This page documents an official English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that should normally be followed by all editors. Any edit to this page should reflect consensus. If in doubt, consider discussing changes on the talk page. This page is also a Wikimedia official policy, established by Jimmy Wales and endorsed by the Foundation as necessary for the operation of the sites under its jurisdiction.

Shortcuts: WP:OFFICE WP:OA

This page in a nutshell: Sometimes the Wikimedia Foundation may have to delete, protect or blank a page without going through the normal site/community process(es) to do so. These edits are temporary measures to prevent legal trouble or personal harm and should not be undone by any user.

Wikipedia policy
Global principles
What Wikipedia is not Ignore all rules
Content standards
Neutral point of view Verifiability No original research Biographies of living persons
Working with others
Civility No personal attacks Harassment No legal threats Consensus Dispute resolution
More
Full list of policies List of guidelines

Office actions are official changes made to content done under the authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, by members of the Foundation's office. These are removals of questionable or illegal Wikimedia content following complaints. Office actions are performed so that the end result is a legal, compliant article on the subject. Neither this policy nor actions taken under it override core policies, such as neutrality.

The most common complaints are defamation, privacy violations or copyright infringement.

Short explanation

Because "official edits" may seem strange in the context of a openly editable encyclopedia, some common causes for confusion should be clarified:

• Office actions are extremely rare.
• Office actions only occur by formal complaint made off-wiki (e.g. postal mail, electronic mail, telephone, or personal meetings).
• Grievances must be grounded in the law or be violations of Wikimedia standards. Requests for preferment or attempts at intimidation are not heeded.
• The vast majority of cases are: libel, unfounded invasion of personal privacy, and copyright infringement.
• As such violations are inappropriate on Wikimedia regardless of complaints, office actions are preventable: if you see a violation of policy on a wiki, or an instance of libel or copyright infringement, correct it or delete it and there will be no more cause for complaint.
  • {{blp}}, {{db-attack}}, and {{db-copyvio}} are useful for diminishing legal risk to the Wikimedia Foundation and diminishing harm to affected persons.

Process

Office actions will be clearly indicated both during and after to prevent ambiguities. Office actions may be authorized by any representative or delegate of the Wikimedia Foundation – such as its chair (currently Michael Snow) or a member of the Foundation Board of Trustees, the Foundation's legal counsel, or a member of the Foundation office.

When a page is modified under this policy, the template "{{pp-office}}" will be placed prominently on the page and the page will be protected. An article may be reduced to a few sentences to remove questionable content, and people then invited to build it up to a more reputable state. This will be indicated by the template {{reset}}. In either case, the instructions on the template should be followed by everyone.

Administrators, who have the technical power to undo protections and deletions, are strongly cautioned against modifying these edits. Official statements and past incidents indicate that such unauthorized modifications will be actively reverted, and possibly the rights of the modifier will be revoked. When in doubt, consult the user applying the protection/template, Jimbo or the Wikimedia Foundation.

Who does office actions

1. Cary Bass (Volunteer Coordinator), staff member of the Wikimedia Foundation Office and Mike Godwin, the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel.
2. Other staff members of the WMF Office
3. Members of the Board of Trustees, and particularly Jimbo Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and founder of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Currently under scrutiny

For images that have been deleted for copyright reasons, enter the name/description into a search engine to see what they looked like. If you see similar images bring them to the attention of the Office.

For an automated, up-to-date list derived from {{Pp-office}}, see Category:Office protected.

Originalia

Mailing list messages

• I am Danny Danny says:

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

• Phone calls Danny says:

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

• Apology Jimbo Wales says:

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

• Libel chill Jimbo Wales says:

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