Child sexual exploitation policy project/Meetings

Due to the nature of the child sexual exploitation policy project, meetings with community members will be limited to existing community groups who have worked with such issues in the past. This can include Arbitration Committees and users with the oversight permission, as well as other users on the access to nonpublic personal data policy noticeboard.

Terms of Use meetings (Week of 12 June 2023)

These meetings were attended by some (not all) members of the below mentioned committees. Therefore, the views here may not be reflective of the whole group. Speakers have been anonymised.

• Wikimedia Commons:
  • Concerns raised around how long it can take for CSAM to be removed from Wikipedia upon report to T&S, issue explained as a lack of staffing in T&S and a limit to who can legally be responsible for this. T&S and Legal should reconsider the level of communication around this workflow when things are reported and/or removed.
  • The existing page around child protection is not currently an official policy. It seems likely this could be made policy locally but would require a discussion on the project.
  • There have been some borderline issues around child protection issues which are worrisome, though we should bear in mind the educational impact of some images that other websites deem unacceptable.
  • There are no "mentorship" programs for younger editors.
• English Wikipedia functionaries:
  • There were some worries about plans to ask the communities to deal with child exploitation themselves. This is not the case, rather the calls were to obtain an understanding of how communities currently handle these issues and how much control they would like to have over sanctioning users.
• English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee:
  • Generally happy to see work in this area following much discussion with T&S.
  • Recent debates on the project with regards to what should be considered "pedophilia advocacy".
  • When there is a criminal conviction, it’s a lot easier to make a call. Often there is not enough information to link a user to a real-life identity (by design), which can complicate things greatly.
• German Wikipedia Arbitration Committee:
  • Reported that the volume of cases in this category is quite low, though grooming issues have emerged in the past.
  • There is a lack of local policy on the German Wikipedia which ArbCom intends to work on with the rest of the local community.
  • There are mentorship programs for younger editors on German Wikipedia, such as JungWikipedia.