TechInfoDepot:Office actions

Office actions are official changes made on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, by members of its office. These are removals of questionable or illegal Wikimedia content following complaints. Office actions are performed so that the end result is a legally compliant article on the subject. Neither this policy nor actions taken under it override core policies, such as neutrality. Pages protected by office actions are seen with a black padlock according to WP:PP.

The most common complaints are defamation, privacy violations and copyright infringement.

Short explanation
Because "official edits" may seem strange in the context of an openly editable encyclopedia, some common causes for confusion should be clarified:


 * Office actions are extremely rare.
 * Office actions only occur by formal complaint made off-wiki (e.g. postal mail, electronic mail, telephone, or personal meetings).
 * Grievances must be grounded in the law or be violations of Wikimedia standards. Requests for preferential treatment or attempts at intimidation are not heeded.
 * The vast majority of cases are libel, unjustifiable invasion of personal privacy, and copyright infringement. Since these are all inappropriate on Wikimedia anyway, office actions are preventable: if you see such a violation on a wiki, correct it or delete it and there will be no cause for complaint and no need for an "office action".
 * blp, db-attack, and db-copyvio templates have been established for the correction of these problems and are useful for this.

Process
Office actions will be clearly indicated both during and after to prevent ambiguities. Office actions may be authorized by any representative or delegate of the Wikimedia Foundation – such as its chair (currently Kat Walsh), a member of the Foundation Board of Trustees, the Foundation's legal counsel, or a member of the Foundation office.

When a page is modified under this policy, the template Pp-office will be placed prominently on the page and the page will be protected. An article may be reduced to a few sentences to remove questionable content, and people then invited to build it up to a more reputable state. This will be indicated by the template Pp-reset. In either case, the instructions on the template should be followed by everyone.

Administrators, who have the technical power to undo protections and deletions, are strongly cautioned against modifying these edits. Official statements and past incidents indicate that such unauthorized modifications will be actively reverted, and possibly the rights of the modifier will be revoked. When in doubt, consult the user applying the protection/template, or the Wikimedia Foundation.

Who initiates office actions

 * 1) Philippe Beaudette (Director, Community Advocacy),  Maggie Dennis (Senior Community Advocate), certain other senior staff members of the Wikimedia Foundation Office and the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel.
 * 2) Members of the Board of Trustees, and particularly Jimbo Wales, co-founder of TechInfoDepot and founder of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Currently under scrutiny
For images that have been deleted for copyright reasons, enter the name/description into a search engine to see what they looked like. If you see similar images bring them to the attention of the Office.

For an automated, up-to-date list derived from Pp-office, see Category:TechInfoDepot Office-protected pages.

DMCA compliance
In some cases, the Foundation may be required to remove content from a Wikimedia Project due to a DMCA take-down notice. In order to retain safe harbor status, the Foundation is required to comply with validly formulated notices even if they are spurious.

Wikimedia Foundation may publish the take-down request at wmf:Category:DMCA.

As a matter of policy, the Wikimedia Foundation will terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts of repeat infringers as provided under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 512).

Responding to a DMCA take down notice
In the event that material is removed due to a DMCA notice, the only recourse for restoring such material is to file a counter-notice with the Foundation. If you believe that a take-down notice which has been acted upon by the Foundation is without legal basis, please feel free to visit the following sites as a first step in learning about filing a counter-notice:
 * "Responding to a DMCA Takedown Notice Targeting Your Content" at Citizen Media Law Project
 * Chilling Effects Clearinghouse FAQ
 * Chilling Effects Clearinghouse counter-notice generator
 * newmediarights.org

Please note that filing a counter-notice may lead to legal proceedings between you and the complaining party to determine ownership of the material. The DMCA process requires that you consent to the jurisdiction of a United States court. All notices should be sent to the Foundation's designated agent.

Originalia

 * Jimbo's original comment, from 6 February 2006
 * In particular,
 * "Please note that this is official policy, and reverting a WP:OFFICE may be grounds for blocking. I do not recommend that admins block for this, I'm just saying... don't revert a WP:OFFICE edit unless and until you've asked and know what you are doing. There may at times be legal reasons for this."
 * "This quick action is in no way meant to override or replace the process of community consensus. There is still plenty of time, and there are still plenty of places, for the community to discuss and replace articles in due course."


 * Relevant mailing list discussions


 * Jimbo's clarification
 * I am Danny
 * Phone calls
 * Apology
 * Libel chill
 * (Relevant selections from these discussions are available at /Originalia)