Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Archive/Explicit protection for young people — policy and tooling
Explicit protection for young people — policy and tooling
Proposes a legal/social/policy change rather than a technical feature
- Problem: young people (and particularly those with dedicated articles) are currently treated as adults and may be subject to inappropriate editing and discussion
- Who would benefit: young people (and indirectly the entire Wikipedia community)
- Proposed solution: that Wikimedia Legal develops policy to protect young people and then develops suitable structures and tooling to monitor and enforce that policy
- More comments: within Europe, Wikimedia has additional responsibilities under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union[1]
- Phabricator tickets:
- Proposer: RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 17:37, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
Discussion
The background to my proposal involved watching and occasionally contributing to the page for Greta Thunberg in its early days. Greta was 15 years old when she first went on strike. At around that time, Greta was peripherally involved in a some kind of scandal with a Swedish social media startup — the details of which are not material here.
What is relevant is that Greta should have been subject to additional editing protections because of her age and provisions under article 24.2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union — 2000/C 364/01.[1] And she was not. I watched contributors argue that Greta's judgment was deficient and it was necessary for this material to go live.
I argue that the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) failed in its duties to Greta such that "In all actions relating to children, whether taken by public authorities or private institutions, the child's best interests must be a primary consideration."
The appearance of children on Wikipedia is likely to grow. Another candidate would be 14-year old Anika Chebrolu who recently won a science prize.[2] Or the six children and young adults currently plaintiffs before the European Court of Human Rights in relation to climate breakdown.[3] Their ages ranged from five to 14 years when their case was first filed in 2017.
I am not a lawyer or a child advocate, so I don't know what policy would be necessary. But I do know that in the absence of such policy, WMF is running a legal risk, and worse, likely to be an unwitting facilitator in undermining the rights of children.
I have tried to raise this matter with WMF Legal in the past, but to no apparent avail.
The policy should also cover the use of images of children, particularly for those individuals of public interest.
I sincerely hope this matter can be conceded, tackled and resolved. We would all benefit, primarily the young people in need of protection and the Wikimedia community not having to watch events deteriorate as editors debate their interpretations of the facts and then publish actionable material.
References
- ↑ a b European Commission (18 December 2000). "Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union — 2000/C 364/01" (PDF). Official Journal of the European Communities (C 364): 1–22. Retrieved 2017-11-09. Article 24 on the rights of the child.
- ↑ Lanese, Nicoletta (21 October 2020). "14-year-old from Texas wins top science prize for coronavirus molecule discovery". ScienceAlert. Retrieved 2020-11-21. Article on Anika Chebrolu.
- ↑ Watts, Jonathan (30 November 2020). "European states ordered to respond to youth activists' climate lawsuit". The Guardian (London, United Kingdom). ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-11-30.
- Hello! The Community Wishlist Survey is about proposing technical improvements or changes to the software you use that the Community Tech will undertake. This proposal is more about a legal and/or policy change and is not in our scope. As such I'm going to archive it, but thanks for participating nonetheless, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
- @MusikAnimal: Okay. Useful to have this material on file anyway so I can follow up the matter up elsewhere. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 17:57, 30 November 2020 (UTC)