Wikipedian Osama Khalid celebrated his 30th birthday in jail
Osama Khalid (left) together with fellow Wikipedian Ziyad Alsufyani: both of of them are currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia (see previous Signpostcoverage).
As detailed in previous Signpost coverage, Osama and Ziyad had both been arrested in July 2020 and sentenced, respectively, to 5 and 8 years in prison, with the former’s sentence having been increased to 32 years on appeal in September 2022; however, reports about their incarceration first went public in January 2023. The two, whose arrest and detention are considered to be connected to the Saudi government’s recent crackdown on online dissent, had both served as administrators on the Arabic Wikipedia for several years, while being deeply involved within the Wiki Project Med Foundation and contributing to several articles about Saudi human rights activists, such as Loujain al-Hathloul.
Nine different civil rights organizations, including Access Now and Digital Citizenship, have co-signed an open letter dated 19 January 2024 asking for the immediate release of Osama, Ziyad and all of the other activists currently detained in Saudi Arabian prisons. – O and AK
Child Rights Impact Assessment
Article One – WMF Child Rights Impact Assessment Report 2023 (English)
The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the publication of a Child Rights Impact Assessment, described as an independent report commissioned from consultancy Article One to "understand the impacts, risks, and opportunities posed to children who access and participate in Wikimedia projects":
While the Wikimedia Foundation’s commitments to privacy and data minimization make it impossible to know just how many young readers and editors there are on Wikimedia projects, an untold number of people less than 18 years of age seek out verifiable, encyclopedic information on Wikipedia. [...] Some of them progress from readers to editors as they start to contribute their own knowledge to these pages. Protecting child safety, both of readers and editors, is a top priority not only for the Foundation, but also for Wikimedia community groups and affiliates around the globe. [...]
This Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) is the latest initiative that we have undertaken in order to meet our commitment to protect and uphold the human rights of all those who interact with Wikimedia projects. In 2020, the Foundation carried out an organization-wide Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA), with a report and update on progress published in 2022. A key recommendation of that assessment was to conduct a targeted CRIA, which could help us to better understand the benefits to and risks to children participating in Wikimedia projects.
The Foundation—in partnership with Article One, a specialized strategy and management consultancy with expertise in human rights, responsible innovation, and sustainability—started work on the CRIA in late 2021, and completed it in March 2023. The publication of this report (redacted to protect security and privacy of volunteers, readers, and those who were interviewed for the report) represents both a continuation of the Foundation’s commitments to human rights, and an important opportunity to revitalize conversations across the Wikimedia movement around how to best protect children on Wikimedia projects.
to lower the RfA approval threshold from the previous 80% to about 70–75%;
to trial probationary adminship for candidates getting at least 50% approval.
The Chinese Wikipedia has apparently been in administrative crisis ever since the 2021 WMF desysops (see previous coverage in the 26 September 2021 Signpost issue: 1, 2, 3). The above measures have been designed to mitigate the situation. – AK
Brief notes
The Deoband Community Wikimedia ran a "Heritage Lens" project last year. The above picture is from the project's second iteration in December 2023, focused on South Kashmir, a region in the Kashmir Valley.
Unindexed: The Phabricator task "Google not indexing Wikisource properly for years" has received an update from Google, saying: "The web is really large and the search index can simply not include every single page. A page that otherwise has no problems may not be indexed for a myriad of complex reasons, for instance if the indexing process determines that the page is unlikely to be requested in search. This is in line with the Search Central documentation that states: 'Google doesn't guarantee that it will crawl, index, or serve your page, even if your page follows the Google Search Essentials.'" Right. For comparison, only a couple hundred of the several thousand Signpost articles accessible from signpost.news have been indexed since August. We can hope.
Unreferenced: The WikiProject Unreferenced Articles is inviting signups for its February 2024 backlog drive, set to start on February 1st, to work on the currently over 112,000 articles without citations. At the time of writing, over 200 editors had already registered.
"... at one independent affiliate event, the organization’s leaders brought in army members to do military style exercises with children, resulting in its suspension until new leadership was elected" -- Well then it wasn't independent, was it? Sandizer (talk) 22:47, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With regard to the report on child rights, I wonder what the Foundation could possibly do about this point (from the exec summary)
Risk: Exposure to harmful content (CRC 19)
A child may be exposed to unwelcome and inappropriate content on the platform. Content that may be classified as “harmful” on pages of Wikimedia projects include bloody or violent images (e.g., medical images), content detailing self-harm or eating disorders, hateful or racist speech, pornography, sexually explicit images, and child sexual abuse material.JMWt (talk) 08:35, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Provide access to a geotargeted suicide prevention hotline at the top of the articles on Suicide Methods.
Create child safeguarding tools, including child-friendly guidance on privacy settings, data collection, reporting of grooming attempts, the forthcoming UCoC as well a “Child’s Guide to Editing Wikimedia Project” to help advance the right of children to be civically engaged.
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