Wikipedia talk:How to protect your privacy on Wikipedia from outside interference

Thanks for making this

I added two things

option to disassociate email from identity, as email can be revealed
mw:Trust and Safety Product/Temporary Accounts

Could talk through more. Recommend publishing in Wikipedia: space

Bluerasberry (talk) 20:03, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Bluerasberry, thank you for your encouragement and content additions. Temporary accounts are a positive development for the privacy of unregistered editors and I look forward to seeing their implementation. I've moved this page to project space and will continue to improve the essay over time. — Newslinger talk 05:08, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WSC views

Worth mentioning WP:VALIDALT and for extreme cases WP:Clean Start here. Yes the onus is on the editor to keep the accounts separate and not have them both vote or support each other in discussions, so I'd suggest that anyone considering a cleanstart take a break between accounts. Temporary Accounts have their place, but they are by definition temporary. An alt account that only operates in particular topic areas that your main account can build a reputation in the area it edits. You can also include userboxes, including ones that claim you are resident in countries more protective of your rights than your real country. But probably best to pick a country in a timezone that sort of makes sense with your editing hours.

Also U1 gives considerable latitude to delete old stuff from your userspace if you email a friendly admin, or just one in a different country. It is usually uncontentious to have your userpage deleted, and then just the revisions from the last x months restored. Ϣere SpielChequers 07:10, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, all of these actions are important to name as options. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:23, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi WereSpielChequers, I also agree that WP:VALIDALT should be added as a suggestion. An undisclosed alternative account can easily violate the WP:PROJSOCK policy if the editor is not careful, so this suggestion should be accompanied with strong warnings. I would like to restructure the article to make it easier to provide suggestions like U1 deletions that apply to multiple types of personal information, but haven't considered how to do this effectively.

Also, I appreciate your recommendation to hold an RfC to allow privacy-sensitive edits to be detached from an account. The ReassignEdits extension shows that edit reassignment is technically feasible to implement, although that particular extension seems to reassign all edits from an account, instead of a limited selection of edits. This essay originally only took into consideration what is currently possible on Wikipedia, so I had not considered new features like edit reassignment. I would definitely support the implementation of this feature if it were proposed in a community discussion. — Newslinger talk 05:39, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Encourage new accounts to start as pseudonyms

Perhaps it is time to dust off a proposal I made on the Strategy Wiki in 2009. strategy:Proposal:Require all new user Accounts to start as anonymous Ϣere SpielChequers 16:57, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A hardline proposal like this would certainly improve user privacy, especially among editors who are not aware of the potential consequences of disclosing one's real name online. However, considering how often real names are used in new accounts, the main arguments against the proposal would be the additional work needed to enforce this rule and the possibility that such a rule could discourage participation from new editors who violate it.

Currently, the only guidance on the account creation page is a link to the username policy and the text "Your username is public and cannot be made private later." Perhaps some additional advice against using one's real name would be a good place to start. — Newslinger talk 05:59, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]