Policy talk:Terms of Use/Archive 1

Edit sort-of requested to remove reference to the legalcode

I have proposed a change at Talk:Terms_of_use#self-referential_nutshell. I appreciate that the WMF isnt expecting changes to this summary so soon, and may need time to consider how changes to the summary should/will occur, so I am not asking these changes be made yet. John Vandenberg (talk) 08:18, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Ported over

At this point, the following translations are complete and have been ported over:

• de
• en
• es
• fi
• fr
• it
• ja
• nl
• pl
• pt
• ru

There are others that are very close to complete (like Korean) but are not quite there. --Maggie Dennis (talk) 16:11, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

There are several summaries that have been copied over that lack accompanying ToU: Terms of use-Summary/ar, Terms of use-Summary/be-tarask, Terms of use-Summary/bg, Terms of use-Summary/eo, Terms_of_use-Summary/fa, Terms_of_use-Summary/gl, Terms_of_use-Summary/ko, Terms_of_use-Summary/mk. --Maggie Dennis (talk) 16:28, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Future language fixes

The following pages currently exist as redirects to this page in order to keep local language links functional. The Terms of Use have not yet been translated into these languages. When translations to this language are prepared, the redirects will need to be altered accordingly. --Maggie Dennis (talk) 12:20, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Mare Lav1995 (talk) 22:48, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Language	Language destination	Redirect that should be pointed to it
Belarusian (Taraškievica orthography)	Terms of Use/be-tarask	Умовы выкарыстаньня
Bulgarian	Terms of Use/bg	Условия за ползване
Greek	Terms of Use/el	Όροι Χρήσης
Hebrew	Terms of Use/he	תנאי שימוש
Croatian	Terms of Use/hr	Uvjeti uporabe
Korean	Terms of Use/ko	이용 규약
Norwegian Bokmal	Terms of Use/nb	Vilkår, Vilkårene
Ukrainian	Terms of Use/uk	Умови використання
Chinese (simplified)	Terms of Use/zh-hans	使用条款
Chinese (traditional Han)	Terms of Use/zh-hk	使用條款

• I would like to help on Chinese translation (zh-tw), where should I start? --Ted H.T. Chien (talk) 01:42, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Add "summary" in the summary box header

As pointed out on Meta, the header of the summary box should read "Terms of Use summary", to make it clear that the box's contents are not the entire terms of use. While there are two smaller-type sentences that suggest that same fact, this suggestion seems clear and appropriate. SJ + 09:22, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Missing entries in collapsed section overview on mobile

In the mobile view of this page on smartphones, the sections "13. Disputes and Jurisdiction", "14. Disclaimers", and "15. Limitation on Liability" are missing in the list of collapsed sections, because of the highlight div surrounding them. (They appear fine in the TOC.) This appears to be caused by phab:T60541. Regards, Tbayer (talk) 09:49, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Addition of text to section 4

Per this RfC on meta I plan to add the following text after:

"a statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions."

"In addition we require those involved with paid editing on Wikipedia to link on their user page to all other active accounts through which they advertise paid Wikipedia editing business. These links may be removed a week after the advertisement for paid Wikipedia editing has been taken down."

To the Q and A I plan to add:

"Required linking to accounts involved with advertising paid editing"

"Claims on Wikipedia that a user has failed to provide a link without solid evidence is considered harassment and is potentially sanctionable. The requirement to link to other sites were these advertisements exist is primarily to be used to address impersonations of Wikipedians in good standing outside of Wikipedia."

JHeilman (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Reasons for the 2018 Terms of Use

Hello, dear collegues! Can the Foundation adopted a new Terms of Use (Attn: The Foundation's General Counsel)?:

• Current version:

• New draft (since 2018?):

CC-BY-SA-3.0 is oldest (since 2012) license for text. «When/if the plan to update our license to 4.0 happens, then it will be fine» (User:Crow). Russian OTRS team working with CC-BY-SA-4.0 for text since 2014 year. Innovative news sites working too on CC-BY-SA 4.0 int, ex: https://klops.ru/ , etc. I will be glad to your new WMF document (Terms of Use). Best Regards, — Niklitov (talk) 15:10, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Are password managers a violation of Section 5 of the Terms of Use?

Initially, I had been using Google's password manager to make and store my Wikimedia password. However, once I found out that you may not disclose passwords to a third party, I stopped using it. For this reason, I had forgotten the password to my former account (which had no email attached to it) and later created this account. Caehlla2357 (talk) 17:30, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

"you should follow the policies that govern each of the independent Project editions."

It is very unclear what the policies precisely are you have to follow as an editor. It would be good, when the Wikimedia Foundation would create a kind of "basic line policies" everyone is obliged to follow and publish these basic policies uneditable on a spot that is easy to find. Furthermore it would be good, editors would be informed beforehand, what eventual consequences would be of not following policies. Last but not least it would be good to know, what body is the authority to decide on issues and according to what rules. Thanks! Count your Garden by the Flowers (talk) 21:13, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Changed translation markup

Hi JeanFred (ccing Jalexander), thanks for improving the translation markup. It seems though that these changes cause problems when updating the existing translations, e.g. this minor typo fix generated major disruption to the German version. Can you or someone else help fixing this?

Good idea adding the "applicable-law" anchor though (there is also a dedicated template btw, {{anchor}}). Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, the German translation was messed up. Fixed it today. So at least there is a complete and workable raw translation now. Of course, there is still work to be done. --Pyrometer (talk) 14:52, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Topic suggestion

There should really be a section indicating why the Board felt it to be necessary to switch from the traditional "focus on the edit" philosophy to the new "focus on the editor" philosophy, given that this is such a substantial philosophical change. 63.230.56.223 20:05, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

In trouble translating ... "pre-existing policy"...

The FAQ states:

"To adopt a pre-existing policy as an alternative disclosure policy, a project community must gain consensus specifically to replace the paid editing disclosure requirements in the Terms of Use with the policy of the project."

I'm not sure if I get the idea. Does it mean to say the following?

To adopt a draft as an alternative disclosure policy, a project community must gain consensus to replace the provisions of section "Paid contributions without disclosure" in the Terms of Use with the provisions of that draft.

--de:user Pyrometer de:user talk Pyrometer

Thanks for asking. In contradiction of m:Writing clearly, the paragraph in question (as well as the preceding one) was missing docs; I've removed it for now till it's made translatable. --Nemo 13:19, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Pyrometer,

a pre-existing policy means a local policy that existed on that project before the Terms of Use were amended on June 16, 2014 (as opposed to an alternative disclosure policy whose draft was published after the amendment, such as the one on Commons). I will add this remark as translation documentation. A consensus formed before the amendment would obviously refer to a different situation where the option of relying on a formulation approved by the Board for the Terms of Use was not available.

For the German translation (thanks!), a good translation of "pre-existing" might be "bereits vorher existierende", see e.g. this online dictionary.

Mind you, the alternative meaning you proposed above ("Does it mean to say the following?") appears to be consistent with the rest of the FAQ too, and I understand why a reader might be wondering about the necessity for this additional sentence about pre-existing policies - e.g. the word adjust in the existing FAQ should already have indicated that this clause does not mean that pre-existing policies override the new Terms of Use. Nevertheless, it was apparently necessary to clarify this point because Nemo had been misunderstanding it [1].

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 02:28, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

So simple... :-) The idea of an override didn't occur to me. Now I get the idea and it makes sense: Any existing local provisions are (for the time being) overridden by the amendment and need to be re-established using the same procedures as outlined in the preceding text.

Thanks for clarifying.

Regards --Pyrometer (talk) 09:15, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

grammar, specificity

This sentence needs fixing:

In United States, for example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the nationwide authority to regulate unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce.

It's grammatically incorrect and wishy-washy. I propose this:

In the United States, for example, "Unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce are unlawful." The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the nationwide authority to regulate this.

P.S. "suggest that you might be" is in the following sentence. Those weasel words should be replaced.

--Elvey (talk) 22:17, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Fixed.--Elvey (talk) 20:51, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Up-to-Date?

Hi User:Tbayer (WMF). I see you created this page. Where did you source the answers from and are they up-to-date? I am trying to decide where I should link institutions to to find out more about COI as there are so many COI pages that offer different interpretations- making things pretty difficult to orient new editors! Thanks, OR drohowa (talk) 19:25, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello OR drohowa,

I actually didn't create this page (see the revision history), only the talk page ;) But I think I can answer your questions: This FAQ has been created by the Foundation's Legal team (who also wrote the Terms of Use section that it refers to), and as far as I know, it is up to date. It should indeed be a good place to link institutions to - in fact it's already linked from the Terms of Use themselves.

(BTW, pings don't seem to work here, at least I didn't receive one from your question - I only happened to see it while checking my watchlist. Trying nevertheless to ping Luis and Stephen in case they have anything to add regarding your question.)

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 11:05, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi User:Tbayer (WMF), User:LuisV (WMF), User:Slaporte (WMF). So the reason I asked if this was up-to-date is that I am getting more and more questions about Conflict of Interest editing as I do GLAM outreach as part of w:Wikipedia:GLAM/METRO and also w:Wikipedia:ArtandFeminism Edit-a-thon organizing. This has prompted me to draft a FAQ on COI editing as part of the materials we distribute to organizers. My idea is to synthesize some of the various COI pages and the most authoritative writing on this topic. Here is my draft so far: w:Wikipedia:ArtAndFeminism/FAQ COI. I'm trying to make the FAQ represent widely held views on COI though everyone knows that we still widely disagree about specifics. If you have any thoughts or feedback of the contents of this page, or where it should go on Meta/Wikipedia/project pages, that would be really helpful! OR drohowa (talk) 21:59, 4 February 2015 (UTC) Email: <dhoward{at}metro.org>.

OR drohowa, you can see the most recent version of the disclosure requirements in Section 4, and this FAQ is up to date. The final answer in the ArtAndFeminimism FAQ looks out of date. Now that the Terms of Use were amended, a user who is paid for edits can provide disclosure on the article's talk page, the edit summary, or their user page as outlined in the FAQ here. Thanks! Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 23:36, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

@Stephen LaPorte: It is not up-to-date 5 years later. At least in the part "Can a local project adopt an alternative disclosure policy for paid editing?" (as "Disclosure of paid contributions to any of the Wikimedia projects is a requirement"). Because there is a number of projects deciding not to require any disclosure. See Commons for instance. Should we update the FAQ? --Neolexx (talk) 18:14, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Where can I register complaints about stealth paid editing?

I occasionally get emails telling me how wonderful I am and that I need a Wikipedia page and they will be glad to write one for me if I pay them. I would like a place where I can quickly post the email address (and perhaps the email as well) so that others are warned and can perhaps determine what nick is being used for this stealth paid editing. WiseWoman (talk) 07:11, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I mean, this guy advertises on LinkedIn that he will write Wikipedia pages for people [2] --WiseWoman (talk) 07:13, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Approval for the Wikimedia Foundation’s Revised Terms of Use

Under the Board Resolution: Delegation of Policy-Making Authority, the Wikimedia Board of Trustees delegated the authority to adopt, alter, and revoke policies to the Executive Director (Chief Executive Officer), who may further delegate such authority to the Wikimedia staff as they deem appropriate. We confirm that the update, posted on June 1, 2023 to become effective June 7, 2023, was approved by the Executive Director and General Counsel. RStallman (WMF) (talk) 22:46, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, this is approved. MIskander-WMF (talk) 20:59, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm confirming that the revised Terms of Use were approved under the delegation resolution on on May 23, 2023. Slaporte (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Incorrect numbering of API Terms section

Hello, the "13. API Terms" section is likely incorrectly numbered, given that it is directly after "11. Resolutions and Project Policies" and directly before "13. Termination". The draft version titles it "12. API Terms". Coolclawcat (talk) 04:09, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

 Done thank you! RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Official announcement

I have not seen any official announcement on wikimediafoundation.org and maillist about the updated ToU become effective June 7, 2023. Any announcement will be published? Thanks. SCP-2000 (talk) 01:35, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Great question. A Diff post about what the CC 4.0 piece means to users is being prepared to go out either possibly the week after next. There's a slight wait on that because some of the technical changes for CC4.0 still need to propagate because of server update schedules. That would also be one place the effective date would be mentioned.

I can't fully confirm where-else it may be mentioned. But to try to address @William Graham, I don't think it will be mentioned in a banner or all-user-notification.

Finally, I'll look into your bullet points on "broken" things. It may be one of those things that still hasn't propagated, but just as likely, it may be simple error. I'll investigate within the next day or two. SSpalding (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Just following on Shaun's note above. Yes, there will be a note going out shortly to wikimediaannounce-l. The community discussion and the draft final update that was proposed for the approvals listed here are also available on meta where we were holding the consultation. - Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I came here to ask the same question. I noticed page edits on WM projects now state a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Will there be notifications on all project sites? I will also note some broken things on Commons:

• the edit page has a red link to the CC 4.0 license.
• Commons:Ownership of pages and files refers to the 3.0 license.

-- William Graham (talk) 01:53, 8 June 2023 (UTC)