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Alternate accounts policy

Hallo, everyone,

Does Meta-wiki have a policy on valid uses of alternat accounts, required declarations, etc.? (I am mostly going to use the account for Commons uploads, but might also want to say some meta things that might not be popular on my home wiki. I don't want to break any rules, but the alternativ is: stay quiet, avoid stress.) I tried searching on phrases like „sock puppet” and „alternate account” and only found Sock puppetry. I don't intend to stack votes.

45.133.192.124 14:38, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Are people sanctioned by the U.S. treasury department allowed to use Wikimedia projects

Hello!

The US Treasury sanctioned some Hong Kong individuals seen here.

Are they permitted to use Wikimedia projects?

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 16:42, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

What connection would this have to Wikimedia? And I strongly doubt senior civil servants and politicians in HK are busy editing Wikimedia projects anyway. – Ajraddatz (talk) 16:46, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

@Ajraddatz: Yeah it's true that senior politicians or civil servants themselves would not likely be editing pages though they could tell an intern to do the edits they want. Anyway the Wikimedia Foundation is HQ'ed in San Francisco, has its main servers in Virginia, and therefore does operate under U.S. law.

• The order notes: "OFAC’s regulations generally prohibit all transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or otherwise blocked persons. The prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person or the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods or services from any such person."

WhisperToMe (talk) 16:50, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for posting the specific text. We could opine as to whether contributing to Wikipedia fits within the prohibition, but it's really something that would require a legal opinion, and absent evidence that these people are actually trying to contribute here probably not worth a community investigation into IMO. – Ajraddatz (talk) 16:57, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Ok. It could be visited/revisited if there are edits from Hong Kong government computers as the sanctioned individuals are executives of relevant departments. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:40, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Also "use" is a very broad term, I can't see us blocking IP's from reading our projects (using them) unless they are actively disrupting operations. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:14, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

I think even globally banned people under the Wikimedia Terms of use aren't blocked from reading articles, only from editing. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:53, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

According to wmf:Terms_of_Use/en#12._Termination, (globally) banned people, unless told otherwise, is indeed still able to read Wikimedia sites. Although preventing someone from reading Wikimedia public pages is like trying to fence the entire countryside isn't it? —MarcoAurelio (talk) 22:22, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Comment wikilawyering is the damnedest thing. Talk to Legal. We cannot know. We also can only talk about Meta on this page.  — billinghurst sDrewth 22:38, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: I went ahead and e-mailed meta. I guess this discussion could be moved to Wikimedia Forum. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:47, 8 August 2020 (UTC)