User:Backslash Forwardslash/Minors on Wikipedia

Minors on Wikipedia; Balancing community diversity with personal privacy.
Like many websites on the internet, Wikipedia has become a sizable community. Everywhere from Aabenraa to Zzyzx, we have millions of people reading our articles, and contributing information. We have grown to a very visible website on the internet, and are therefore faced with challenges smaller websites do not have.

Wikipedia does not discriminate in who it accepts as contributors, whether they are 9 years old or 90 years old, all are welcome to create an account. Our community has a sizable amount of users who are under the age of majority (as much as a quarter of editors ; legally minors in their respective countries. Minors make up an integral part of the community, but there are risks involved with having children editing Wikipedia. While there are differing viewpoints on the editorial appropriateness, the most pressing and concerning challenge is that of dealing with personal information.

Often it is new users unfamiliar with the nature of Wikipedia, other times it is and experienced editor that feels safe enough to disclose his identity. No matter who the editor is, however, as soon as the personal information is on the userpage, it cannot be retracted. Deletion and suppression can remove it from public view on Wikipedia, but there have already been Wikipedia mirrors and website caches that store the information in some corner of the internet, no matter how obscure, until the heat death of the universe.

What was intended to be a friendly gesture for the sake of social collusion has become a de-anonymising force, with every trace evidence of you and your actions both on and off Wikipedia being stored, gathered and collected for anyone's consumption. Therein lies a major privacy issue, not just Wikipedia's but that of the whole internet.

Personal information identifying minors is problematic for many reasons, some obvious but some more peripheral. Let's start with the obvious one; children, particularly 8-13 year olds who may not be as net-wise as older kids, are sadly vulnerable to paedophiles. While some consider this risk extreme, there are far too many cases of paedophiles using the internet to contact and meet children for the risk to be ignored. While parents do have a responsibility to make sure their child is safe, Wikipedia has a duty of care to ensure these children are not being unnecessarily endangered, in the same way Disneyworld has to maintain a level of security.

The next problem is that of cyberstalking and cyberbullying. The use of the internet to threaten and harass is growing, with websites like 4chan acting as a standing army for those who want to annoy. Even if an editor has only released a name and/or location, their email address, phone number, street address, workplace, school and social groups may all be at risk of getting discovered and used against you. Websites like Facebook and Myspace can be used against an editor, and all in the interest of harassing an editor. Wikipedia's community is painfully aware of the issue of offline stalking, with many editors being forced away due to the veracity of the harassment, and while not all of them are minors, the potential for harm is much greater for a young person whose social life is spent online. It is only the control of personal information that can significantly decrease an editors risk of being affected.

Another pertinent issue is the effect of having an illusion of privacy, and the possible implications when that boundary is shattered. While editing Wikipedia, some rarely consider whether their mothers and fathers, friends and employers would approve of the edits. Some rarely consider that their internet life and their outside life will ever cross paths. Some editors choose to be up front with personal information, and make sure to make that calculation, but others are much less reckless, and may end up having a Wikipedia personality that even they may disapprove of. In an age where an employer googles the name of a job seeker, having your real name connected with a divisive Wikipedia personality may cost you a job, even if it only happens in 10 years time.

The internet is a dangerous place, and it doesn't help to be editing one of the most visible websites in the world. While adults are often capable of balancing the risk-reward scenario of the release of personal information, it is minors who may not be able to make a rational or fully informed decision. What Wikipedia's role in managing minors' information is not clearly defined; we rely on the effort of minors to function as a community, but we need to ensure that those minors are being at risk in doing so. It is every editors moral and ethical imperative to ensure that every child editing this encyclopaedia is comfortable, to make ensure every child is not being overly open about their personal lives, and to most of all ensure that every single child editing Wikipedia is safe.