator. Are we sure this is a good idea? At the very least maybe we should allow sock edits or vandalism to be reverted by any extended confirmed editor? Toadspike [Talk] 11:56, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  or it can be amended further to explicitly state only those added by an extended-confirmed user is considered valid 95.5.191.22 (talk) 15:04, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  @Toadspike: For what it's worth, this was merely a reorganization of a provision that already existed, which was remedy 7 (Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel_articles_4#General_sanctions_upon_related_content). Further amendments may be a good idea, but the principal purpose of this motion was to remove the "principal"/"related" distinction that had created issues with ECP and userspace. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 15:35, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  Ah, thank you. Removing that distinction is indeed a major improvement. Maybe the specific wording that bothered me can be the subject of another amendment request... Re: IP – I agree, but it would also be a pain if, say, I accidentally tag the wrong page or the wrong piece of text, and only an uninvolved admin is allowed to clean up after me. Normally we'd cite IAR, but IAR and ArbCom don't always mix well. Toadspike [Talk] 16:40, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  I admit I wasn't aware this existed but can arbcom clarify how this interacts with ARBECR? Adding such a comment or an edit notice by a non EC editor would seem to be forbidden by WP:ARBECR so normally this would mean any EC editor is free to revert such an addition. But the wording would seem to suggest maybe they can't? There is a sort of weird additional point here in that as much as non EC editors are forbidden from doing so, it probably doesn't make much sense to revert such an addition if you feel they got it right i.e. it does fall within the area of conflict. Instead just alert the editor as needed and tell them to cut it out but leave it. You're only going to revert if you think it's unjustified. But if you do feel it's unjustified, in some ways the editor wasn't actually forbidden from making the editor, they just think they are. Nil Einne (talk) 10:22, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

  This is the problem with trying to write all of the arbcom stuff like we're lawyers or lawmakers. I guess we could say added by any editor with standing, any marking, template, or editnotice may be removed only by an uninvolved administrator.
  I think the best bet is probably to AGF that an admin isn't going to do anything if a non-EC account adds an invisible notice to something and you remove it, or if you choose not to remove it because it's legit. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:12, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

  I don't think a talk page notice or HTML comment indicating that a page or section of text falls within the scope of this contentious topic area can be considered vandalism. It could be a bad-faith edit or one performed by a sockpuppet. Personally, I feel that those cases, though, fall directly within the intent of the remedy regarding who should make that determination. isaacl (talk) 16:42, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

New clerks (October 2025)

Original announcement

• Congratulations everybody! Toadspike [Talk] 21:05, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Seconded, congrats everyone! Fathoms Below (talk) 21:32, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

That went from a shortage to an embarrassment of riches! --Tryptofish (talk) 23:05, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

grumble grumble something something getting replaced by younger and more enthusiastic generations... KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 23:34, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I want to say, without the formality of a FTAC attached, how excited I am to work with everyone. Thank you so much for volunteering :) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:29, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Proposed motion for amendment to arbitration procedures: automatic abstentions for non-votes

Original announcement

Arbitration motion regarding amendment to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures relating to automatic abstentions for non-votes

Original announcement