WT:Guidance for younger editors

"Location" could be as specific as your exact address (which for sure is oversightable) or as broad as the continent you live on. What does "location" specifically refer to? Does it mean a minor shouldn't share their neighborhood? Their city? County? State/province? Country? Or what? interstatefive  16:10, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

:{{ping|interstatefive}} I haven’t found those exact words, but I personally think that it’s fine to share the country you live in, not recommended to share state/province, and it’s too risky to share your city or neighborhood. I definitely agree with not sharing your address. As a minor myself, I haven’t posted any information about my location. Hope this helps. LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 05:19, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

::I mostly agree with you on that except for the state part. Almost every state/province in the world has at least 100k people, and its very hard to isolate one person out of that many. Larger states such as California or Texas have populations of over 10 million, which makes it even harder to find one specific person. interstatefive  15:05, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

:::I guess it depends on where you live and how dense the population is. If you live in Nunavut, for example, there's ~39,000 people that live there. Sharing neighbourhoods is definitely a bad idea. Cities... maybe. Saying you're from Toronto isn't as big of a deal as saying you're from Alymer because again, it's easier to narrow you down. Clovermoss (talk) 16:02, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I think this page can be useful in letting others know about such things, but I wonder if it might be better to broaden the target audience to "newer" editors. A Wikipedia newbie can potentially be of any age. And - maybe I've missed it - but I'm not seeing much that is limited only to those of a certain age.

Does anyone have any concerns about moving the page? And alternatives to "newer" would be welcome. - jc37 11:44, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

:It's been a while since I've read through this, but it seems to be more geared towards younger editors as it is simple and to-the-point. We do have Wikipedia:Personal security practices for general best practices, but it goes into a lot more depth about most of the topics covered here. Primefac (talk) 12:14, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

::I don't disagree. I was just thinking that some new Wikipedians might benefit from the style and tone of this page, regardless of age. - jc37 12:18, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

There seems to be a lot of mixed messaging in this page, like "Many young editors forget our purpose and obsess over popularity, fame, attention, and more" followed by "Some people think our younger editors do not have the maturity, knowledge, skills, or attitudes needed to work on Wikipedia. Our young editors prove them wrong every day" in the next section. Maybe removing young so it's just "many editors forget our purpose..."?

This one's more nitpicky but I read through Wikipedia:Advice for parents (which is actually a shorter page than this one) as a nonparent nonadult despite "Adults can read Wikipedia:Advice for parents as well."

Not making either change as I'm not really NPOV on this, but would appreciate others.

-Underdevelopedprefrontalcortex (talk) 21:02, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

"Always log into your account and use it when you contribute to Wikipedia. By doing this, your edits will be attributed to your username rather than your IP address." If you accidentally log out, shall we install MediaWikiWiki:Extension:AnonPrivacy so that only administrators and rollbackers can see your IP address. 38.83.114.104 (talk) 06:43, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

:Better to contact a member of the Oversight Team to suppress the IP. Primefac (talk) 12:30, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

::It is a security theatre because the undo function shows your ip 38.83.114.104 (talk) 20:55, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

:::When using Undo, the edit summary can be edited to remove that sort of information. If you mean you are doing an Undo while logged out, then yes, your IP would be showing, but that doesn't change my response on how to get your IP hidden. Primefac (talk) 13:10, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

What's the minimum age for adding personal information, like age, location, real name, without getting suppressed? CreatorTheWikipedian2009 (talk) 18:22, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

:That's a loaded question with about a half-dozen different answers, all variants of "it depends on the situation". The very simplistic answer is that there is no minimum age; I have suppressed content posted by 11-year-olds and I have suppressed personal information written by 40-year-olds (though admittedly the older one gets the less likely they are to post personal information).

:However, to get to the hidden question in your question, the WMF considers anyone under 16 to be a minor, which means the OS team treats any personal content from someone below this threshold as suppress-on-sight. If someone is over this age, and posts simple/non-trackable information such as a DOB or general location, it will likely stay un-suppressed, but again I have suppressed information about college-age students and older where they simply gave too much personal information which would allow someone to actually know their physical location.

:On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog, but at the same time they shouldn't know how to find you. The advice I usually give is to think about what you really want people to know about you; things like your location and real name will very, very, very rarely fall into that category. Primefac (talk) 01:05, 20 May 2025 (UTC)