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Should we really be listing the current URL of a website as dangerous as this, after its primary domain was already taken down? Jenny Death (talk) 15:56, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Considering we do the same for 8chan, and all that's happened and is happening related to this website, I'd support removing their external link. Isabelle 🏳‍🌈 16:06, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
We did that for 8chan because of concerns over child pornography. That seems to be nothing at all like what we're dealing with here. Endwise (talk) 16:14, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Absolutely should not be advertising alternative domains or assisting with people finding this site. -- ferret (talk) 16:15, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
But yet we "advertise" The Daily Stormer, Stormfront, VDARE, The Right Stuff etc. proudly in their infoboxes? Neo-Nazi epidemic on Wikipedia! Tweedle (talk) 22:54, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
If you're asking whether I think we should remove it from them as well: Yes. We should. -- ferret (talk) 23:01, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
I'd be happy with excluding the URL. The sheer amount of leaked personal information on the forum (full names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses) about vulnerable individuals is terrifying. Add in the frequent use of that information to harass people, actual threats to life via swatting and most recently a bomb threat in Northern Ireland [1], and the rest of the obscene and hateful content on the site, I don't think there's any good reason to publicise whatever URL they're currently using. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:19, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
As there seems to be a rough consensus not to include the URL, I've WP:BOLDly removed it and mentioned this section in the edit summary. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:31, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Definitely seems reasonable given the discussion so far. Perhaps we might want to start an RfC on it a bit later though. Endwise (talk) 16:41, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
I was under the impression (from WP:ELNEVER/WP:ELOFFICIAL) that we only don't link to an official link to a website in cases where the material on the website is illegal/violates copyrights, or is serving malware, rather than being obscene and hateful? E.g. Nazi site The Daily Stormer is certainly hateful, and shock site Goregrish.com is certainly obscene, but we do link to both of those. Endwise (talk) 16:35, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Doxxing is, in many jurisdictions outside of the US, illegal. While the forum's servers might be hosted in the US, many of the active users and their targets are international. Swatting likewise is also illegal in many jurisdictions. Both of these things are frequent actions that arise on KiwiFarms. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:39, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Support removal per Sideswipe. That's true regarding 8chan, Endwise, but given the proliferation of doxing and violent threats on this platform I think a similar case can be made here. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 16:20, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
If we DO keep a URL, it should still be the main URL. Let readers see what Cloudflare has to say, until the site updates it's DNS records away from CF. -- ferret (talk) 16:21, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Not so fast! this is a major infobox policy. If you want to leave the url off, we should give it the attention and time it deserves. TeeVeeed (talk) 19:06, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Not representative of the site content the site is currently serving. Domain name doesn't matter (at least not in Infobox). A link to the site serving with their intended contents matter, this is for the credibility of Wikipedia. You must not dictate what readers should see because of Wikipedia censorship policies. Rukario-sama ^ㅈ^ -(...) 19:59, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Considering that KF keeps on changing service provider and domains, I think for now it's a bad idea to keep on finding links every time it goes down. Pyraminxsolver (talk) 03:23, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

I'd say to keep it, doxxing is illegal is some jurisdictions, but so is hate speech is some parts of the world, which sites such as the Daily Stormer are guilty of, but still have their URLs displayed. I'm certainly not very much of a fan of the site's content, but in being consistent, I'd say it should stay. As for whether it should be the blocked main URL or online alternative URL, that should definitely be discussed. Wikicannibal (talk) 19:38, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I support removing the URL as this site has demonstrably incited real-world violence against marginalized people, and shows no sign of stopping this behavior. I propose that we take this to an RfC. (I'd prefer someone else start the RfC however.) Funcrunch (talk) 19:49, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm in two minds whether or not an RfC is necessary on this point. While it could be helpful, per WP:RFCBEFORE I do not think we've exhausted discussion here yet. However, even with a huge pile of WP:AGF, given the nature of KiwiFarms, I have a (I believe) reasonable fear that such a discussion could a target for off-wiki harassment and canvassing.
That said, if we are to hold an RfC, how would we phrase the question. Would a simple, straightforward Should we include or exclude the URL to KiwiFarms in the infobox and external links section? be sufficient and neutral enough? Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:07, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Well it is not just Kiwi Farms? Or should it be on an ad hoc basis? Prior to this, only 1 site had the distinction here on WP, so it is easy to keep track of that. But if we are going to allow individual talk page discussions to rule over this, that needs to be clarified or not. Agreed that changing policy like this at this point should undergo a formal process like RfC. TeeVeeed (talk) 20:18, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

The illegal content of a site must be stated clearly and point out clearly where on the Wikipedia policies it breaks, and a clear consensus conclusions must be reached to remove it. Please no more bold moves, it's good that we have started discussion about this. If it the consensus cannot be reached here please don't change anything to "de-link" the site from Infobox other than updating it with a new domain name to the intended server. Rukario-sama ^ㅈ^ -(...) 19:59, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I've already done so above. The forum is notorious for its doxxing, swatting, and harassment of vulnerable individuals, actions that are illegal in many jurisdictions worldwide including the US, so covered under WP:ELNO#EL3. Sources for these actions are already present in the article text, and it obviously would not be responsible or wise for us to link to specific incidents on the forums ourselves. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:15, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
This sounds like a potential outcome of this discussion, but then again you shouldn't deploy based on a prejudication/rough consensus, the discussion is still ongoing and the final conclusion remains unclear. Such obscene contents served online have happened on 4chan too and we still provide a link to it as well as that happens to several other sites mentioned by several users and we have links for them. I'm not expert on what makes things illegal in the US that Wikipedia should take off the link so I'll leave this up to others to decide if an link should stay off. I'm still in the opinion of the link staying for credibility of Wikipedia.
Also I've come across the Wikipedia's blacklist that appears to include Kiwi Farms' older domain name and its variants, has it been agreed upon from elsewhere, like a previous discussion and such? Rukario-sama ^ㅈ^ -(...) 23:52, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I'd rather we don't waste contributor time when we have a rough consensus. The addition of official external links have always been done under best-practice guidelines; there is no policy that I know of that states we have to provide a link to the subject of the article. On the other hand, WP:BLPEL, a policy, states: External links about living persons, whether in BLPs or elsewhere, are held to a higher standard than for other topics. Questionable or self-published sources should not be included in the "Further reading" or "External links" sections of BLPs, and, when including such links in other articles, make sure the material linked to does not violate this policy. I believe WP:BLP should be heavily considered here, due to the activities Kiwi Farms promotes. Isabelle 🏳‍🌈 20:08, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I disagree this is precisely the type of thing that we need to waste time with.TeeVeeed (talk) 20:20, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
WP:NOTFORUM
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
And furthermore, I don't really want to power-level myself as a sometime visitor to KF here, but no one forces people to commit suicide, and no one forces them to look at KF. Personally, I know that I would have deleted a requested thread if someone was that distressed about it, but no one forces anyone to visit the farms so the "bullying" is like the suicide- self-inflicted. This is about culture wars, and preventing readers from having information to make their own decisions about their own opinions is not a good look. TeeVeeed (talk) 20:29, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
...so the "bullying" is like the suicide- self-inflicted. I'm honestly speechless. Isabelle 🏳‍🌈 20:35, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
...so the "bullying" is like the suicide- self-inflicted Wow. That is absolutely abhorrent.
...no one forces them to look at KF Aah yes, because the harassment on Kiwi Farms stays on Kiwi Farms. That people who have threads about them have been swatted, subjected to identity theft, and had personal information like full names, addresses, telephone numbers, employers, email addresses, is clearly immaterial because they didn't have to look at the site... Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:39, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
The real world actions that you are talking about are scary and should always be reported to admin in my opinion. I have not seen anything like that when and if I view KF. Are they mean? Yes. Personally I feel like it is a stretch saying that KF is responsible for suicides. Telling them not to be mean does not prevent suicide though. What you are calling harassment is sometimes just taking-away the ability to control someone's narrative when that person has a public persona. Like The Butcher of Ardmore for example or other monetary or deviant interests that benefit from controlling the narrative.TeeVeeed (talk) 21:02, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

If it is still up for discussion, I am of the opinion that the URL should be reinstated, at least for the main page, for consistency. Fernsong (talk) 22:31, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

+1 support here. Tweedle (talk) 22:57, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
No, it really shouldn't. Most websites don't actively dox people and commit other crimes, so consistency is not an issue here. PBZE (talk) 23:21, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Except this is explicitly discouraged and any who do partake in these activities are punished. Fernsong (talk) 01:03, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Citation needed. Funcrunch (talk) 01:43, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
It's a little concerning that in this very thread we have editors, some with lots of edits, repeating Kiwi Farms propaganda. PBZE (talk) 03:13, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Literally just a glance at their "Terms and Rules" section.
"You agree to not use the Service to submit or link to any Content which violates any laws. You are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content or your conduct."
I would think that "dox people and commit other crimes" would fall under this. Fernsong (talk) 05:40, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
You could say whatever you want in your ToS but if you don't enforce your rules it's always as if you don't have rules. If KiwifFarms had indeed been against doxxing as you claim, a large portion of its users probably would have been suspended or banned and complaining about it on some other site. Hg3300 (talk) 22:12, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Support keeping the URL off of Wikipedia. Thanks to everyone who's been trying to keep Wikipedia safe. Stix1776 (talk) 01:10, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
It's not just a matter of keeping Wikipedia safe. The content of Wikipedia infoboxes show up at the top of Google and other Internet search results, so our decisions have broad impact. Funcrunch (talk) 01:43, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
At least two editors (maybe more, I'm just aware of two) have active threads dedicated to them there. One had their home address posted. Seems pertinent... --Chillabit (talk) 02:04, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

We currently have a discussion on Wikidata about the same issue. I encourage everyone here to join

@GorillaWarfare, Chillabit, Funcrunch, Stix1776, Fernsong, TeeVeeed, Isabelle Belato, Sideswipe9th, Hemiauchenia, 0xDeadbeef, Dumuzid, FormalDude, and NightWolf1223: --Trade (talk) 15:15, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

RfC on linking to Kiwi Farms

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
For ease of navigating this closure, I've divided it into subsections.
  1. Relevance. Some editors suggested that there isn't much of a dispute to resolve if the webpage is unstable or not accessible at all (see WP:ELNO#16). However, an article from 7 October suggested it was online, and I was able to access the forum from the main webpage, so the point is no longer valid and the question about secondary links need not be answered for now. So, moving on:
  2. Precedents. There were several discussions cited here that, in editors' opinions, could help the closure: the village pump discussion, and those about 8chan, Stormfront, The Right Stuff and VDARE. For the reasons I explain below, I don't find any of these necessary to take into account, and I don't want this closure to create precedent.
  3. General state of discussion. There was a similar number of support and oppose !votes, just a bit more on the oppose side.
The oppose side's main argument is that a website largely dedicated to harassment and doxxing should not appear on WP. Indeed, even though no one cited the guideline, WP:PROBLEMLINKS makes it perfectly clear that Wikipedia strongly discourages any links to web sites that routinely harass. Copyright violations are less of a concern at this stage, though I've taken these into account as well. WP:ELNEVER#2 is largely irrelevant, because, as it was pointed out, the restriction is technical.
The support side generally used two arguments: first, a page about a website should include the website itself, which usually makes sense (cf. WP:NEUS, an essay), and that an official webpage is exempted from WP:ELNO, which is also true. Another argument was WP:NOTCENSORED, but that was less convincing. First, WP:GRATUITOUS suggests that this is not an absolute rule; secondly, NOTCENSORED and harassment are two different things, which some have pointed out. NOTCENSORED certainly does apply in articles about extremist ideologies, something that the village pump discussion came to (same for "immoral" things). But harassment or doxxing need not be extremist, obscene or offensive, and Wikipedia is very strict about these activities, particularly if performed by editors.
The burden for rallying support for inclusion rests with the support side, and WP:PROBLEMLINKS asks to err on the side of caution in case of doubts. The proposal to include did not enjoy consensus (so the burden was already not met at this stage), but also the arguments for retention were weaker. (Wikipedia discourages links to external harassment, even if the link is the main page), so the consensus is that we shouldn't include the link. (non-admin closure) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 16:12, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Should we provide an external link to the Kiwi Farms website on this article? If yes, should we use their secondary domain while their primary domain is down? Endwise (talk) 04:09, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Oppose linking the website in any way. Per WP:ADV: Choose which pages to link based on the immediate benefit to Wikipedia readers that click on the link. There is no immediate benefit to Wikipedia readers by including the link on the article. 0xDeadbeef 05:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose per Deadbeef above. Current Cloudfare issues aside, while I don't think every time such a link was clicked it would result in harassment or associated awfulness, I think it would be more likely than with just about any comparable link. We absolutely need to cover this. We do not need to enable it. Cheers, all. Dumuzid (talk) 05:23, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose including any external links to the Kiwi Farms website. This site is dedicated to mocking and harassing marginalized people, and the site's users have repeatedly and demonstrably caused real-world harm. And as I commented in the previous section, Wikipedia infobox contents top the results of Google and other search engines, so our decision here has broad impact. Funcrunch (talk) 05:29, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Strong oppose per above. ––FormalDude (talk) 05:32, 5 September 2022 (UTC) (Summoned by bot)
Strong oppose per above. PBZE (talk) 06:38, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Addition: It is speculated that Joshua Moon is collecting referer headers to track people who visit the site. So linking to it from Wikipedia may be endangering our readers and editors. PBZE (talk) 17:16, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose We should not link a site dedicated to the harassment of online comunities. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 13:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose linking, per Sideswipe9th's comment above: The sheer amount of leaked personal information on the forum (full names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses) about vulnerable individuals is terrifying. Add in the frequent use of that information to harass people, actual threats to life via swatting and most recently a bomb threat in Northern Ireland [5], and the rest of the obscene and hateful content on the site, I don't think there's any good reason to publicise whatever URL they're currently using. That aside, their recent deplatforming from Cloudflare and then from DDoS-Guard makes clear they will have increasing difficulty staying online (as acknowledged by Moon in a Telegram post), and so it seems likely it will become logistically difficult to keep any URL up-to-date. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 13:59, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose: inclusion would violate WP:BLPPRIVACY (doxxed private information), WP:COPYVIOEL (consistent copyright violations and lax enforcement), and WP:ELNO WP:ELNEVER#2 (website currently on the spam blacklist). Pilaz (talk) 15:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose: In line with what every other commenter has said, I strongly oppose having a link to Kiwi Farms in this article. It not only violates Wikipedia rules, but inclusion of its link will lead to more harassment and threats. Historyday01 (talk) 16:16, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Support: Reasons: 1) An article about a website should include a link to the website. It should include the primary, well-known link, not any recent workaround URLs, because the primary URL is the one that was notable (e.g. this is the one which will be findable in web.archive.org). 2) WP:NOTCENSORED. We remove material based on policy violation, not personal distaste. Removal would be inconsistent with the longstanding practice of including links to distasteful (yet notable) websites. 3) Addressing the reasons for opposition: WP:BLPPRIVACY is not violated merely by including a link to a site. It is not clear to me why the site would violate WP:COPYVIOEL. Links "to an official page of the article's subject" are explicitly exempted from WP:ELNO. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:35, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
With respect to WP:COPYVIOEL, Kiwi Farms has an infamous section called "Take that off the internet!" which is filled with takedown notices emails, many of which are made on copyright and DMCA grounds, and to which the owner of the Kiwi Farms responds often with dubious counter-claims. To me, that fulfills the If there is reason to believe that a website has a copy of a work in violation of its copyright, do not link to it. line of COPYVIOEL. As for ELNO, I actually meant to link to WP:ELNEVER #2, which prohibits linking to websites on the spam blacklist without exception. Hopefully that sheds some light on my reasoning. Pilaz (talk) 21:02, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
@Pilaz: I don't think that either of those prohibit us from linking to the main page. Sci-Hub is blacklisted and contains copyrighted information but we still link to the main page. WP:COPYLINK says In articles about a website, it is acceptable to include a link to that website even if there are possible copyright violations somewhere on the site. WP:ELNEVER #2 states that it is purely technically prohibited, not inherently prohibited - it just needs to be whitelisted. SmartSE (talk) 21:20, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose per above, particularly per Pilaz. ser! (chat to me - see my edits) 17:32, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Support per Barnards.tar.gz, for me it is 1): consistency with Wikipedia's other pages and 2) while this might seem trivial to a extent, it does have encyclopedic and notable value (albeit miniscule I guess) having the URL to a website in their respective Wikipedia page infobox - Tweedle (talk) 17:39, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Support The link to Kiwifarms is relevant to this page, and is consistent with other articles on websites. Many of the responses in opposition seem to be WP:Advocacy against linking to hateful websites, but other websites commonly described as hate websites have their links in their infoboxes, such as The Daily Stormer. Even websites of terrorist organizations, when known, have been linked on Wikipedia. As to which link to use, I am not sure. They still own the .net even if not used, but it would seem to be that the .onion link may become more of a primary link depending on how long the situation lasts. So I would either list both the .net and the .onion or just the .onion. Serafart (talk) (contributions) 18:00, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Support per Barnards.tar.gz and Tweedledumb2 above. Other articles like The Daily Stormer and Parler, both of which are more notorious than Kiwi Farms (and in the case of The Daily Stormer, possibly even more dangerous), have their respective URLs in their infoboxes. There is no reason not to link the .net URL of Kiwi Farms in the infobox, especially when there is already a precedent against removing it. JungleEntity (talk) 18:04, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Lean oppose because linking a site that includes doxing/harassment of other editors may be aiding the sort of behavior that violates global WMF policy. I would usually lean in favor of inclusion of basically anything that doesn't host child sex abuse materials (i.e. things that are illegal to even view in pretty much any country) since there are a number of sites nonetheless in the public interest which contain behaviors illegal in some countries that still yet don't implicate the viewer (e.g. anti-government, true contents deemed libel, educational pirated materials, etc.) but I don't think this is something we can ignore. --Chillabit (talk) 19:03, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Oppose per my own justification in the subsection above: The sheer amount of leaked personal information on the forum (full names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses) about vulnerable individuals is terrifying. Add in the frequent use of that information to harass people, actual threats to life via swatting and most recently a bomb threat in Northern Ireland [5], and the rest of the obscene and hateful content on the site, I don't think there's any good reason to publicise whatever URL they're currently using. I'd also add that, at the time of writing this !vote, the alternate domain is currently offline due to DDoS-Guard removing service from the site earlier this afternoon, and the site is currently only accessible through TOR. I think it's reasonably safe to assume that if the site does maintain a presence online, its domain will be significantly unstable for quite some time. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Absolutely Positively Completely Certainly Definitely 100% Oppose per Sideswipe9th's reason for opposition. I also don't think any far-right URL should be on Wikipedia whether they're offline, going offline, or not. Even if a Nazi site has been offline for ages, people can still find out what the sites were like through archives, I don't think we should help them do that per what Sideswipe9th said. Stephanie921 (talk) 21:02, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Strongly oppose Concur with Stephanie921 and Sideswipe9th. That includes removing The Daily Stormer and other such sites' URLs. Jenny Death (talk) 21:14, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Strong oppose Per deadbeef and Stephanie921. Vacant0 (talk) 21:20, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Strongest oppose The idea that "for consistency" is considered by anyone a sufficient argument is absurd. That argument locks the status quo in place forever, "Other pages do it, so we must do it here." We can certainly be inconsistent. We can have no infobox at all! Such is allowed. In the face of valid reasons not to support this site in the least, including the active doxxing and harassment of our editors, "other pages do it" is laughable. -- ferret (talk) 21:26, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Comment "We can have no infobox at all!" is a rather silly argument, because it has nothing to do with whether or not there can be a link on this article. It would just be put under "external links." The site still exists whether or not it is linked on this article, and it serves the article no good to not link the subject of the article. Serafart (talk) (contributions) 22:53, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
If you want to misread what I'm saying, that's on you. We are NOT required under any basis of "consistency" to have this link. Not a single policy or guideline requires we keep it. -- ferret (talk) 22:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Support per reasons already stated. Consistency being one, but also I have yet to see any solid argument that the site explicitly encourages or supports criminal activity. Fernsong (talk) 22:30, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Strong Support: Echoing Barnards.tar.gz, "An article about a website should include a link to the website." This is what Wikipedia does with other sites that host unpopular speech, including The Daily Stormer. Consistency is very important. We are building an encyclopedia and we should follow consistent standards for inclusion. Consistency helps safeguard against making knee-jerk, emotional decisions which can only degrade the quality of our work. With consistency in mind, I am not sure I understand the argument against. If we were to refuse to include links to any site with odious user-generated content, we would be forced to remove links to notable sites such as Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, et cetera. Or is the argument that they ought to get a pass just because they are more mainstream? By way of example, my understanding is that there was a death threat posted on Kiwi Farms and within about 30 minutes it was deleted and the user who posted it banned. This is fairly consistent with the track record of mainstream companies - for example, Facebook took about thirty minutes to remove the Christchurch shooting livestream. If we're going to develop a policy to refuse to include links to sites, it should be a policy that applies equally to all websites including mainstream ones. In any event, such a policy does not seem to exist - and as I mentioned at the beginning of this message, Wikipedia has historically included links to websites with content that many find to be objectionable.CelebrateMotivation (talk) 00:25, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Well, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit aren't inherently hate websites. But Kiwi Farms is. Hate speech is a systemic problem on social media that the companies do not take care of and mainstream companies absolutely do not have track records like u described. And if u think that Kiwi Farms is run the way u described I suggest u re-read the article - especially considering how important the discussion is - because your claim is contradicted by every sentence in it, which are well-sourced. Death threats are a feature of the site, not a bug. Kiwi Farms isn't a normal site with a few rotten apples.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Stephanie921 (talk • contribs) 0:44, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Whether or not the site is hateful or not is quite frankly completely irrelevant to whether or not it's URL should be listed on an article about itself. Pretending like it's link doesn't exist and not putting it on this article reduces the quality of the information provided by the article, leading to an inferior encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not a platform for advocacy on what types of speech should be permitted, or what type of behavior is acceptable outside of the encyclopedia, and even if it was, refusing to put an otherwise easily findable link to the article's subject is not a particularly effective method of doing so. The link otherwise violates no Wikipedia policies which apply to links to the subject of an article. Serafart (talk) (contributions) 02:05, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Well, at the time of writing this reply, the site is only intermittently accessible through Tor, and is completely inaccessible on the surface web. Unless you know the .onion URL, or someone shares it with you, finding the site is surprisingly difficult at this time. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:09, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Comment With respect, I am not terribly interested in whether or not a site is a "hate website" (a rather nebulous and ill-defined category as best as I can tell). I do not think it has much to do with running an encyclopedia or, more specifically, whether or not a webpage should have its link on Wikipedia or not. Are you proposing a policy by which any "hate website" is not allowed to be linked from Wikipedia? This would be an extreme divergence from existing policy and I think, ultimately, would reduce the quality and credibility of this encyclopedia. It raises many questions. Who gets to decide what a hate website is? What is the criteria, exactly? It is nebulous enough that I could easily see (and in fact, have seen) people arguing that various mainstream political views (anti-abortion, etc) constitute "hate speech" and as a result those sites should not be linked from Wikipedia. Let's not go down this road. I think Serafart said it best above - by removing links to whatever it is that people find objectionable, all we're really doing is editorializing and "reducing the quality of the information provided by the article, leading to an inferior encyclopedia." Very well put.
Regarding your comments about how mainstream companies are run - I made a very specific reference to the Christchurch shooting, in which Facebook took at least 29 minutes to remove the livestream. Multiple RS (and Facebook itself!) say that the first user report for the livestream didn't even come in for 29 minutes. The point I was making is that websites with user generated content cannot reasonably be held accountable for the actions of every single one of their users, especially if lawbreaking users are dealt with in a swift manner by the moderation teams (which is also what happened on KiwiFarms). It's also worth discussing whether this should matter to Wikipedia at all. We're building an encyclopedia, not making moral judgments - hence the reason why we link to sites like The Daily Stormer and far worse.
Regarding your comments about how Kiwi Farms "is run" - my claim is that the death threat was actioned within thirty minutes (message deleted, poster banned). Are you suggesting this is not the case? There is nothing in the article that contradicts this. You are welcome to put this information into the article if you can find RS saying so, but as far as I can tell such a thing does not seem to exist.CelebrateMotivation (talk) 02:13, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
There's some disagreement over interpretation of WP:NOTCENSORED, but I think it's definitely safe to say that Wikipedia is *not censored* on the basis of something being "hate speech", which is a subjective concept anyway. I think there's a legitimate debate to be had about KF directly inciting violence and whether that precludes linking to it. But on the basis of "hate speech" or "defaming marginalized people". Big nope on that one. As biased as I see some of the leanings in editorial policy currently, it's still (hopefully) *Wikipedia*, not *Wokipedia*.Peter G Werner (talk) 08:42, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
Strong oppose including any link to the website. According to Talk:8chan, "Most editors agree that our moral obligation to not facilitate access to a website notable for containing child pornography overrides any benefit to the project derived from giv[ing] the reader the opportunity to see what the subject says about itself." A web URL is arguably less encyclopedic and more instructional information, and if moral obligation is a factor at all, then a site being an active hate and stalking platform should be weighed very heavily against providing instructions to find it. Kiwi Farms has made a great many people's lives less safe for a long time. Autumn on Tape (talk) 02:14, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose: KF is notorious for hosting people's private information (doxxing). Its whole raison d'être is centered around bullying, harassing, and doxxing individuals deemed to be "special." Sure, all of these things can be found on pretty much any social media, but what sets KiwiFarms apart from most of the others is the fact that its primary purpose is for these behaviors. But most importantly of all, a former FBI official compared the website's activity to a potential terrorist threat, seeing the Keffals situation, which is actually part of the reason why the Russian domain got removed. Cloudflare was right; it is a threat.
  • Side question: what's the precedent on Wikipedia for deciding whether to link to defunct websites on their Wikipedia articles, by the way? Do they still get linked? I believe they do, but with a parenthetical note of (defunct), etc. on the side. Dennis Dartman (talk) 04:08, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Support Wikipedia is not censored. When Wikipedia has an article on a topic then we provide the most relevant available resources. For websites, one of those resources is a link to either the site itself or an archive of it. If a site is down and it is easy to link to a secondary site then we should, but we are not obligated to maintain quickly changing links or verify dubious mirrors. We need to keep the link because Wikipedia is a resource for journalists, researchers, policy makers, and thought leaders, and it is essential that we provide access to those audiences so that they can examine media and make decisions for themselves. I recognize the opposition's concerns that this is a hate-based media channel, and that by increasing public access to the website we inflame negative sentiment. However, I disagree that hiding media is an effective strategy for countering those views, and instead think that making it available avoids censorship, gives the people who enjoy that content an opportunity to reflect on what they are doing along with Wikipedia's other information, and gives critics access if they need it. Bluerasberry (talk) 11:19, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
    Comment: My concerns are about the activities promoted and enacted on the forum, which, as covered in the article, are known to be implicated in at least three deaths; not just the sentiments of its users. A lot of editors voicing support for including a URL seem to miss that point and view this as a matter of disagreeing views that may be defused by providing information. Wikipedia's inclusion or non-inclusion of a URL here could have a real effect if Kiwi Farms moves permanently to a less intrinsically findable onion service. Journalists who report on extremism have other sources for such information, and many of them would agree that deplatforming works. Autumn on Tape (talk) 18:48, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
@User:Autumnontape completely agreed Stephanie921 (talk) 18:54, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
@@Autumnontape and Stephanie921: Your claim is believable. Suppose that I accept your claim: "this website is a tool for bringing death and violence into the world". Why do you think that reducing access to the website is a better strategy for countering this than increasing access to the website? I know the situation is complex, but often, misconduct thrives when others hide it from view and protect it. Why do you feel that transparency is not the safe response in this case? I do not see obvious sources in deplatforming that support this strategy. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:12, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Why do you equivocate on my premise like that when it's covered as a matter of fact in the article we're currently discussing?
Harassment campaigns by Kiwi Farms users are known to have contributed to the suicides of three individuals. The Kiwi Farms community considers it a goal to drive its targets to suicide, and has celebrated such deaths with a counter on the website. They have used social media reporting systems to mass-report posts by harassment targets in which they've expressed suicidal thoughts or intentions, with the goal of reducing the possibility their targets receive help.
The article is of high quality and very detailed. It's not hiding the site from view or protecting it just because it doesn't help readers to visit it. I feel that transparency is an excellent response to a community like Kiwi Farms that long relied on manipulating their own image in order to reach a wide audience with their libelous claims, but that kind of valuable transparency, capable of reducing their ability to do harm, does not come from the main page of Kiwi Farms itself but from sources that document its history and impact. Autumn on Tape (talk) 20:42, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
@Autumnontape: I accept your claim exactly as you state it about the site's murderous history. There is no disagreement on that point.
I question your conclusion that the effective strategy to contain the danger of the website is to restrict access.
Another question - suppose that I agreed that we should omit the URL. How would that look? Would it simply not be in the Wikipedia article, or in the place where the URL goes, would we establish and link an internal documentation page, perhaps WP:CENSORED SITES, where we disclose the list and the discussions that decided each case? Do you want to hide the URL, or do you want to both hide the URL and the explanation why we are hiding the URL?
If you are proposing to openly censor the site then I find that easier to support because the community can regulate how long and to what extent; if you are proposing to secretly censor it then I find that much more problematic. Bluerasberry (talk) 12:04, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Again, you're asking for a level of transparency that Wikipedia already provides. Talk pages aren't secret. When a decision about an article's content is made that's likely to surprise some editors, a permanent note is often left at the top of the talk page. This is what was done when it was decided not to include a link to 8chan in the article about it.
Moving a note like that into the article itself and creating a centralized list of articles for which such a decision was made would be extraordinary steps to take. Such things aren't done when information is omitted under WP:BLPPRIVACY, for example. That would paint a huge target on the pages in question, and it would do so specifically for people who disagree with the policy and want to pick fights about it. Autumn on Tape (talk) 21:57, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
@Autumnontape: Wikipedia's rules of engagement say "no censorship". I recognize that censorship is a powerful weapon and that if we wield it, then we can solve problems with it. I fear your proposed solution because you show no recognition that Wiki editors and readers whom we support have been and will again be the targets of censorship, and when this happens, then they are consistently helpless and defeated.
Some countries have two political parties at odds with each other, and because Wikipedia is global, we are always at odds with multiple countries and parties. Right now we can avoid a lot of politics by saying that we do not censor. Avoiding politics prevents some of the attacks on our editors with the weapons of censorship. I think that is best, because in general, the bad guys are more powerful attacking with censorship than the good guys are defending with it. I do not see this case as comparable to anything Wikipedia already provides like BLPPRIVACY. I am fine with coming up with some new rules, and would support a ban on linking to harassment websites if we defined them. We block spam with Wikipedia:Spam blacklist and we block low quality media with Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources. We could revive the failed Wikipedia:Attack sites proposal and start banning attack sites, and I would not call that censorship.
When we call out this one site and block it without due process, that seems like censorship to me. The due process I want is 1) a blanket rationale for blocking that applies to all sites and 2) published documentation for how this site meets that rationale.
I looked up the 8chan link discussion you referenced - Talk:8chan/Archive_2#Inclusion_of_the_link_to_8chan. It seems that the rationale in that case was that promoting 8chan is a violation of United States law. I do not have an opinion about 8chan's administrative process, but in any case, I do not think violation of United States law is the rationale for avoiding a link to Kiwi Farms. "Illegal linking" could be yet another rationale for not linking to a class of sites, but again, I do not think there is any harm in having a published record of due process when we make such judgements. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:15, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
When we call out this one site and block it without due process, that seems like censorship to me - I did not realise that a month-long highly-attended RFC was not considered "due process" (regardless of which way opinion ends up swinging). Primefac (talk) 15:54, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac: Thanks for the comment. To me this one-month discussion seems like a one-off ad hoc process. I am not a lawyer, but if there were a "due process", I imagine that there would be some general rule we could apply to other such cases and make an assessment about whether attacks and harassment happened. I notice that many people have different reasons for supporting and opposing, and I do not see the conversation converging to a simple reusable rationale for blocking that we can apply to other cases. I think there might be such a rationale in here somewhere, maybe no WP:Attack sites, but I am not sure. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:44, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Comment In addition to my previous support, I would like to mention this village pump: [[2]], where there was a pretty clear consensus that links to extremist organizations, which many who are against the inclusion of the link say Kiwi Farms is, should be allowed on the wiki, especially on their articles. Serafart (talk) (contributions) 14:41, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose. WP:ELOFFICIAL protects this kind of external link from many otherwise valid reasons to remove, but does not mandate inclusion of official website links. WP:NOTCENSORED would apply if the rationale for exclusion were based on the site's content being offensive or objectionable, but I do not see that mentioned by any Opposers so far. The fact that Cloudflare dropped services for the site due to "imminent threats to human life" is a sign that we should not be linking to the site. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Comment It's true that Cloudflare said without evidence that there was an "imminent threat to human life" but should we necessarily take them at their word? Cloudflare is a for-profit company under a tremendous pressure campaign and, as such, are anything but a neutral party here. This is a corporate press release and should be treated as such (i.e., dubious until proven otherwise). Echoing my previous comment, my understanding is that the death threat on Kiwi Farms was deleted within about thirty minutes and the poster banned. This is a very similar timeframe to how long it takes mainstream websites with thousands of employees to remove illegal content, threats, and even livestreams of shootings (e.g. the Christchurch shooting on Facebook). How are we as Wikipedians to have a consistent policy if we give mainstream sites a pass for the exact same sort of results? Basically, I don't think that Cloudflare's statements should be treated as gospel. I'm not convinced there was any credible threat to human life in the first place, and ultimately I don't believe that Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, should care one way or the other. Let's lower the temperature and be realistic here - linking to a website is not going to kill anyone even if the threat was as dire as Cloudflare's (frankly dubious) claims might indicate.CelebrateMotivation (talk) 15:53, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
This is a fair point as far as it goes, but essentially you're asking us to disfavor Cloudflare's explanation in favor of...Kiwi Farms' own attestations and those of some individuals online? Combined with the NBC news piece where Kiwi Farms is said to be "synonymous" with both doxxing and swatting, I think it's fair for observers to draw inferences. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 16:02, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
It feels to me that the job of evaluating the “imminent threat to human life” claim should fall to the police, not to us. I believe the site to be within the jurisdiction of US authorities, and I am not aware of any attempt to arrest the site operators or use the US legal system to take down the site. The inference I draw is that the site is operating legally, and until the relevant authorities make a ruling we have no reason to think the alleged threat is credible. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:35, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Stochastic terrorism is notoriously difficult to prosecute in the U.S. thanks to First Amendment protections (not saying that's a bad thing). For me, simply arguing that the site is not malum in se does not lead to the conclusion that a link should be included, but reasonable minds may differ on the point. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 16:40, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
I offered the comment not as a reason for inclusion but as a counterpoint to a purported reason for non-inclusion. My reasons for supporting inclusion are stated up-page. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:53, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
There has been US lawsuits filed against Kiwi Farms, but as far as I know they've all haven't gotten anywhere or were dropped. I don't think any news sources report on this, but Kiwi Farms has published warrant canaries uploading the legal action taken against them in years past. JungleEntity (talk) 19:21, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Comment I'm not suggesting we take Kiwi Farms' word for it. I'm suggesting we should be reasonably skeptical of everyone involved in this situation, especially statements from a publicly traded company ("NET") whose main goal, presumably, is to increase its profits and avoid scandals. I'm making very specific claims here - that there was a death threat posted on Kiwi Farms, and that it was taken down in short order. Anyone can see for themselves that it was taken down and the poster in question was banned - we don't need RS for this (well, we do if we were to include it in the article, but not for the purposes of this conversation). The only question, really, is how long it took for it to be taken down. They claim ~30 minutes and I don't see any reason to question that claim, personally. I'd be skeptical of it like everything else, but I haven't seen anyone at all denying this specific claim. So if we want to be consistent - and as an encyclopedia, we do! - then the question becomes "how long should a website take to remove user-generated illegal content." Again, mainstream websites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc have illegal threats and worse on them all the time. If Wikipedia is going to get into the business of refusing to link to any site that temporarily hosts illegal content, then we would need some kind of policy that clarifies what scenarios this should happen in. Is thirty minutes acceptable? An hour? Two? Perhaps it's whether or not the site encourages that kind of content? How do we decide that? I've been to KF and there are disclaimers all over the place saying not to post illegal content and that they are against swatting. Maybe that's just for show - I don't know. But it makes me wonder how we can reasonably make such a determination, or if indeed Wikipedia should be in the business of making such a determination. Personally, I think all of this is more a job for the police. And for what it's worth I would not agree with any of those potential policies, but for consistency's sake I think that is what would be required for any of this to make sense. Best regards!CelebrateMotivation (talk) 20:04, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Respectfully CelebrateMotivation with your focus on a single threat that was purportedly taken down, I feel as though you can't see the forest for the trees.
The issue isn't that Kiwi Farms has had only a handful of one off incidents of doxxing, or threats to life posted, it's that the site regularly has such content posted. While that one comment may have been deleted, though I don't know for sure if it has neither Null nor the forum's moderators are particularly reliable, there are countless other threads dedicated to harassing countless other individuals, which are still live now (at least when the site isn't offline). Another editor has commented elsewhere in this discussion that at least four participants in this discussion presently have threads about them, and one of them has had personal information leaked on that thread. The link to the site isn't objectionable because of a single death threat made against a person, it is objectionable because of the sheer volume of other threats, and regular doxxing that accompany it on it. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:24, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Comment A forest is made up of trees. I am using this particular incident as a gauge for how KF handles these situations. Either the site allows death threats or it does not. This is important because it seems to be the primary justification for this RFC, or at least the most emotionally compelling argument that people are making against inclusion of the link. It is rather perplexing to me that you persist in using words like "purportedly" in reference to this incident. If you wish, you could personally visit the site and see for yourself that the comment isn't there. It was deleted - this is provably factual and anyone can see it. If the site says it doesn't allow death threats, and it deletes death threats within hours or even minutes when they are reported, then the strongest stated justification to remove the link from Wikipedia - which I think was weak to begin with - vanishes entirely. As for a handful of one-off incidents of doxxing or threats to life - I would wager my entire net worth that mainstream sites like Facebook and Reddit have far more users posting this sort of content. As such, the policy should not be special cased away (i.e. a pass given to mainstream sites but not others) solely because some editors find a particular website to be objectionable.CelebrateMotivation (talk) 23:30, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
I am not proposing to use Cloudflare as a source, but yes, I believe them that there existed imminent threat to human life. I am not aware of any reliable source contradicting that point, and if there is one, I'd be glad to know about it. If I'm reading the end of your comment correctly, you are suggesting that you'd advocate for including the link even if the site definitely includes imminent threats to human life. I strongly disagree. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:33, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
You say you haven't seen any RS contradicting that point. The problem with that statement is that the burden of proof is on the entity making the claim. Cloudflare is claiming without evidence that there was an "imminent threat to human life." That is a big claim, and big claims require big evidence. I haven't seen any. There are no RS for or against the claim, really - just RS stating that Cloudflare said it happened. Yes, I am advocating for including the link even if the site definitely had death threat(s) on it. It is clear that a death threat was in fact posted on the site, but it's also clear that it was quickly removed (anyone can navigate to the site itself and see that it's gone, so I don't think anyone can really reasonably contradict that it was removed). My point is that death threats are posted on mainstream websites all the time and are subsequently removed, and that's exactly what happened here. As an encyclopedia it doesn't make sense for us to treat Kiwi Farms or any other website as a "special case" just because some or even most editors may find its other content to be especially objectionable. Frankly, even if the site had a death threat on it which was not removed I would still advocate for linking to it. I refuse to believe that a Wikipedia link is going to put anyone's life in danger. Here's my reduction to the absurd: governmental militaries don't just talk about killing people, but actually do kill people all the time - and we still link to their websites. Why? Because this is an encyclopedia. We're collecting the information of the world and presenting it. We are not editorializing or making moral judgments.CelebrateMotivation (talk) 20:04, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
I can tell you right now that there is an active PSNI investigation into at least one individual in Northern Ireland relating to the threats directed at Keffals from users on Kiwi Farms. However because of how such investigations work here, due to our history with such incidents, the incident involving the imminent threat to life is likely to be under reporting restrictions for a considerable period of time. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:36, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Strongest Support: The website is well-known enough to have an entry here so it is also well-known enough for this page to not be the point of origin for the vast majority of visits to it. Purposefully censoring external linking to the website is a silly display that ultimately benefits nobody and harms those later attempting to document the history of events. All external links should be maintained and indication of whether or not they are active should be periodically reviewed, just like for any other website. Anything of critical importance should be archived as appropriate so that it is not lost. External links and archives are neither hosting nor endorsing content found at Kiwi Farms. People know how to get there. Making that more difficult for a handful of visitors, by comparison, benefits no one. So, again, I give my strongest support to maintaining external links. Xenomancer (talk) 16:35, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose a clickable link. This is a criminal website in a great many ways, including hosting copyright violations. Having a link which an innocent user might click on and trigger all manner of logging is irresponsible. Having a link which a less innocent user might click on and be seduced by is also irresponsible. I think it is sufficient and acceptable to say what the domain names are without actually linking them. We are not censoring or withholding information if we do that. Anybody, who really wants to, can copy the name into their URL bar but that's such a deliberate action that that's 100% on them if they do. If we are to have a clickable link at all (and we definitely shouldn't) then it should go at the bottom of the article so that nobody clicks it without having seen the article first. (An existing article that does this is goatse.cx, which is about a site which is offensive but not as dangerous as this one.) A clickable link absolutely cannot go in an infobox as if this was a normal website. It isn't. --DanielRigal (talk) 17:34, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
    I think this is a good idea, but it's worth noting that consistency between articles should try and be maintained. Some sites hosting copyrighted content such as Library Genesis have the URL in the infobox non-clickable, while other's like the more notorious The Pirate Bay have theirs clickable.The Daily Stormer, which most in this talkpage would consider worse than Kiwi Farms, has its link clickable (disregarding the discussion here about The Daily Stormer having a link). This is even muddied further by YouTube's link being clickable, which also hosts copyrighted content. You could argue that in the case of YouTube, hosting things that goes against U.S. law goes against their ToS, but to my knowledge, that is the same for Kiwi Farms. I think this just highlights that we need to work on a policy that makes URLs consistent across articles, and if linking to controversial sites should be allowed on Wikipedia. JungleEntity (talk) 21:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Strong oppose as an WP:IAR hack to prevent real-world harm. I agree that in almost all cases an article about a website should have a link to the website. However, KiwiFarms by itself abundantly justifies the "almost". Regardless of all other Wikipedia policy, and certainly above mere "consistency", it would be nuts to link to a site whose sole purpose is to dox and harass non-public figures, often with the express stated purpose of driving them to suicide. Loki (talk) 20:58, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose based on its deliberate facilitation of doxxing of private persons. NBC News' recent piece describes Kiwi Farms as being directly involved in doxxing and swatting; I visited Kiwi Farms a few weeks ago and easily found a thread holding up a private figure for ridicule, with participants helping each other doxx her and her family and others making provocative and actionably libelous claims about her. Such behaviors are not mere advocacy of vile ideas but are a form of ideological terrorism inimical to a free society. I don't think policy forbids linking, but good judgment counsels against it in this case. Rebbing 22:55, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose the FBI literally called it a potential terrorist threat. If it’s on the dark web it’s beyond our metaphorical pay grade as far as I’m concerned. Dronebogus (talk) 00:59, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
    Comment the FBI absolutely did not call them a potential terrorist threat. A former assistant director did. Even if they did, there is previous consensus to support linking to terrorist organizations and the such on their articles. Serafart (talk) (contributions) 02:18, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
    If a site promotes violence against civilians I’d strongly support not linking it. Kiwi Farms does. Dronebogus (talk) 15:59, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Support I'm not a big fan of Wikipedia acting as an arbiter of morality, as long as there's a working link to the site I think it should be linked.--Ortizesp (talk) 01:47, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose any link to Kiwi Farms. I'm generally reluctant to support removing any links when the article is on the website fearing there will be pressure to take it too far. For that reason I'm unconvinced and probably will not support removing links to Stormfront, V-DARE, The Right Stuff and I suspect most of the sites people have named (although for those extreme examples I'm not sure I'll oppose it either). I feel that Kiwi Farms is somewhat unique though as Chillabit and others have mentioned and I mentioned on BLP/N [3]. Most of the other sites are general sites, I'm not going to visit them but from descriptions I've seen they advocate incredibly harm ideas and actions but these are often of a general character. For example, they may target people as a group due to their race or ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity, national origin, religion etc. This is disgusting but while I'm not personally opposed to trying to prevent people seeing harmful ideas, but it's not really the Wikipedia way to handle things. According to previous discussion Stormfront and maybe the other sites have also been used to organise attacks and murders. Again while very concerning, I'm still not sure it's enough for us to not link to them as it's not likely we'll have in any way reduce that. By comparison a key purpose of Kiwi Farms is to dox, attack, demean, disparage identifiable or identified living individuals based on whatever characteristics their users think is enough to warrant that. Their site was even named after that originally. These individuals are often not notable or barely notable by our standards and are often already vulnerable given the characteristics that makes Kiwi Farms users target them . This is something fundamentally against our BLP policies. For clarity I agree anyone who's really interested in Kiwi Farms isn't going to not visit because we don't link, I'm sure they'll find the site anyway. But there are likely to be a small number of people who are just curious, who'll visit when they see the link but won't when they don't. Most of these will just be disgusted and navigate away, but a small number may have some sort or morbid curiosity and stick around. I don't think it even matters though since IMO we shouldn't contribute to even one more person seeing that content who wouldn't otherwise. From what I've read before, while people seeing the content is often a small factor, it's often still a factor in the harm people suffer. So while a tiny contribution sure, it's IMO a worthwhile one to make a contribution to less suffering by those living persons targeted by the site via less eyeballs seeing the disgusting content targeting them. Noting again I'm not going to visit the other sites to check, while I assume they may occasionally do similar things, it doesn't seem to me one of their key purposes and so I assume is a lot less common. I suspect even when they do target individuals, it's more commonly fairly notable ones. I'd note that Kiwi Farms has been linked to suicides which also seems to support the differences between what these sites generally do. Nil Einne (talk) 02:04, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
    TL;DR version of the above, I oppose linking to Kiwi Farms since a key purpose and so much of their content seems to be material that directly harms specifically targeted often non notable or barely notable living people who may already be vulnerable, so I feel it's in accordance with BLP. This doesn't seem to be the case for other sites people keep citing where the material may be incredibly harmful, but in a more general sense rather than directed at specific individuals and especially not non notable or barely notable ones. Nil Einne (talk) 02:18, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose per GorillaWarfare, Pilaz, and Firefangledfeathers. Alyo (chat·edits) 14:16, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Support and comment Many users seem to be arguing that from a moral perspective it should not be included or "promoted", and not from a wikipedia policy standpoint. Ananinunenon (talk) 14:54, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
That's a fair point, but if ever there were a case for ignoring rules, preventing harm would strike me as a pretty compelling one. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 14:57, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment On a whim I checked the first 5 references and 3 of them provide a link. I haven't checked them all so am unsure whether that's representative of what all the reliable sources have chosen to do, but I suggest that the Wikipedia approach should (as with all content) follow the reliable sources. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:37, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
    In contrast, every recent source I've looked at does not provide a link. I found a few sources that mention one of the newer urls, and even those did not link them. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:49, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
    Would those three happen to be from before this year and all the recent developments? If anything, I see a pattern with recent articles avoiding linking to them. Isabelle 🏳‍🌈 16:51, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
    If those three are from this year, especially in the last month or two, it could be that the authors found there was no suitable URL to link in the article, as the site has gone down intermittently. JungleEntity (talk) 22:35, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Support as someone with WP:NPOV like, seriously, what happened to NPOV? I see everyone is running around wikipedia policies to apply, then carry on to scream how awful this website is. Not every policy has equal effectiveness of application.
The domain name of this site is a perfectly valid input for website oriented infobox template, and so per my previous comment the url should be a link to an intended server. You cannot beat correct technical information. Skewing or removing it runs a breach of WP:NOTCENSORED, it is required that information of a site to be correct and up to date regardless of how awful the website can become. If it's any comfort to the opposers, a new domain name would come up none in search result and archive web, and readers should know well ahead when clicking that link; article gives plenty of space to read. It's just a cute little detail in the infobox that's nothing more than a domain name. I'd be willing to oppose putting a link anywhere else beyond that.
I can understand 8chan just isn't getting one, by definitions at WP:ELNO #3, such a link gives you and the readers the possibilities of a "direct possession" to an illegal material like child porn, whereas kiwifarm is just an "incident" or "reference" to illegal stuff, like many other questionable sites. This should go the same for piracy sites for a possibility of a "direct possession" to pirated materials but for some reason we're giving them links.
But that's just my definition of illegal to access contents described at ELNO #3. The "reference" to an illegal stuff can only be handled other than just a taking the domain name off from article that will have no effects doing so anyway. It's no use what we as editors can do but to break WP:NOTCENSORED, censoring ourselves is no better.
As always, WP:NPOV. Rukario-sama ^ㅈ^ -(...) 21:30, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
I will be the first to say WP:NPOV is somewhat confusingly named, but how does representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic really inform us one way or the other as to whether to include a link? Dumuzid (talk) 21:34, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
The link must be correct but not "required to be present" asked by Ferret. But honestly the domain name is too bareboned to look at. Whether it's good to include or not is down to WP:NOTCENSORED if not for other good policies that's not too far fetched for this url. Rukario-sama ^ㅈ^ -(...) 19:46, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
But you haven't stated any policy that requires an external link to be present. NPOV doesn't require it. NOTCENSORED doesn't require it. EL itself doesn't require it, simply presents recommendations. Nothing REQUIRES us to have a URL. On the other hand... NOTCENSORED does say to exclude things that violate our policies, including BLP and NPOV, or the law of the United States. WP:DOXXING and WP:OWH (as well as the fuller WP:Harassment it is part of) is a policy. This site is known to dox actual active Wikipedia volunteers. That's really the end of it, in my view. -- ferret (talk) 21:37, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Didn't said that link is required, just saying the link must be correct and up to date. I didn't know there'd be harassment on wikipedia volunteers in this site, but that doesn't change my standpoint.
Unless you could find a link for that then that policy would apply, the domain name is too bareboned to make it worthwhile. A website (any website e.g. Reddit) is bound to have questionable information buried deep that would break wikipedia policies. This website is full of things, and I think it should be about "direct possession" vs "reference" that I mentioned and I wish we would have a discussion about that. I guess that whatever outcome this discuss might be updating WP:ELNO would be appreciated because people reaching out all possible policies against this website means there's something wrong. Rukario-sama ^ㅈ^ -(...) 19:46, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
"like, seriously, what happened to NPOV?" Well, it's taken a back seat to a culture of safetyism and the flat-out POV-pushing of self-proclaimed "allies of marginalized groups". Not all of us who contribute to WP think that's a good thing. Peter G Werner (talk) 08:35, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose on numerous grounds. It clearly violates WP:ELNEVER in that, as part of its doxxing, it contains large amounts of copyrighted material used without the permission of the copyright holder, with no reasonable fair-use exception; it has refused to take these down when contacted, and insufficient benefit exists to readers to justify ignoring this clearly-defined policy. Likewise, while this article is not itself a BLP, the last sentence of WP:ELBLP, separate from the requirements for the rest, says Do not link to websites that are not fully compliant with this guideline or that contradict the spirit of WP:BLP, emphasis mine; it is difficult to imagine a source less compliant with the spirit of BLP than one that exists for the purpose of harassing specific named individuals. Finally, I'll note that per WP:ELBURDEN, even without this the burden is ultimately on the people who wish to include it to justify inclusion, and the arguments for inclusion are weak (essentially just WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS coupled with WP:NOTCENSORED - the latter being meaningless not only because there clearly are policy violations, but because it only allows and does not require inclusion.) Additionally, note that the reason Cloudflare dropped them is because they concluded that the increasingly-specific threats the site was hosting were illegal in nature ([4][5][6].) --Aquillion (talk) 02:46, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    Regarding the copyright issue, WP:COPYLINK says that In articles about a website, it is acceptable to include a link to that website even if there are possible copyright violations somewhere on the site (cf. pages on copyright-violating sites like Library Genesis, which provide the site URL in the infobox but don't link to pirated works therein), so just including the domain here doesn't seem to violate the copyright rules. - LaetusStudiis (talk) 00:58, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
    Just flagging that WP:ELBLP applies only to articles that are BLPs. This is not a BLP. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 15:57, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Support. As per the arguments provided by Barnards.tar.gz. Wikipedia should generally be consistent across its articles. This is not a policy/guideline, and in some cases, there are valid reasons that consistency is not possible because the situation is unique for a specific article. In this case, the uniqueness stems from what appears to be a personal dislike of the website; this reasoning because of dislike (hosts copyrighted material/doxes people/etc.) and a desire that readers not go to the site would violate Wikipedia's no WP:advocacy policy through omission of standard information. Any appearance of advocacy by Wikipedia of a cause should be avoided, since this damages the public's trust in the impartiality of the encyclopedia.--Guest2625 (talk) 09:06, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose we should not link to it. Those who oppose above have put it better than I could.
Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 09:19, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose Linking to troll sites is not part of an encyclopedic mission. WP:EL is the guideline and linking to known-attack sites is not among the reasons a link should be provided. Apparently some other websites provide the links but Wikipedia is never required to copy what other websites do. Aquillion provided further policy-based reasons for non-inclusion, including that we do not link to copyright-infringing sites. The copyright situation is conclusive, regardless of what people might think about the site. Johnuniq (talk) 09:46, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Currently neutral on kiwifarms, ardently oppose using as basis for removing links on other scummy websites - So kiwifarms are assholes of the lowest order. So the question is instead more "how does our singular cause of providing knowledge to everyone" stack against either deplatforming or providing protection in cases of physical threats to users. The first is completely unacceptable - that a site is distinctly unpleasant and calls for worse, doesn't mean we should remove the link. Obviously we should remove links where the US courts have indicated such. KF is apparently holding a small bubble where they are basically enabling threats to specific individuals as their raison d'etre (rather than as a set of specific threads but not a website's purpose, as might be the case on, say, 4chan). As such I place some value on the protective side, (hence the neutral), but not the broader precedential value as indicated by @Hemiauchenia and Funcrunch: et al Nosebagbear (talk) 09:52, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I'm really torn here. On one hand, I can see the encyclopedic value since it can help show the history of how they were dropped or otherwise had to go to different providers over time. On the other, there's a lot of potential for real world harm here. The site not only contains personal information but also private photos and videos. Some are sexual, some are not. I believe that there may also be photos of individuals self harming, but I'm admittedly not certain of that. Some of the images are ones purchased through places like OnlyFans or Patreon, which poses a copyright issue. Others were obtained through methods ranging from social media posts to tricking them into giving up the images to illicit means. In many cases the images were never intended to be publicly shared. These images aren't rife through the site, but they are common enough to where this should be considered. I think that if it is included it should at least not be clickable, although GW is correct in that the URL is likely to be dynamic and not really be stable enough to keep up with unless someone wanted to specifically keep on top of that. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 13:57, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Support inclusion. Facts, not feelings, people. Kiwi Farms is just the latest pitstop on the superhighway traveled by impotent man-children for decades, from SomethingAwful to 4chan to 8chan to KotakuInAction. Linking to them as we do for any other article based on a company or website or web forum or whateveer does not promote or validate the content found there, it is just a simple piece of information. Blacklisting or prohibiting links like this should be reserved for the utmost of extreme conditions, such as malware or actionable illegal content being hosted there. Zaathras (talk) 22:16, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    8chan isn’t a good example since it was URL banned for hosting child porn. Dronebogus (talk) 22:48, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    Which is a very unique situation, which absolutely does not apply to Kiwi Farms. The only real example of a situation where we have decided not to link to a website was in a case where the content potentially violated United States law by distributing child pornography, which Kiwi Farms does not. Serafart (talk) (contributions) 03:23, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Just to be clear, part of the reason Cloudflare dropped Kiwi Farms is because they believe that there was likely actionably illegal content on it, describing "immanant threats to human life." ([7][8][9]). Would you consider updating your position in light of that? What would you consider sufficient evidence that a site hosts actionably illegal content, if not? --Aquillion (talk) 09:51, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose (unless linkage can be made nofollow). Do be aware of my conflict of interest, but part of how Kiwi Farms harmed people over the years has been poisoning Google and other search engine results for their targets. By having a link from high-Pagerank Wikipedia to Kiwi Farms, it boosts Kiwi Farms' ability to harm marginalised people by defaming them and having the defamation appear in results for that person's name. --Lizthegrey (talk) 15:19, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
    As far as I'm aware, external links on Wikipedia use the nofollow attribute value, which means that they have no effect on how high the website will appear on a Google search. Endwise (talk) 15:48, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
    I can't find a clear answer to whether English Wikipedia links use nofollow by default or not. The earliest evidence I can find is this email saying it was requested to be turned back on by Jimbo in 2007. As I understand from the Meta-Wiki's nofollow page, it was completely disabled as a link attribute in 2006 as we preferred to use the URL blacklist instead. JungleEntity (talk) 19:00, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
    All external links on enwiki use nofollow. If you're not convinced, just check. Elli (talk | contribs) 21:20, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
    I don't know why I didn't think to check the page source. After checking a few Wikipedia pages like YouTube, DreamHost and Pornhub, I can confirm that they all have the nofollow attribute. JungleEntity (talk) 22:42, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
    To be fair, while they have a nofollow attribute value, they have enormous value acting as a gateway between the website and the clear internet, as research highlighted in this month's Signpost has shown. Infobox external links have the highest clickthrough rate, too. Pilaz (talk) 21:30, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Strong Support: For reasons of WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:NPOV, with the reasons for opposing the linking seeming to me to have everything to do with the poltical bias of various editors. But given the long-established nature of bias in Wikipedia editing, an editorial policy in opposition to linking will carry the day. But it feels worthwhile to express dissent against it nevertheless. Peter G Werner (talk) 22:59, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
I will be the first to admit that I am biased against driving people to suicide, though that has never seemed particularly political to me. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 23:36, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
And I would respond that belief in moral panic-driven nonsense concepts like “stochastic terrorism” is maybe not a valid reason to make exceptions to WP:NOTCENSORED and NPOV.Peter G Werner (talk) 23:48, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
We are all entitled to our own values. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 23:55, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Comment: On the complaint that doxxing takes place on KF, if it was the case that we were talking about linking directly to a thread containing dropped doxx, I'd agree about not linking it. But the idea that means not linking to the site at all? Disagree, and it's rendering a POV about the site rather than allowing readers to get information for themselves, both from within the article and cited sources and from examining the site directly and coming to their own conclusions. And, yes, my view on how to treat this issue comes from a strong strain of anti-paternalism that's been out of fashion for the last few years, but maybe it's an approach worth reconsidering. Peter G Werner (talk) 08:55, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
FWIW, I oppose this RFC having anything but the most narrow possible precedential value. Kiwifarms is IMO a special case where linking to it would cause such obvious real-world harm we just can't, even though it's ordinarily policy to. Loki (talk) 18:27, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
If you're talking about the current attacks against Clara Sorrenti, then I can see your point. However, I wonder if that justifies a permanent ban on providing the link to the KiwiFarms site, should it come back, or whether the immenent threat status should be revisted. Just a few months ago KF was not considered such a dangerous site that end users should be prevented from accessing it, and in fact, I can think of a few journalists who have admitted to using KF as a source of information in the past. (The latter point is something I should have included in my original argument, actually, it's one of the reasons I think normal, non-malicious users have some business accessing it.) So even if the current mobbing of Sorrenti justifies keeping information about KF's current whereabouts blocked right now, I think that's a decision worth revisiting later. Peter G Werner (talk) 21:55, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
Sincere question -- given that the article currently lists three suicides associated with the site, and now the Sorrenti business, isn't that enough to draw an inference that such things happen at the site? Dumuzid (talk) 22:38, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
Because I don't buy the "driven to suicide" claims as undisputed fact. These were likely unstable people to begin with, and claims that they were driven to it by the actions of one site are entirely speculative. There could be many reasons for there suicide, and sites like The Daily Dot are simply glomming onto the narrative they favor. The fact that Sorrenti is currently the target of a harassment campaign is well-established, and it's one of the few compelling arguments I see for at least temporarily making an exception to the usual WP:NOTCENSORED guideline. But I don't think Bad tendency* alone should be enough to make an exception. *(I realize "bad tendency" is a term that comes from American free speech law and WP is not subject to that. I do think "bad tendency" is a useful concept, however, and worth differentiating from "incitement".) Peter G Werner (talk) 10:14, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Declaring them unstable is equally speculative and frankly inappropriate. --Pokelova (talk) 11:45, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
It's not just the current attacks against Clara Sorrenti. It's the huge number of doxes up on the site. Linking to KiwiFarms is, IMO, equivalent to linking to a revenge porn site. Loki (talk) 03:04, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Several !votes here describe this as a censorship issue. I do not accept that, as it seems simplistic to me. Framing this as some sort of philosophical obligation is trying to make the page into a cause instead of an encyclopedia article. Grayfell (talk) 06:16, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
    Why is it "simplistic"? If there's a "cause" here, it's the safetyism implicit in prohibiting the inclusion of a link. Presuming that the site goes back up and stays at a stable URL, I don't see any reason under existing Wikipedia rules and guidelines, of which WP:NOTCENSORED is very much one, of not stating that information in the infobox or external links. Bottom line is I don't think Wikipedia is under any obligation to participate in the coordinated deplatforming of any internet site. If we're going to, as a rule, disallow linking to sites for "moral" reasons, I think that should be an actual global-level rule that's agreed upon by the Wikipedia community as a whole. Peter G Werner (talk) 10:04, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
    Is putting scare quotes around "moral" supposed to make it into a bad thing? It appears to me that you arguing that your interpretation of policies allows us to include the link. I disagree with that interpretation, (as I think this has tipped over into WP:ELNEVER) but let's go with it. If you think this is a slippery-slope issue, or will otherwise set a precedent you disagree with, I find that to be simplistic. For one thing, citing policy to preserve the status quo regardless of context harms our ability as editors to improve the article. Sources do not treat Kiwi Farms like every other website, and we, as editors, can make judgement calls same as always. Almost everything about Wikipedia is decided on a case-by-case basis. Calling this censorship doesn't really explain why it's a special case.
Further, I don't think it's meaningful to say this is part of a coordinated deplatforming. Even if I did accept that, I don't see why that would be a reason to include it. We're don't keep garbage around just because other people agree that removing it is a good idea. Grayfell (talk) 21:44, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Support: The harm caused by the site which some opponents say they want to prevent is (if I understand correctly) harrassment, doxxing, SWATting, etc., committed by the site's users and organized on the site itself; whether that continues depends on whether the site stays accessible in a form its current users can find and access. Thus, WP's inclusion of the URL is unlikely to have any nonnegligible effect, since users of the site will find it as long as it stays up, while WP readers, like the general population, tend not to be interested in obsessively stalking and harrassing minor celebrities and therefore are unlikely to join in even when they find the site. If that issue is not something our choice has a significant effect on, and the copyright concern is not applicable (since, per WP:COPYLINK, In articles about a website, it is acceptable to include a link to that website even if there are possible copyright violations somewhere on the site, as in e.g. The Pirate Bay), then the main remaining reason for opposition given here is that editors (understandably) dislike the site, which seems to fall under WP:NOTCENSORED: Discussion of potentially objectionable content should usually focus not on its potential offensiveness but on whether it is an appropriate image, text, or link, which a link to a site on an article about that site generally is. - LaetusStudiis (talk) 00:44, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose - WP:GRATUITOUS describes why WP:NOTCENSORED should not necessarily apply here, and the possibility of real-world harm resulting from a link to the website should be an unimpeachable reason to refrain from doing so. Hatman31 (talk) 00:53, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
    There is nothing gratuitous about a web link to a website in an article about said website. We would clearly not be including the link "simply because it is offensive"; including links is the norm for websites we discuss (including porn websites, piracy websites, etc). Elli (talk | contribs) 11:45, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
    I wouldn't describe linking the site as "gratuitous" either, but the point of the guideline is that the NOTCENSORED policy is not on its own sufficient to determine that material should be included in an article, and there is precedent for excluding links to certain websites (such as 8chan, a much better comparison than piracy or mainstream pornography sites) even from their own articles. Hatman31 (talk) 00:17, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
    8chan's link is excluded because they have child pornography which presents a clear legal risk to anyone who might go to the site. Kiwifarms is bad, but it does not have that issue. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:45, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Support. Firstly, I'm sorry about how long this comment is. I was on the fence about this so wanted to hear people out before commenting, but to put it bluntly I don't think most of the oppose !votes here really make any sense. Official links are by default noteworthy; this whole article is talking about a website, to not tell readers what the website actually is would leave them significantly uninformed about the topic, and as WP:ELOFFICIAL says, official links give the reader the opportunity to see what the subject says about itself. The only exceptions set out by ELOFFICIAL and WP:ELNEVER to the principle that official links should by default be included are if 1) the website is serving malware (no one is suggesting this), or 2) WP:COPYLINK exceptions. Note that it is not against policy to link to blacklisted websites, as some participants here have incorrectly claimed, it is only a technical restriction to publishing edits; see e.g. InfoWars or Breitbart News. Regarding copyright, note that policy states In articles about a website, it is acceptable to include a link to that website even if there are possible copyright violations somewhere on the site. All forums/social media sites have copyright violating material on them somewhere; YouTube has terabytes and terabytes of copyright violating content on it for instance. Those arguing that we can't link to Kiwi Farms because there will be copyright violations in some posts on the forum are misunderstanding how policy around copyright on Wikipedia works.
This leaves us really with only one (non-nonsense) rationale: Ignore all rules. Essentially, we shouldn't be promoting a website which is harmful even if this disagrees with Wikipedia's PAGs. I'm sympathetic to that. Others have pointed out this does go against the spirit of WP:NOTCENSORED, but I also think editors are significantly overestimating how much linking to the website "promotes" it. If they do manage to get a stable URL running again, this will presumably make it's way back to a Google search result, and as all Wikipedia external links use nofollow, Wikipedia will have no hand in where it appears on Google. More importantly though, this is an extremely general concern. There are hundreds of harmful websites Wikipedia currently links to. If we want to stop linking to harmful websites, we should not make an exception for a single page. There should be a community-wide consensus and a policy or guideline established about it. For instance, this should be handled by trying to revive a guideline/policy like Wikipedia:Attack sites or a change to WP:ELOFFICIAL/WP:ELNEVER, and removing all such websites. I'm not entirely convinced that this would be a net a positive for Wikipedia, but I am convinced that doing this through policy at a community-wide level is far more appropriate than trying to make a single-article exception to what is presumably a problem on hundreds of other pages. So I think what's best for Wikipedia is to (if they ever get a working URL) link to Kiwi Farms for the mean time, and have a discussion about harmful sites in general at e.g. Wikipedia talk:External links. Endwise (talk) 04:14, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Óppose Kiwifarms doesn't currently have a stable domain and there's no sight on that situation changing. I also don't think it's our job as an encyclopedia to guide (former) users of a hate platform to that platform's current location. We're not an advertising platform after all. I also suggest there should be a particularly strong argument for inclusion, or none at all; given the potential harm caused to real people by essentially providing a link to their private information. The entire website is a BLP violation by its very nature. --Licks-rocks (talk) 21:23, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
    Regarding Kiwifarms doesn't currently have a stable domain, it appears they have had a stable domain for a while now, back at their old url (kiwifarms.net). Endwise (talk) 14:31, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
    It's debatable whether being online for a week can be called "stable", but nonetheless, that's a shame. I think the WP:BLP issue is the bigger problem for us in this case anyway. A lot of people seem to be referencing WP:NOTCENSORED here, but I don't think that covers linking to the private information of private individuals who are the targets of a harassment campaign. Licks-rocks (talk) 16:26, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Support. It clearly has informational value as a primary source, which is why we include official ELs as a matter of course. The arguments against inclusion of a link largely rest on normative, moral judgements which are not relevant, per WP:NOTCENSORED. The other most common argument against inclusion, relating to copyvios, has I think been convincingly rebutted (e.g. by SmartSE above). Colin M (talk) 20:17, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Support. Wikipedia is not censored, as many people have expressed above. My main concern is that although the users of the website have engaged in harmful conduct, or at least are alleged to have done so, the website itself is not per se illegal. I don't agree with the argument that linking to the website is a BLP violation, because Wikipedia does not require that linked sites follow Wikipedia policy. By that logic, Google.com would be the biggest BLP violation of all and should be scrubbed from the wiki. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 18:48, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
    I think in regards to BLP violations and Google, Google isn't a big BLP violation because it merely links to other sites that might host BLP violations (in an automatic way too). Basically, don't shoot the middle man! Although I am sure one could make the argument that Kiwi Farms is merely a middle man between the poster posting internet drama and the viewer. In this way, Kiwi Farms is more like YouTube, which is also in a strange state in regards to hosting harmful or copyrighted content. JungleEntity (talk) 03:31, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
    I don't think a search engine and a website totally dedicated to targeted harassment and doxxing are in any way comparable in this context. Licks-rocks (talk) 14:57, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
    The comparison between Google and Kiwi Farms was merely meant to state that Google is not like Kiwi Farms. Sorry for my complicated wording.
    However, I think the comparison between YouTube and Kiwi Farms still stands. While YouTube isn't dedicated to targeted harassment, it is often used for it. Kiwi Farms is used for this purpose too, regardless if the site is "dedicated" to it or not. I really don't think the original intent of the site's use really matters here, since it's really difficult to definitively say what a site's "intended" use is. With forums like Kiwi Farms, it is exceptionally hard because most have broad categories on all kinds of stuff. Kiwi Farms has what seems to be a fairly active discussion section not focusing on Internet drama / e-celebs. Some forums are dedicated to one thing, but the users use it for something else.
    I'm not trying to dispute that Kiwi Farms is used for harassment, hosting copyrighted materials, or dox, I'm just saying it's hard to pin it down as a BLP violation. JungleEntity (talk) 01:00, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
    I don't want to stretch the analogy too far. My point is that any website that provides a gateway to user-generated content will inevitably contain material that violates WP:BLP. (Just check the comment section of any news website.) Which is a moot point anyway, since that policy only applies to content on Wikipedia. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 13:40, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
    I'm replying to both of you at the same time here: the problem is that the site is dedicated to harassment. The owner started it to stalk one specific person and from there they expanded. It has always been first and foremost a platform for stalking and digital harassment. It has had the personal information and slander of private individuals pinned to the main page by site administrators on multiple occasions. I fail to understand how linking directly to the private information/slander of harassment targets is not the epitome of a BLP violation. Licks-rocks (talk) 20:51, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
    "I fail to understand how linking directly to the private information/slander of harassment targets is not the epitome of a BLP violation."
    As a preliminary matter, WP:BLP applies to the content of biographies of living persons on Wikipedia. This is the very first sentence of the policy. In contrast, it does not apply to linked websites which might contain material that -- if included in a BLP -- would be objectionable.
    Linking to the top-level domain is also not the same as "linking directly" to any objectionable material, but that's really beside the point because WP:BLP doesn't prohibit linking to websites which contain user-generated content that would be objectionable if used within a Wikipedia article. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 22:31, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
    The top level domain is the objectionable content here. I explained as much in my previous reply. As for WP:BLP, yeah I am familiar, there's a reason it's called BLP, biographies of living persons. The central purpose of WP:BLP is protecting Living Persons from being slandered or otherwise harassed using wikipedia as a medium. As shown in the Cris-chan discussion above, when other non-biographic articles stray into BLP territory that is still a violation of BLP, because you're still sharing Biographic information about Living Persons. Licks-rocks (talk) 16:07, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
    Can you give me the section of WP:BLP which states what you're saying it states? May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 16:46, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
    Literally the first sentence. Licks-rocks (talk) 10:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
    I don't think anyone interprets that to mean that external links which may contain BLP-violating content must not be included in an article. Otherwise, every website that contains user-generated content should have their link removed. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 20:46, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
    Ah. See, I was assuming you were asking about a point I actually made, for example the one made in the message you were replying to, rather than an imaginary position that you are projecting onto me which I already clarified I don't hold. I think WP:TROUT would be the applicable wiki-policy here. Licks-rocks (talk) 11:20, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Support, Wikipedia is not censored, if people don't like Kiwi Farms, they don't have to click on the link to the site. It's not our job to decide for people whether or not they can look at the site, and the fact that some editors seem to think that is their business is very disturbing to me. It's also totally standard to include the URL of websites, and the fact that we don't have it for this site is highly abnormal. Joe (talk) 23:56, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose setting aside the fact that any link we put would have to be regularly updated as they continue to hop from one domain to another, the plainly illegal material hosted on the website coupled with the strong potential for harm that comes from publicizing it make it obvious to me that we should not link to this website. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/they)Talk to Me! 01:36, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
    Are they hopping from one domain to another? From what I can tell, it's on the same domain it always has been (the one that ends in .net.) It went up and down for a while but it appears to be reliably up for the past several weeks.
    When you say "plainly illegal material", what material and what law? My understanding is that while Kiwi Farms users have engaged in harmful activities, it's not illegal to talk badly about someone on the internet. At least under US law - maybe other jurisdictions are different. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 13:43, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
    Not counting their presence on Tor which has changed URLs at least once, they've cycled through at least five domains between end of August and end of September. Three of those domains have subsequently been revoked by their respective domain registrars.
    Illegal content includes doxxing (illegal in many countries but not US), harassment (illegal in most countries including USA), stalking (illegal in most countries including USA), terrorist threats (a bomb threat was made on the forums against Keffals when she was in Northern Ireland). Stating that this is just the users at fault and not the forums themselves is a distinction without meaning, as Kiwi Farms enables and encourages such behaviour. Unrelated to Keffals, at least one known verified and somewhat prominent UK Kiwi Farms member was taken into custody and had personal devices seized over issuing "malicious communications (sending of indecent, grossly offensive messages, threats, or information) and harassment" (Daily Dot, Vice, PinkNews) through the site, content which I believe still exists on the forum. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:28, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
    Aditionally the owner of the site is one of the users that have engaged in/endorsed said illegal activities. There really isn't a clear boundary between user and owner here Licks-rocks (talk) 20:31, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
    The applicable policy is WP:ELNO, which forbids linking to "content that is illegal to access in the United States." The key phrase here is "illegal to access." For example, if someone wrote a death threat and sent it to a news outlet, that's an illegal act. But we can still link to a website that contains a transcript of the threat, because it's not illegal to read it. All of the above accusations, even if true, are still legal to read within the US.
    That being said, I question as to whether these activities are actually illegal but that seems irrelevant given that the policy is not actually whether it's legal but whether it's legal to access. Which makes sense to me, as a policy. Although I do want to make the point that the illegality angle of this is somewhat dubious. For example, the woman you referenced in your post has not actually been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of anything. Frankly, I don't care what the UK considers "indecent communications" and it has no bearing on what I'd put in an article on Wikipedia. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 22:19, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
    It's interesting to note that Wikipedia hosts things that some parties claim to be illegal under U.S. law, like Illegal number and Free Speech Flag. While no one has been charged or arrested for these images (although some have been sued), scholars claim that the legal status of these numbers are dubious. I don't know if anyone else sees this comparison, but I think this is a bit like what we have with Kiwi Farms. Individuals in the U.S. have been sued for content on Kiwi Farms, but no one has been formally charged or arrested. The current legal status of Kiwi Farms is also dubious.
    To clarify, I'm not saying Wikipedia should host dox/personal information from Kiwi Farms, but linking to it doesn't break WP:BLP or WP:ELNO. Besides, as said above, Wikipedia already links to many sites that do explicitly break U.S. copyright law, like The Pirate Bay and Library Genesis. JungleEntity (talk) 23:44, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
    The #DropKiwiFarms deplatforming campaign is hot on Twitter right now, so I get the impression that some people are starting with the conclusion that linking to KF violates Wikipedia and then trying to work backwards. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 13:01, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Can we remove the domain names from the RfC question please? Leaving aside for a moment the broader discussion on whether we should or should not link to the site in the article space, presently all KiwiFarm URLs that are not on TOR are down. DDoS-Guard, their drop in replacement for Cloudflare, has just terminated service to the site (no RS on this yet but Kevin Beaumont is a SME), and over on their Telegram Null has put up a post saying that it will be at least a week before any resumption of service can occur. Excluding the specific secondary domain from the question at this time does not change the nature of the question, and arguably gives more freedom for any editors who support adding it to the external links and infobox as it leaves it more open ended during a time period of instability for the site. Sideswipe9th (talk) 14:33, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

  • Comment The consensus developing here is the exact opposite result of the same discussion that was had about the Stormfront URL, see Talk:Stormfront_(website)#URL, which has been linked to the same sort of stuff (and worse) Kiwi Farms has. That RfC was quite heavily contested and in the light of this RfC maybe a new discussion is warranted. Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:46, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Maybe so. I'd definitely support the removal of the stormfront url from that page for the same reasons I support removal of links to Kiwi Fams on this page.Historyday01 (talk) 16:16, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Same. That other dangerous websites have their URLs included is not, to me, sufficient reason to keep the Kiwi Farms link. The Stormfront URL discussion was over a year and a half ago, was not listed as an official RfC, and had a non-admin closure. If reopened, I would !vote to remove that URL as well. Funcrunch (talk) 18:33, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm honestly a little baffled that people on both sides here are focusing on the question of whether or not we should link to "hate sites" or "extremist sites". That's not really what makes Kiwi Farms unique; there are plenty of extremist or hate sites. What makes it unique is that it dedicates threads to compiling sensitive information about individuals it doesn't like, even leaking revenge porn sometimes (as in the case of Keffals, at least according to the text of this very article & an attached source). Further as I mentioned, there are Wikipedia editors who have dedicated threads there, and at least one of those has sensitive personal information leaked on it. I mentioned there were two such active threads, I've now been made aware of two more. I can't make people care about this aspect over any other. But to reduce it to a simple question of whether or not to host "hate sites" strikes me as missing the point... sure, that's something the site is. But that's not what makes it stand out. --Chillabit (talk) 20:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

@Pilaz: Please don't baselessly accuse people of canvassing. I pinged them they clearly expressed a strong opinon on the topic. The others did not, or had already voted in this RfC. Pinging two people is not going to sway the outcome of this RfC, so I don't possibly see how this could be votestacking, the only thing that this would really qualify under Wikipedia:Canvassing#Inappropriate_notification. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:53, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Please review WP:APPNOTE. All had contributed to the topic, and selectively picking "strong opinions" on the topic is by definition canvassing. A couple extra pings go a long way to even the playing field. If in doubt, ping all or none. Cheers. Pilaz (talk) 23:07, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
You clearly have no fucking idea what canvassing is then. Canvassing would have been if I had selectively notified individuals with a specific leaning, while not notifing others, which I did not deliberately do. If there had been other users who had expressed clear opinions to not include the URL who had not previously posted in the RfC, then I would have notified as them as well. Notifiying two people doesn't count as selective canvassing. Just fucking drop it and move on. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:43, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Apologies if this brushed you the wrong way. I do not have omniscient powers to determine if one wishes to canvas or not - at any rate, try to ping all next time you ping some. I'm seeing IPs pinging random people on here, so caution is warranted. And on a semi-public RfC like this, remaining WP:CIVIL goes a long way too. Pilaz (talk) 00:37, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Masem has not participated in this RfC at all and they did not suggest to include the URL. On a separate note, notifying users "who have expressed strong opinions" is biased as it excludes users who might !vote Oppose but did not express so directly on BLPN. 0xDeadbeef 05:06, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
The "revenge porn" angle is interesting. I know that some sources have reported that KiwiFarms posted "revenge porn" of Keffals, but from what I can tell, they shared porn videos that Keffals herself had posted to the internet. Perhaps she'd prefer they weren't discussing it but that's not the definition of revenge porn. I know that's what some sources claim but we're talking about editorial decisions here, not the text of the article, so we shouldn't shut off our critical thinking skills in this case. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 19:00, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

I’m really trying not to have my comments show up twice, but the way this section is structured is a total mess! Peter G Werner (talk) 23:53, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

  • Revive Wikipedia:Attack sites? We have a 2007 proposal to regulate attack sites. Should we revive this to apply to cases such as this one? So far as I know we have no active policies which regulate how we respond to attack sites. I am imagining that we could regulate attack sites in a way comparable to how we list and present evidence for regulating the Wikipedia:Spam blacklist and Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:25, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
    While I understand the impetus here, and would agree that there are other sites that represent dangers of one sort or another, to my mind each is so sui generis that a broad policy or shotgun approach is less desirable. To my mind, while this category exists, it's constituents are rarified enough that we can and should handle them individually. But, as ever, reasonable minds may differ on the point. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 16:05, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
  • I think it's a good idea to have some sort of policy in place for this to some degree. Or at least some sort of statement/stance. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that we need to figure out what our stance is on linking to active attack sites because clearly, we're mixed on this as a community. If a media outlet decides to report on Wikipedia having links to attack sites then we're going to be under increased scrutiny. Just pointing to WP:NOTCENSORED may not be good enough. Some may say that "not censored" should be applied differently depending on the site, as places like PornHub and OnlyFans are most decidedly not the same as places like KiwiFarms. Trying to apply the same idea of "not censored" could come across as callous and insensitive in those situations, where you could be dealing with someone sharing nudes that were never intended to be shared with the general public. We need to have a stance on sites such as that to prepare for this potential scrutiny. It may not come now or even in the next year, but we're a visible site and it will almost certainly happen. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 18:02, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
    The fear of possible future "scrutiny" shouldn't dictate editorial decisions. Self-censoring to avoid criticism later isn't my jam. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 20:15, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment: I'm not sure how much longer the RfC needs to run but I note that events are rendering it increasingly moot as KF is unable to keep a website up for more than a few days at a time on any given URL. --DanielRigal (talk) 01:33, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
    I don't the recent inability for Kiwi Farms to keep the site up renders this RfC moot at all. Currently the site is experiencing a campaign against them to it down, so it shouldn't be unexpected that the site be down. That doesn't change the fact that Kiwi Farms might come up again with a stable permanent URL. If they ever get a stable URL, we still have to decide if we should link it or not on Wikipedia. I think it's best to leave the RfC open until Kiwi Farms gets back on its footing, or until it's plainly obvious that it never will. JungleEntity (talk) 02:48, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment - I think some posters are keying into the fact that Wikipedia links to other websites which are demonstrably worse and have been tied to much, much worse conduct. The difference is that KiwiFarms is the hot topic right now. I think that in the rush to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS we should take a breath. This is the kind of decision that really needs a site-wide policy, which I understand has been discussed before but petered out much for the same reasons as the discussion above. May His Shadow Fall Upon You ● 📧 18:52, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Discussions

Related discussions: Talk:The Right Stuff (blog)#URL, Talk:VDARE#Link. These websites are similar to Kiwi Farms, have URLs in their infoboxes and were brought up earlier Stephanie921 (talk) 21:24, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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