Wikipedia:Office actions

This information page describes "office actions" taken by the Wikimedia Foundation pursuant to the Wikimedia Foundation official policy.

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

Office actions are actions performed by Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) staff accounts pursuant to the Wikimedia Foundation official policy.

Office actions are described by the Foundation as "official changes to or removals of content on the Wikimedia projects, or actions against specific individuals, performed by Foundation staff members and under the authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, upon receipt of one or multiple complaints from the community or the public, or as required by law. Complaints that may lead to enforcement of office actions may regard, but are not limited to, privacy violations, child protection, copyright infringement or systematic harassment. All office actions are performed pursuant to the Terms of Use."

On the subject of modifying office actions, the Foundation states "Wikimedia administrators and others who have the technical power to revert or edit office actions are strongly cautioned against doing so. Unauthorized modifications to office actions may be reverted and lead to sanctions by the Foundation, such as revocation of the rights of the individual involved. When in doubt, community members should consult the Foundation member of staff that performed the office action, or their line manager. However, details regarding an office action are only shared to the extent that they do not compromise the safety of users, the public or the project."

For the full text of the Wikimedia Foundation official policy, see meta:Office actions.

The office actions policy was originally launched on en.wp by Jimmy Wales, back in February 2006, and shortly afterwards on meta, in order to solidify long-standing practices and processes followed by the Foundation, that were not officially recorded elsewhere in the projects at that time. Its original scope focused on page protections and BLP article content changes, in response to increasingly rising number of escalated calls for action, placed directly to the Foundation’s staff, by affected individuals. Danny Wool was the first designated Foundation staff member mandated to accept, review and act on such requests, after Jimmy Wales.

The office actions page has undergone several iterations since, on both sites, and has been expanded to include a variety of office actions that have been taken over the years as common practice, broadening its original scope. At the same time, strict internal processes have been developed by the Foundation in order to complement as well as standardise office actions and staff use of advanced rights. In June 2019, the en.wp page was changed to an information page referring to the the Wikimedia Foundation office actions page hosted at meta:Office actions.

Office actions were originally intended to be temporary actions, alleviating pressures caused by controversial situations and calling community attention to them in the hopes of resolution. However, certain office actions have since evolved to be permanent and non-appealable due to the nature of the issues they deal with, while others have become defunct (Superprotect).