Wikipedia talk:Guidance for younger editors

Young editors and COI statement

The nutshell states that young editors should never give out any personally identifiable information (name, age, location, school, IP address) on Wikipedia. On the other hand, WP:COIEDIT states that you should disclose your COI when involved with affected articles. Yound editors can't really follow both of these they have a Wikipedia article about themselves and their name is in the article. —Happy New Year from Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 19:33, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

You seem to have a valid point, though it appears this would only come up infrequently. On the other hand, there is no demand that an editor declare the precise nature of their relationship to a subject. "Has a conflict of interest" does not mean "is a member of the subject's immediate family" or "is the article subject". It appears to me that we are able to nail them down on COI the same way we would any other editor. Rebuttal?--Quisqualis (talk) 23:24, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

"Don't share your location" is ambiguous.

"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)

@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)

Younger

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)

Mixed messaging

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)

Shall we install MediaWikiWiki:Extension:AnonPrivacy

"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)