User:TParis/Protecting Children

Children on Wikipedia are welcome and even encouraged to participate in the project with as much due respect as any adult contributor. That being said, children are often targetted by online predators and it is the responsibility of the community to ensure their safety. Websites collecting information about children under the age of thirteen are required to comply with Federal Trade Commission Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Wikipedia does not collect such information, yet it does offer the ability for children to volunteer it and self identify.

Proposed Guideline
Children should not be discouraged from contributing to Wikipedia. There is no concern about children identifying themselves as being under 13 as long as personally identifiable information is not also provided. Rather, children should be educated about what not to post on their user pages. Any child suspected of being under thirteen and posting information that could be used to find them should be reported privately to the oversight committee via email. Also remove the information from their page and properly substitute the template onto their talk page. Children who persist in publishing information about themselves after warnings and surpression should be blocked.

Children are not always children
A self identified child may be a child, an adult predator, trolls, an adult privacy watcher, or a member of a law enforcement agency. Reasonable measures which forestall the drama associated with interactions between naive children, predatory pedophiles, and sting operations by law enforcement are appropriate.

Don't help the predators
Categories and non-substituted templates about children should never be used on pages suspected of being children. Such use will only target children for predators and have the opposite effect of this guideline. If information that could idenfity the child is posted or easily accessible based on information they've already supplied, you should not do any action that could target the user. Privately notify a member of the oversight committee so they can purge Wikipedia of the content and any revision histories. This is called surpression and cannot be performed by an Administrator, only a member with oversight rights. Surpression is so complete it even prevents administrators from recovering the information.

Self identification
Self identification is any case in which a child identifies their age. Personally identifiable information (PIN) is any information that can allow someone to uniqely identify, contact, or locate a person. This can include a phone number, address, email, name of a school, community center or park, clubs or organizations, last names, social security numbers, to name a few. This could also include a link to a myspace page or facebook or personal website that has the information. Any information which could be used to obtain PIN should also be considered PIN. You may not think a first name and mention of an athletic track award is personally identifiable, but a google search on the award and a first name could lead to a last name and broad location. Then a white pages search of the last name and broad location can lead to a specific location and phone number.

This is not an all inclusive list, but some self identification can be:

Any information that can target a specific person in a given location is personally identifiable. This includes unique first and last names that are globally unique and only 1 person in the world has it. Also, even without names a person can be targetting with specific information on their age, hair color, eye color, athletic records, rumors, or their favorite shoe brand when paired with information such as their school, a local mall, their IP address, clubs, ect. For example, "I hold the track and field record for the high jump in men's category at Willamette High School" is personally identifiable. There are many ways to identify a person that this list cannot be all inclusive. Use common sense when posting information and remember that information here can be combined with information off Wikipedia; especially if you use the same username here as on another medium.

Parents
Parents are ultimately responsible for the protection of their children online. It is the parent's responsibility to educate, mentor, and monitor their children when using the internet. This guideline is not meant to replace a parent's responsibilities, only to compliment their efforts and assist in the collective goal of protecting future generations. Parents should not assume this guideline is sufficient to keep their children safe. We will do our best, but we are neither the first nor last line of defense. If you are a parent and ok with your child submitting information about themselves online, feel free to say so.

Also, Wikipedia is not censored and contains information, pictures, and graphics that may not be suitable for children. Wikipedia does not make an effort to control the content your child has access to.

What should you do?

 * 1) Do not make an incident report on WP:ANI or WP:Village Pump.
 * 2) Do not add any templates or categories to the user's page which might target the user or alert child predators.
 * 3) Do leave a friendly message on the user's talk page about the dangers of posting PIN
 * 4) Do send an email, if you have Wikipedia email enabled, using this form or to oversight-l@lists.wikimedia.org explaining your concern with a link to the user page. Include a copy of any mail sent to the user.

If you are an admin and the user posts either is or pretends to be a child posting provocative information that is disruptive to the encyclopedia, you may block the user on a case by case basis. If the user seems to be editting in good faith, you should attempt to warn the user and notify the oversight committee. Users who continue posting PIN may be blocked on a case by case basis.

Exclusions to this guideline
Any article that contains PIN that is available on any other public source is excluded from this guideline. This also does not pertain to children on Wikipedia who do not self identify their age. Nor does it pertain to children who identify their age but do not offer any PIN. Also please be aware that some parents may be ok with their children submitting information about themselves online.

Legal
This is not a legal policy of Wikipedia or any attempt to ensure Wikipedia is following the laws of any country. This is merely a guideline for editors about what to do in situations where children have self-identified their age and offered PIN.