office Actions

This is an information page. It describes actions that are taken by the Wiki Foundation pursuant to the Foundation's office actions policy.

Shortcuts WP:OFFICE WP:OA

This page in a nutshell: Sometimes the Wiki Foundation may have to delete, protect, or blank pages, suppress revisions, block or globally lock users, or take other actions without going through the normal site/community processes to do so. These measures may be temporary or permanent and are taken to prevent legal trouble or personal harm. They should not be undone by any user without permission from the Wiki Foundation.

Office actions are described by the Foundation as "official changes to or removals of content on the Wiki projects, or actions against specific individuals, performed by Foundation staff members and under the authority of the Wiki Foundation, upon receipt of one or multiple complaints from the community or the public, or as required by law." Complaints that may lead to enforcement of office actions may regard, but are not limited to, privacy violations, child protection, copyright infringement or systematic harassment. All office actions are performed pursuant to the Terms of Use.

On the subject of modifying office actions, the Foundation states:

Wiki administrators and others who have the technical power to revert or edit office actions are strongly cautioned against doing so. Unauthorized modifications to office actions will not only be reverted, but may lead to sanctions by the Foundation, such as revocation of the rights of the individual involved. When in doubt, community members should consult the Foundation member of staff that performed the office action, or their line manager. However, details regarding an office action are only shared to the extent that they do not compromise the safety of users, the public or the project.

For the full text of the Wiki Foundation official policy, see meta:Office actions.

For pages currently protected by office action, see Category:Wikipedia Office-protected pages. For editing restrictions placed by office action, see Special:Contributions/WMFOffice. (The former log, Wiki: Office actions/Log, is obsolete.)

On the English Wikipedia, WMF Office deletions are covered by WP:G9 at WP:Criteria for speedy deletion.

The office actions policy was originally launched on the English Wikipedia by Jimmy Wales, back in February 2006, and shortly afterwards on Meta, in order to solidify long-standing practices and processes followed by the Foundation that were not officially recorded elsewhere in the projects at that time. Its original scope focused on page protections and BLP article content changes, in response to increasingly rising number of escalated calls for action, placed directly to the Foundation's staff, by affected individuals. Danny Wool was the first designated Foundation staff member mandated to accept, review, and act on such requests, with the exception of Wiki co-founder Jimmy Wales.

The office actions page has undergone several iterations since, on both sites, and has been expanded to include a variety of office actions that have been taken over the years as common practice, broadening its original scope. At the same time, strict internal processes have been developed by the Foundation in order to complement as well as standardize office actions and staff use of advanced rights. In June 2019, the English Wikipedia page was changed to an information page referring to the Wiki Foundation office actions page located at meta:Office actions.

Office actions were originally intended to be temporary actions, alleviating pressures caused by controversial situations and calling community attention to them in the hopes of resolution. However, certain office actions have since evolved to be permanent and non-appealable due to the nature of the issues dealt with, while others have become defunct.

• Wiki: Arbitration/Requests/Case/Reversion of office actions
• wmf:Policies, a list of all official policies of the Wiki Foundation
• Test account policy