Wikipedia:Oversight/FAQ

If you believe that something you have spotted on the English Wikipedia meets one of the criteria and should be suppressed, contact the Oversight team immediately by e-mail - even if you're not 100% sure if you're correct or not. DO NOT post any requests for suppression, or post any direct or indirect links to the content in question anywhere onto Wikipedia. You must remember that Wikipedia, by default, is a public space; adding this information will bring more public visibility to the information, causing increased attention and viewership as a result. This can potentially cause the information to become published elsewhere solely in order to maintain its visibility (also known as the Streisand effect).

This is a list of frequently asked questions about Oversight and Suppression on English Wikipedia. Please note that these are intended to be general answers to common questions; if you are unsure of a specific case, it is always best to consult the Oversight team. As all cases are unique and no set of guidelines can be exhaustive, much here is being purposefully left to individual oversighter discretion.

Q: What is the difference between revision deletion and suppression?
A: There are two ways that individual revisions can be removed from the generally accessible content of the English Wikipedia project:

Revision deletion (often referred to as revdeletion)

This is the ability to mark individual revisions as no longer accessible to general readers. It is similar to deletion of a page, but acts on an individual entry in an article's history. Once a revision, or an article, is marked as deleted, it cannot be read by users. A small subset of users do have the ability to access deleted revisions. These include administrators, oversighters, checkusers, stewards, and certain Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) staff members. If a revision has been revdeleted, while the deleted content is not visible, its existence is visible to all users in the revision history, and any administrator or oversighter can reverse the action.

Suppression

This is functionally identical to revdeletion, but it extends the restriction of viewers to oversighters, stewards, and certain WMF staff members only. If a revision has been suppressed, while the suppressed content is not visible, the existence of the edit log is visible to all users in the page's revision history, and any oversighter can reverse the action if it becomes necessary.

Q: How do I request oversight or suppression?
A: Follow the directions at Wikipedia:Requests for oversight which may be summarized:

• Use this form if you have a Wikipedia account with Wikipedia email enabled (click here to enable account email);
  • Please use a short, descriptive subject line in your email, and do not put important information only in the subject. The OTRS system the Oversight team receives emails through only supplies a small snippet of the subject line; we rely on the content of your email to tell us the necessary information.
• Use your normal email and write to oversight-en-wpwikipedia.org;
• Contact an oversighter personally, ensuring you do not repeat any sensitive information on-wiki.

Q: What information do I need to provide about an edit when I ask for it to be suppressed?
A: You will need to provide enough information to allow us to find the edit and judge what the problem is. That usually means giving us a diff of the problem edit or edits, and an explanation of why you feel the edit needs to be suppressed. If you have trouble providing a diff, you can also provide us with the title of the page the edit was made to, and the time the edit was made to that page. If you're requesting suppression of multiple edits, please be sure to specify that, and provide diffs or page/time information for each edit. You don't need to provide us with your username, though if you use the Wikipedia email function to contact us, that information will automatically be provided to us.

Q: What can I do while I wait for the Oversight team to handle my request?
A: The oversight function cannot be applied to a page's current version, so you should generally revert or trim the problematic content out of the page in question prior to contacting the oversight team. This also makes the objectionable material significantly less visible until oversight is applied to it.

Q: Well, but I found an edit that needs urgent attention. Should I post it on one of the admin noticeboards so my request can be noticed quickly?
A: No! Do not post requests for oversight or revision deletion on public noticeboards. The goal of revision deletion and suppression is to minimize the number of editors who see problematic content, and posting a link to something on a noticeboard can only increase the number of editors who see it. You should always contact the Oversight team privately to request oversight. If your edit truly needs urgent attention, contact an oversighter by joining the #wikipedia-en-revdel ^connect IRC channel and typing !oversight to get the attention of an oversighter.

Q: But I already tried contacting the Oversight team privately, and I haven't gotten a response yet!
A: The Oversight team are all volunteers, and sometimes cannot act on requests immediately. If you have made an urgent request that has not yet been actioned, we are sorry. Please know that we do not ignore requests; if you made a request that hasn't been acted on, that probably means that either no oversighter has been able to attend to it yet, or that the Oversight team is discussing the matter internally. You may wish to try contacting an individual oversighter, via e-mail or IRC, to ask them to check on your request, or you could try re-sending your request to oversight-en-wpwikipedia.org. Posting your request on a noticeboard or other high-traffic on-wiki page will not get your request handled any more quickly; it will only make more work for the oversighter who eventually attends to it, who now will need to suppress posts on another page as well.

Q: Do you suppress e-mail addresses?
A: It depends. Some e-mail addresses are obviously personally identifiable, or their presence on pages in the English Wikipedia may cause harm to the person who posted it or owns it. Those are suppression worthy. Others are obviously throw-away or non-private addresses and are not. It is left to the discretion of the suppressor as to the nature of the address and what should be done. In difficult cases, like most others, the suppression is usually discussed on the oversight-l mailing list.

Q: Do you suppress copyrighted information or trade secrets?
A: Suppression, as opposed to deletion, of copyright material or trade secrets is usually only performed at the behest of the WMF Legal department or as an WP:OFFICE action. If you believe you have found a case that may need this unusual type of suppression, please contact the WMF Legal department about it prior to contacting the Oversight team. Run-of-the-mill copyright violations are generally dealt with by the community according to its usual processes (see here for details about handling text copyvios, here for image copyvios).

Q: Do you suppress threats of violence or self-harm?
A: The Oversight team is not the body empowered to handle threats of harm. It may, at oversighter discretion, suppress information contained in such threats, especially if the edits relate to private personal information or are potentially libelous. However, emergencywikimedia.org should always be contacted regarding threats so that aspects of the situation, beyond its effects on Wikipedia and its sister projects, can be properly addressed.

Q: Do you suppress personal information posted by editors under eighteen?
A: Yes, though oversighter discretion will apply to the specifics of any individual case. Though the English Wikipedia is not bound by the American Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which causes many websites to bar users under thirteen, we do take the safety and privacy of minors, both over thirteen and under, quite seriously. If you have encountered a young editor providing too much personal information on Wikipedia, please contact the Oversight team so we can evaluate the situation.

Q: I came across an edit where the editor wrote something really, really offensive about someone or something else! Can you suppress this?
A: Material that is simply offensive or obscene, even if it's grossly so, is generally not covered by our oversight policy. Some offensive material can also be considered libelous, however, and libel is covered under our oversight policy. If the offensive edit alleges illegal activity or otherwise legally- or personally-damaging information, please contact an oversighter to have them evaluate the edit.

Q: I don't have a Wikipedia account. My IP address was published on Wikipedia when I edited. Can you remove it?
A: If you wish to conceal your IP, you should create an account. In some cases, suppression may still be considered, for example, if you are a new editor and did not realize your IP address would be publicly published.

Q: I have a Wikipedia account, but I forgot to log in to my account before editing, and now my IP address is attached to my edits. Can you remove it?
A: Yes. The IPs of account-holders are considered private information. You may contact an oversighter to request suppression of your IP. Please note that this courtesy is not intended to allow registered editors to edit logged out to avoid scrutiny of their actions; it is intended only for accidental use of an IP rather than an account.

Q: None of these questions matches the material I'm wondering about, but nevertheless, the material seems really problematic. What do I do?
A: If you think an edit is problematic and may need suppression, you can always contact the Oversight team and ask us to evaluate it. Even if the material doesn't match the explicit limits of the Oversight policy, exceptions are sometimes made in unusual cases to allow for suppression of problematic material.