Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-02-27/Community view
Open letter from French Wikipedians says "no" to intimidation of volunteer contributors
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- This is an open letter from members of the French community of Wikipedia editors, protesting the threatened doxing of one of their peers by a journalist from a French magazine, Le Point, which has already responded to this open letter. Antoine Srun, the President of Wikimédia France, has officially endorsed the letter, stating "Wikimédia France will always stand alongside the Wikipedia volunteer community to defend it, protect it and help it in its missions of free access to all knowledge." User Jules*, who helped organize this effort, told The Signpost that Wikipedians who haven't previously contributed to the French Wikipedia can now add their own signatures, as well. - S
We, volunteers contributing to Wikipedia in French, give our full support to our colleague FredD, the target of intimidating emails by a journalist from magazine Le Point, threatening to reveal his identity and profession. In this letter, we wish to recall the importance of respecting the pseudonymity of Wikipedia volunteers, as well as the operating principles of the collaborative encyclopedia.
On Saturday, February 15, after contributing to the Wikipedia article about the magazine Le Point,[1] FredD, a volunteer contributor to Wikipedia for 18 years, who has made more than 30,000 edits, had the very unpleasant surprise of receiving an email sent from the professional address of Erwan Seznec, a journalist at Le Point, which included the following comments: "We are going to write an article about you, on our site, giving your identity, your position, and requesting an official reaction from [FredD's supposed employer]." The same journalist also obtained FredD's personal telephone number and contacted him through that means.
The statements made in these emails are explicitly threatening and are, as such, completely unacceptable. Editorial disagreements, which are quite common on Wikipedia, are settled by debates on the discussion page of the article in question, in accordance with the rules of etiquette.
These threatening remarks come after the dissemination of supposed personal information about several other volunteer contributors in an article in Le Point.[2]
These procedures, unprecedented in the mainstream French press, do not fall within the scope of free criticism, to which Wikipedia is regularly subjected — which is perfectly legitimate. They do not seem to us to respect the ethics of journalism or to be part of a journalistic approach for the citizens' right to information, but rather to fall within the scope of score-settling or intimidation. They pose a problem on several counts:
- They are likely to expose our editors to harassment — which we regularly encounter — and can even endanger Internet users who voluntarily participate in the construction of the encyclopedia;
- They are likely to, through the threat of disclosure of personal information, intimidate and cause self-censorship of other volunteers on the articles this journalist from Le Point has targeted, first and foremost the article on Le Point itself, but also on other articles previously called into question by Erwan Seznec (Eugénie Bastié, Sylvie Brunel, et cetera);
- They circumvent Wikipedia's editorial processes, which allow anyone to participate in developing consensus on the writing of articles and to resolve editorial disagreements, which are part of the normal functioning of the encyclopedia.
For the record, Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia with horizontal, non-profit operation. It is based on five founding principles, including an encyclopedic aim, neutrality of point of view (mentioning points of view according to their place in the field of knowledge, that is to say quality sources) and respect for rules of etiquette. Decisions are taken by consensus.
Volunteer contributors, with varied profiles and political opinions, mostly edit under pseudonyms, in accordance with the platform's recommendation to avoid harassment. Contributors are not anonymous, and can be identified by the courts upon request to the host.
The encyclopedia is not perfect — for example, discussions regularly animate the community on how to improve biographies of living people and the treatment of recent events or media controversies. But its operation and its rules guarantee its independence from all powers.
We, volunteer contributors to Wikipedia, assure FredD of our support and denounce any attempt, from whatever source, to intimidate volunteer contributors to Wikipedia, including by threatening to contact their employer, and to disseminate personal information about them.
Signatures
More than 1000 Wikipedians have signed this open letter, as of February 25. If you would like to sign it, you may do so from this page at the French Wikipedia.
Notes
- ^ All changes made to the Le Point article can be viewed in its history, which is public.
- ^ Seznec, Erwan (13 December 2024). "Wikipedia, a dive into the making of a manipulation" (in French). Le Point. Retrieved 18 February 2025.
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