Legal talk:Wikimedia Foundation Country and Territory Protection List

Edit request 2024-02-15

Change all [[en: to [[:en:. Apperant misuse of cross-wiki links. --魔琴 (talk) 11:03, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

@EMagallanes (WMF): Excuse me. -- 魔琴 (talk) 13:08, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

@魔琴 and EMagallanes (WMF): All set. Also, so you know, the {{Edit request}} template is a fast way to get the attention of the wiki's core administrators team.

Guide readers to ways to programmatically access the list

{{Edit request}}

Whether creating pipelines that publish data or adding an redaction step to a report, it's useful to programmatically access this list and automatically remove countries that should be removed from the published data.

Fortunately, we have this ability by using the canonical_data.countries table in the data lake with the data sourced from this TSV file. Users can join with that table and perform the necessary redactions based on the is_protected and data_risk_classification columns.

This page should guide the reader to that table (and the corresponding source file) so that the person looking at this list can easily take next steps.

Thanks! – MPopov (WMF) (talk) 14:15, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@MPopov (WMF), do you have suggested wording, want edit access to make the change, or know someone in Legal with edit access that can make the change? I think it is a good idea, but I am not 100% sure how to word what and why we are linking, and what additional resources/links people may need to fully use. Thank you! --Gregory Varnum (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 17:21, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Edit access would be great, thanks! – MPopov (WMF) (talk) 18:24, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Granted - let me know if you need any assistance. --Gregory Varnum (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 17:17, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Recategorization of Hong Kong to "Not published"

After the passing of Article 23 in Hong Kong, we've recategorized Hong Kong from "Lower Risk" to "Not published" on the Country and Territory Protection List. This decision is in response to the changes in the legal landscape, reflecting an abundance of caution for the safety of our readers and contributors amidst an increasingly repressive political climate. This change means that all reader and editor information about Hong Kong will (as of 18 May 2024) no longer be published. We aim for this step to protect our community members from potential harm or retaliation. MFischer (WMF) (talk) 13:36, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

@ MFischer (WMF) It should be "nine countries", not eight. Stang 06:40, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks for the note! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:10, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

MyLanguage

Please change "mw:GitLab" to "mw:Special:MyLanguage/GitLab". Thanks, --Ameisenigel (talk) 17:05, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

 Done - thank you, @Ameisenigel. --Gregory Varnum (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 23:01, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Concerns of uncritically using the Freedom House Index

Hi, I'm very concerned that the Freedom House "Internet Freedom Score" is being misused here. This index can't uncritically be used as a proxy for 'risk to editors', and it has a number of components that would be simply irrelevant to assessing risks in releasing data. For example, factors in the index include:

• Do infrastructural limitations restrict access to the internet or the speed and quality of internet connections? (6 points)
• Is access to the internet prohibitively expensive or beyond the reach of certain segments of the population for geographical, social, or other reasons? (3 points)
• Are there legal, regulatory, or economic obstacles that restrict the diversity of service providers? (6 points)
• Does the online information landscape lack diversity and reliability? (4 points)
• Are websites, governmental and private entities, service providers, or individual users subject to widespread hacking and other forms of cyberattack? (3 points)

The measures I've listed, among others, are not useful proxies for the 'level of risk' posed to an editor and should be excluded from consideration. In particular, I'm concerned that using measures that essentially serve as proxies for wealth (cost of internet, density/strength of internet infrastructure, etc.) will mean that WMF-published data will be replicating existing inequalities in digital data representation. Freedom4U (talk) 15:11, 1 November 2024 (UTC) (Pinging @EMagallanes_(WMF) Freedom4U (talk) 15:36, 1 November 2024 (UTC))

Similarly, for the RSF index, the indices for 'Legal framework' and 'Safety' seem relevant, while the indices for 'Media landscape' (how pluralistic the media landscape is, how easy it is to open a news organization), 'Political context' (attitudes towards journalists in politics and from politicians, interference in the affairs of news organizations), 'Economic context' (the general economic health of news organizations, availability of funding for news organizations), and 'Sociocultural context' (cultural views on journalists, taboos and self-censorship) seem less important or irrelevant. Freedom4U (talk) 15:22, 1 November 2024 (UTC)