Policy talk:Wikimedia Foundation Office Actions Policy

Edit request 25 June 2025

Under the Foundation global ban section:

Change: In those cases, the global ban will typically be issued only after prior warnings (from the community, and/or the Foundation).However, the Foundation reserves the right to impose a global ban directly, in sufficiently severe cases of repetitive Terms of Use violation, or where it has not been practical to offer warnings.

To: In those cases, the global ban will typically be issued only after prior warnings (from the community, and/or the Foundation). However, the Foundation reserves the right to impose a global ban directly, in sufficiently severe cases of repetitive Terms of Use violation, or where it has not been practical to offer warnings.

(add a space in between the sentences)

Element10101 (talk) 19:36, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

 Done Fixed, thank you for mentioning. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:14, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Edit suggestion

There's a minor issue that I found on this page involving the lack of a space between the punctuation of a sentence and the first word of the next sentence. It's located in the Primary office actions section and within the Child protection subsection of the page's content.

Change the following text (specifically, the underlined portion) from:

"or attempting to approach minors inappropriately during Wikimedia in-person events.In contrast, contact for the purpose of organising and running school-related editathons is acceptable."

to be:

"or attempting to approach minors inappropriately during Wikimedia in-person events. In contrast, contact for the purpose of organising and running school-related editathons is acceptable."

Quiddity (WMF), you probably have this page on your watchlist, but I've pinged you in case this is not correct. I hope you don't mind. :-) Best - ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 00:22, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

 Done Fixed, thank you for mentioning, and the ping helps. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:58, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Group Office Actions

An interesting term "group Office Actions" was recently introduced here by user @Mdennis (WMF), within a very helpful clarification of various T&S policies and practices. It seems that search engines (Meta, Foundation, English Wikipedia) do not point to previous uses of such an expression. Regardless of any specific case, what would be a general meaning of such a term, for example - in contrast to individual Office Actions, that are well defined? Would it be right to assume that the term "group Office Actions" is simply technical, designating standard Office Actions towards individual users who constitute a group in terms of their collective, mutually connected transgressions? Regarding various policies and rules in general, it might be useful to officially clarify and define specific terminology, related to group/collective Office Actions. Sorabino (talk) 06:58, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Additional questions: It seems that some specific terms, such as "group actions" and "collective actions", are gaining importance in recent conversations related to T&S policies and practices (here). As noted by user @Mdennis (WMF) in relation to some recent T&S actions: "it is not the first time that T&S has enforced group Office Actions impacting a specific language Wikipedia" (here). Such clarifications are very important, and also revealing, since they might be seen as a semi-official acknowledgement that a peculiar gray zone exists between officially defined polices and their practical applications, particularly when it comes to the enforcement of group-related Office Actions, that are by their very nature more complex then "actions against specific individuals", as defined by the Wikimedia Foundation Office Actions Policy. Unrelated to any specific cases, it seems that some formal additions to policies might be useful, since "group Office Actions" are practiced in complex situations, but not yet sufficiently regulated and defined. Are there any formal proposals, drafts or amendments to polices and rules, that would address those questions? Sorabino (talk) 13:40, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Sorabino, thank you for this note. Very helpful! I'll talk to the policy team. Your note above rightly captures how I mean the term. And it's probably worth noting that even if office actions involve groups of individuals, they still impact the individual - what that language in policy is meant to signify is that actions are not taken against accounts. (This is why later the page states, "A global ban is placed against an individual instead of against a specific username." If you change an account, you are still the same individual. But I can see how our language evolution to discuss actions against groups of individuals is creating ambiguity! Similarly, we added this into policy some years ago when people considered that sanctions against an individual meant others could for that reason act on their behalf: "Knowingly facilitating the contributions of a globally banned individual, acting as a proxy for such a person, or attempting to interfere with Foundation staff or volunteer administrators, bureaucrats or functionaries enforcing a global ban in line with local policies may result in sanctions, including loss of advanced user rights or suspension of contributing access to Wikimedia sites." I'll ask them to include this for future clarification, clarifying what is meant by group office actions and how that relates to the individuals who are in the group. --Maggie Dennis (talk) 13:15, 20 April 2026 (UTC)