Harassment is a pattern of repeated offensive behavior that appears to a reasonable observer to intentionally target a specific person or persons. Usually, the purpose is to make the target feel threatened or intimidated, and the outcome may be to make editing Wikipedia unpleasant for the target, to undermine, frighten, or discourage them from editing.
Wikipedia must never be misused to harass anyone, whether or not the subject of the harassment is an editor here. Edits constituting harassment will be reverted, deleted, or suppressed, as appropriate, and editors who engage in harassment are subject to blocking and banning.
Harassment can include actions calculated to be noticed by the target and clearly suggestive of targeting them, even when no direct communication takes place.
Types of harassment and disruption
Harassment, including threats, intimidation, repeated annoying and unwanted contact or attention, and repeated personal attacks may reduce an editor's enjoyment of Wikipedia and thus cause disruption to the project. Harassment of an editor on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religious or political beliefs, disability, ethnicity, nationality, etc. is not allowed.
The prohibition against harassment applies equally to all Wikipedians. It is as unacceptable to harass a user with a history of inept or disruptive behavior as it is to harass any other user. Wikipedia encourages a civil community: people make mistakes, but they are encouraged to learn from them and change their ways. Harassment is contrary to this spirit and damaging to the work of building an encyclopedia.
Hounding
Hounding on Wikipedia (or "wikihounding") is the singling out of one or more editors, joining discussions on multiple pages or topics they may edit or multiple debates where they contribute, to repeatedly confront or inhibit their work. This is with an apparent aim of creating irritation, annoyance, or distress to the other editor. Hounding usually involves following the target from place to place on Wikipedia.
Many users track other users' edits, although usually for collegial or administrative purposes. This should always be done with care, and with good cause, to avoid raising the suspicion that an editor's contributions are being followed to cause them distress, or out of revenge for a perceived slight. Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles. In fact, such practices are recommended both for Recent changes patrol and WikiProject Spam. The contribution logs can be used in the dispute resolution process to gather evidence to be presented in incidents and arbitration cases. Using dispute resolution can itself constitute hounding if it involves persistently making frivolous or meritless complaints about another editor.
The important component of hounding is disruption to another user's own enjoyment of editing, or disruption to the project generally, for no overridingly constructive reason. Even if the individual edits themselves are not disruptive per se, "following another user around", if done to cause distress, or if accompanied by tendentiousness, personal attacks, or other disruptive behavior, may become a very serious matter and could result in blocks and other editing restrictions.
Threats
Threatening another person is considered harassment. This includes any real-world threats, such as threats of harm, and threats to disrupt a person's work on Wikipedia. Statements of intent to properly use normal Wikipedia processes, such as dispute resolution, are not threats. Legal threats are a special case of threat, with their own settled policy. Users who make legal threats will typically be blocked from editing indefinitely.
Perceived legal threats
Wikipedia has a policy of blocking users who post legal threats on Wikipedia against other editors. It is important not to post comments that others may reasonably interpret as a legal threat; words such as libelous or defamatory are best avoided for that reason. In handling apparent legal threats, users should seek to clarify the poster's intention, explain the policy, and ask them to remove the threat. That users are involved in a legal dispute with each other is not a reason to block, so long as no legal threats are posted on Wikipedia.
Posting of personal information
Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person has voluntarily posted their own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia.[note 1] Personal information includes real-life name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation, telephone number, email address, profiles on external sites, other contact information, or photograph, whether such information is accurate or not. Posting such information about another editor is an unjustifiable and uninvited invasion of privacy and may place that editor at risk of harm outside their activities on Wikipedia. Unless unintentional and non-malicious (for example, where Wikipedians know each other off-site and may inadvertently post personal information, such as using the other person's real name in discussions), attempted outing is sufficient grounds for an immediate block. This applies to the personal information of both editors and non-editors.
How to deal with personal information
If you have accidentally posted anything that might lead to your being outed (including but not limited to inadvertently editing while logged out, which reveals your IP address, and thus, your approximate location), it is important that you act promptly to have the edit(s) oversighted. Do not otherwise draw attention to the information. Referring to still-existing, self-disclosed posted information is not considered outing, and so the failure of an editor to have the information redacted in a timely manner may remove it from protection by this policy. Further information about protecting private information is at Personal security practices, On privacy, and How to not get outed on Wikipedia.
Any edit that "outs" someone must be reverted promptly, followed by a request for oversight to delete that edit from Wikipedia. Any administrator may redact it pending oversight, even when the administrator is involved. If an editor has previously posted their own personal information but later redacted it, it should not be repeated on Wikipedia, although references to still-existing, self-disclosed information are not considered outing. If the previously posted information has been removed by oversight, then repeating it on Wikipedia is considered outing.
If you see an editor post personal information about another person, do not confirm or deny the accuracy of the information. Doing so would give the person posting the information, and anyone else who saw the page, feedback on the accuracy of the material. For the same reason, do not treat incorrect attempts at outing any differently from correct attempts. When reporting an attempted outing take care not to comment on the accuracy of the information. Outing should usually be described as "an attempted outing" or similar, to make it clear that the information may or may not be true, and it should be made clear to the users blocked for outing that the block log and notice does not confirm the information.
The fact that an editor has posted personal information or edits under their own name, making them easily identifiable through online searches, is not an excuse to post the results of "opposition research". Dredging up their off-site opinions to repeatedly challenge their edits can be a form of harassment, just as doing so regarding their past edits on other Wikipedia articles may be. Threats to out an editor will be treated as a personal attack and are prohibited.
Exceptions
Nothing in this policy prohibits the emailing of personal information about editors to individual administrators, functionaries, or arbitrators, or to the Wikimedia Foundation, when doing so is necessary to report violations of confidentiality-sensitive policies (such as conflict of interest or paid editing, harassment, or violations of the child-protection policy). Only the minimum information necessary should be conveyed and the minimum number of people contacted. Editors are warned, however, that the community has rejected the idea that editors should "investigate" each other. Posting such information on Wikipedia violates this policy.
Posting links to other accounts on other websites is allowable in specific situations (but see also Wikipedia:Linking to external harassment):[note 1]
- There are job posting sites where employers publicly post advertisements to recruit paid Wikipedia editors. Linking to such an ad in a forum such as the Conflict of interest noticeboard is not a violation of this policy.
- If individuals have identified themselves without redacting or having it oversighted, such information can be used for discussions of conflict of interest (COI) in appropriate forums.
- If redacted or oversighted personally identifying material is important to the COI discussion, then it should be emailed privately to an administrator or arbitrator—but not repeated on Wikipedia: it will be sufficient to say that the editor in question has a COI and the information has been emailed to the appropriate administrative authority.
- To combat impersonation (an editor claiming falsely to be a particular person), it is permissible to post or link to disavowals from that person, provided that the person has explicitly and in good faith given their consent, and provided that there is a high degree of confidence in the authenticity of the source.
Issues involving private personal information (of anyone) could also be referred by email to a member of the functionaries team. While in the limited circumstances outlined above, links to external websites containing solicitations to edit Wikipedia may be posted on Wikipedia to demonstrate that there may be conflict of interest editing, links to personal profiles on external sites should not be connected to any specific Wikipedia editor unless that editor discloses it themselves.