Template talk:Suppressed

The smiley face
The smiley face we're currently using in this template is adorable. And Im flattered that we have twice used a variant of the template using a face that I made. But it bothers me that this template might now be doing more harm than good. Children are active on all sorts of social media networks these days, and information that we suppress might well be available somewhere else. is a list of all recently edited user talk pages with this smiley face on. Because we use this smiley face for almost nothing else, this list is effectively a publically accessible directory of Wikipedia users under age 13, and in particular, users under 13 who've recently posted personally identifiable information. We've done our part by hiding this personal information on our site, but many of them will be easy to track down on other social media networks. Shouldnt we be worried?

As much as I love the yellow smiley face, I think it might be time to replace it with a much more common image, or with no image at all, so that it won't be easy for third parties to find these kids.

There is also a link to Guidance for younger editors, though I feel this is of a much lesser importance, as we use it as part of a greeting for new users we are only guessing about. I am only interested in the suppression-related uses. Is it technologically possible for us to have no template at all, but rather an editnotice that only the user can see? You guys mostly know who I am, but I've lost my touch recently and may have forgotten even some things I knew five years ago.

I look forward to hearing any replies.

Thanks, — Soap — 18:54, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * 100% agree, and it's not something I'd considered, back in the day. By all means, do change that to something less trackable - A l is o n  ❤ 19:09, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Ive changed it to the blandest image I could think of ... the blue "i" we use for information messages in general. Many other things could work.  Also, I just thought of this .... maybe we could use an emoji? That way we'd get the informal "helping hand" feel of the original back without the need to link to an image.   — Soap — 20:28, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Changing it to a less unique image seems totally reasonable to me. What were you thinking in terms of using an emoji? A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:34, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I was hoping we could use a literal printable character, e.g. 😲, at a large enough size to resemble the original. This would likely do a better job of getting young users' attention than a simple blue letter "i".  But aside from the issue of it not rendering properly on every device, it's possible that searching for 😲 on user talk pages would find the new template.  I havent been able to quite figure out if emoji printable characters are covered by our search function or not.
 * I dont know. It also occurred to me this morning that people can just type in the text of the template and search for that, and although the pages dont show up in chronological order, they seem to be mostly newer ones.  I thought I had a brilliant idea yesterday but now I'm not so sure.  Perhaps the benefits of using the original, visually prominent original image outweigh the benefits of making the switch.  I trust the intuitions of our community as a whole, whichever way we go.  Thanks, — Soap — 14:32, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Last I checked uw-selfinfo, User:Fluffernutter/c, and User:Alison/c used them as well. Might be worth changing those as well. Primefac (talk) 16:36, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Astute observation. Worth noting that a search combination of the new image and template's text would still give this away, though. So, to really address this issue, we should either move to a generic suppressed notice (if one even exists? I don't think it does), or none at all. Unfortunately, although may seem rude, I think none is the better approach (perhaps send an email if we really want to inform them, as that'll be private). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:12, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think I've used these maybe twice in the last decade. I prefer a simple talk page message, or nothing. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:28, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Im glad I was able to help by bringing this up even though the answer seems to be not so simple as I'd imagined. I will keep listening here but I dont really have any other thoughts to add at this point. — Soap — 18:08, 1 September 2020 (UTC)