Legal talk:Wikimedia Foundation Country and Territory Protection List

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)

Clarify ownership

An internal Wikimedia Foundation discussion has determined that the Global Advocacy team is in charge of updating the list (there is a little bit of detail in phab:T381944).

Please change the beginning of the "process" section from "The Wikimedia Foundation relies on the judgments of respected international human rights NGOs to assess potential risk to Wikimedia users." to "The list is maintained by the Global Advocacy team of the Wikimedia Foundation. The team relies on the judgments of respected international human rights NGOs to assess potential risk to Wikimedia users."

This will be primarily useful to folks within the Foundation, but is tangentially useful and not overwhelming for folks outside. Neil Shah-Quinn (WMF) (talk) 18:15, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for clear details! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:21, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Split translation unit

Please split T:37 by inserting an empty line after the section header. Thanks, --Ameisenigel (talk) 18:07, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

 Done - Thanks for the note. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 9 February 2026 (UTC)