Research talk:Wikimedia Research Best Practices Around Privacy Whitepaper/Draft

Questions for the Wikipedia Communities and Arbitration Committees

In particular, from this group we are seeking input on the following questions:

1. Starting with a review of some of the basics we've sketched so far in the white paper draft, what should the recommendations be for Wikipedians (section 4.2)? What is missing?

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2. What values do you think should be mentioned in Section 3.1 'Understanding key values of Wikipedians'? What community essays, policies, or guidelines should be referenced in communicating key values of Wikipedians?

• The Biographies of Living People (BLP) policy [1], at least on enwiki our privacy practices are primarily just an application of BLP to active editors (all presumably living people). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:13, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Outside of policy I think the principle of "Transparency for the powerful, privacy for the weak" is one that is strongly held by the community and is what generally gets applied when things like NOTCENSORED and BLP conflict. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:31, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

• en:Wikipedia:No personal attacks? --Piotrus (talk) 01:34, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
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3. What do you see as missing, if anything, as recommendations for researchers?

• We can and should be expecting researchers who wish to engage with us to be aware of relevant ethics standards (including privacy and transparency activities; things like pre-registration, ethics boards, etc, etc) in their fields of research. Stuartyeates (talk) 06:45, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
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4. Where would you like to see future work on this topic? What opportunities should be highlighting for researchers to examine more deeply?

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5. Do you have ideas about how we can address one or more of the "TODO"s we have listed throughout the draft?

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Questions for researchers

In particular, from this group we are seeking input on the following questions:

1. What recommendations are unclear, and maybe therefore unhelpful, for you?

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2. What questions do you still have about privacy on Wikipedia after reading this?

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3. Do you have ideas about how we can address one or more of the "TODO"s we have listed throughout the draft?

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Additional comments and feedback

To all reviewers and commenters, please try to organize your feedback by either adding it to an existing topic on this talk page, or by adding new topics so we can keep discussions around similar topics organized.

We will be monitoring this page until 30 April 2024, but won't be able to respond directly to comments. However, all comments will be reviewed and considered in the ongoing drafting and revising process.

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Existing guidance

First, why hyperlinks to said guidances or Wikipedia articles if they have them are not implemented? There are footnotes, but the lack of hyperlinks is suprising. See ex. en:Common Rule. Second, in addition to linking to Ethic Committee bodies, we should link to the relevant ethic codes, directly, and or quote from them. This WP currently links, for example, to APA's "Advisory Group on Conducting Research on the Internet" ([2]), which is good, but it should also link to APA's "Ethics Code Standard" [3]. Further, I think it would be good to quote the relvant (short) parts of existing codes. Here, from APA: Psychologists take reasonable steps to avoid harming... research participants... I'd add two more I've found a while ago: Royal Historical Society's Statement on Good Practice: taking particular care when research concerns those still living and when the anonymity of individuals is required and ASA's ethical code Sociologists take all reasonable steps to implement protections for the rights and welfare of research participants as well as other persons and groups that might be affected due to the research... In their research, sociologists do not behave in ways that increase risk, or are threatening to the health or life of research participants or others. RHS's is particularly relevant as the paper that led to this WP's being drafted was wrtten by historians. Piotrus (talk) 01:09, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

In agreement with Piotrus here. It is fine to have "Follow existing human subjects research protocols at your institution" but it should also have "Obey the ethical guidelines established by the relevant professional bodies", or similar, with examples. Zero0000 (talk) 01:52, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Other remarks (by Piotrus)

Overall, I am quite impressed with this WP.

I think we should clearly state somewhere (perhaps in the abstract/nutshell as well as recommendation and conclusion) that TL'DR best practice is to not name anyone unless they have permitted that. Instead, researchers should refer to volunteers as User1, Wikipedian-B, etc.

It would be good to spell out somewhere that for volunteers who disclose their real name on Wikipedia, privacy concerns exist as well (as in, they should not be named in a paper unless permission has been given). What to do when a researcher wants to link to a diff by such a user is a question to discuss further.

Regarding For some, possibly even many, editors, an attack on their username may be perceived as a serious personal attack, one on par with an attack on their real-world name and identity. - if you want an academic citation, I am pretty sure this was discussed in en:Common Knowledge?. Ping User:Pundit, the author, who may be able to quickly provide the relevant chapter/page info.

I definitely agree that veteran nicknames are treated like names, they are a source of one's identity and should be treated with respect. I would not quote nicknames, unless from widely known public discussions or when it is essential to give the name. Pundit (talk) 18:14, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I am curious about what can go to "Escalation avenues". Maybe consider linking to en:Committee on Publication Ethics here, for example - but many journals (including the one that sparked this WP) are not members of COPE. Writing a letter to the journal, or publisher, can be mentioned, but the reality is such letters are likely to be ignored. Support from WMF is somewhat theoretical - WMF declined to comment on the said paper (that led to this WP), for example.

While as I said, this WP is overall a very good start, I do think one key aspect is missing (partially related to the outlined but not yet written section on "Escalation avenues"). If one feels that their privacy has been violated by a piece of research, what can they do - and what support, if any, can they expect from WMF? Something I would like to see is a public WMF system where people could ask WMF for help, publically, and where WMF would respond in public. For example, I think WMF should publically comment, when asked, on non-controversial issues such as stating whether a particular research paper followed best practices such as anonymizing volunteer names, asking them for permission to be named, whether a paper passed through a relevant IRB procedure, and assist in writing a letter to the journal expressing concerns if such best practices where not followed, and if the journal declines to publish such a letter, publish it on WMF's pages. Piotrus (talk) 01:31, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I think its debatable whether best practices would extend to not naming editors in circumstances when naming them carries legitimate public interest and academic value. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:13, 13 April 2024 (UTC)