User:Geo Swan/An OTRS form

An OTRS form

In the last couple of years I have interacted with approximately half a dozen third parties who wanted a portrait image deleted. All of them seemed to have trouble using our existing OTRS procedures to confirm their real life identity.

I've given this a lot of thought, and I suggest the WMF could make the procedure for requesting real world confirmation of a third party's identity easier to initiate.

The third parties I interacted with said some equivalent of "I can't figure out how to use the OTRS process." Since the process starts with sending an email, and everyone knows how to send an email, the anxiety they expressed does not usually get that much sympathy. I've concluded

I now think this is a mistake. I think the reason they show anxiety is not that they don't know how to send an email, or that they aren't who they say they are - it is that they did want their images removed, and they didn't understand what would happen once they confirmed their identity. I think that if the WMF provided the WMF commons, en.wiki, and all the other wikis, an automated form, that provided some guidance to good faith third parties, it could relieve some of their anxiety.

In the sidebar beside the User: page, User talk: page, and User contributions: page of Wikipedians who confidentialy registered a real world email address, there is an "Email this user" button. When someone clicks on this button it brings up a form, with a couple of brief paragraphs of helpful exposition, a few boxes to fill out, and a submit button.

I suggest that third parties who want to confidentially confirm their identities would benefit from a similar form.

What exposition should the form contain?

I want to suggest something like the following... Yes. I know it should be half to a third as long!:

Form to confidentially confirm your real life identity.

The email you initiate by completing this form will be processed confidentially. Only a select group of individuals will ever access this email, and learn your real life identifying information. The reasons you might need to confirm your real life identity include: You uploaded an image for us to use (thank you very much) and we need to verify that you own the intellectual property rights to that image. Please see Meta:Why do I have to surrender IP rights for my images to be used? There is an image of you on this project, and you want to have it removed. Meta:Is an image of me being used in violation of my legal rights and Meta:Can I request the removal of properly licensed image of me, as a courtesy? There is biographical information about you on this project, that you think is in error, and you want to discuss having it corrected. Meta:Correcting erroneous information about yourself There is biographical information about you on this project, and you think it should be removed to preserve your privacy. Meta:Courtesy deletion of biographical information Please bear in mind our requirement third parties identify themselves is for their protection. We don't want to agree to change the information about them based on requests from impostors. Please remember that the individual who answers your request is a volunteer, here to help you, who will do their best to be polite and patient with you, so please do your best to be polite and patient with us. Please remember that, when the image or information about you is properly licensed, a request for its deletion is a favor. Once you have confirmed your identity your clerk can inform regular participants in a project's discussion that the wiki identity you used is tied to the real life identity you claimed. Each individual project has its own rules as to how to process your request, once your real life identity has been confirmed. Someone there should help you find the specific rules you need to read. In general, if the reason for your request is personal vanity, then openly acknowledging this is a good idea. How will we confirm your identity? That depends. If there is nothing controversial about your request, and there is a page of an official web site that lists your email address - like your faculty page at well-known educational institution - once you give us the URL of that official page, we will use that email address. Once you reply your email is confirmed. If you have no official web presense we have other methods. Remember, we are trying to help you

Yes. This form should be half this length, or less.

What boxes should the form contain?

The form should contain boxes like:

your email address
a real world webpage that lists your email address (optional)	Many third parties won't have a webpage with an email address...
the discussion where you want your identity confirmed (optional)	Many third parties won't know how to capture the location of a discussion.
the reason you want to confirm your identity	Reasons to be selected from a list, including: I want to request courtesy deletion of an image of me, or biographical information about me I want to request correction to biographical information I consider to be inaccurate, or unflattering I have an image, or images, I want to make available to you, and I want to confirm I own the intellectual property rights, and that I understand the rights I would be agreeing to surrender. other (please explain further):

When should administrators summarily delete material?

The individual rules may vary, for individual WMF projects. It is my impression that the summary or speedy deletion of material should only be performed when the material in question is a genuine attack on the third party, as decribed in en.wiki's WP:ATTACK.

The administrator processing a third party deletion request should actually take the time to confirm it meets that wiki's definition of an attack page.

The case of the Jeffrey Norwitz article

In 2009 I (User:Geo Swan) drafted a brief stub on Jeffrey H. Norwitz, an author, public speaker, named professor at a Service College, and highly decorated NCIS officer. When I couldn't find the stub when I went back to flesh it out I found that Norwitz had figured out how to send a message to OTRS, and requested the article's deletion, all within hours of its creation.

The (new) OTRS volunteer who processed Norwitz's request had summarily deleted the article. They explained that they thought the deletion policy authorized administrators to speedy delete articles, when the BLP subject requested deletion, if they regarded that individual's notability as marginal. They decided that Norwitz's notability was marginal.

I was sure the deletion policy only authorized administrators to consider whether a BLP subject's notability was on the cusp, when closing an AFD that they would normally close as "no consensus". It was my understanding that an administrator closing an AFD that would normally be kept as "no consensus" was authorized to delete the article instead, if there was an OTRS verified request for deletion from the article's subject.

I saw my choices as (1) take the article to DRV, for a review; (2) wait until additional references emerged, that bolstered the case that Norwitz's notability was not on the cusp.

Over the next two and a half years I contacted the deleting administrator multiple times - every time my google news alert advised me of new references about Norwitz. The deleting administrator always replied politely, but firmly, declined to restore the article, as they continued to think those new references did not move Norwitz into unquestionable notability.

I probably should have taken Norwitz's case to DRV sooner - maybe right away. The DRV I initiated overwhelmingly concurred that the Norwitz article was not subject to speedy deletion. The deleting administrator had quickly changed his mind, after discussing the case with some OTRS colleagues. My hat is off to him for graciously saying so. The subsequent administrative AFD was quickly closed as a SNOW Keep. Even individuals who almost always left !votes to delete articles, when I started them, agreed Norwitz was unquestionably notable.

This case confirmed my understanding of en.wiki policy, that en.wiki administrators are only authorized to take into account request for courtesy deletion when closing an AFD. The policy uses the wording "when closing a discussion". I think that, for all usual purposes this means an AFD - and certainly not a speedy request.

I'll repeat, of course they remain authorized to delete an article, when they see a request for speedy deletion, if it genuinely meets the criteria defined in WP:ATTACK.

Discussion

I am going to leave a note on the Village pump, requesting comment on this suggestion. Geo Swan (talk) 18:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)