Your Wikipedia donation money at work (in France)

[Bezdomni]

When I brought User:Sulpyensid (T-C-L) to the French equivalent of AN, the result was his first block on fr.wp. He was indeffed 3 months later.

Now the WMF is being charged €500 a day as long as they withhold his IP info concerning another BLP matter. It appears that web platforms are required by French law to conserve IP data for one year after the closure of an account.

h/t Andreas § (Signpost)

Reading the ordonnance de référé it appears the WMF *also* was ordered to pay out €8000 (roughly 32,000 home-made espressos) to the company who sued them over Sulpyensid's scrivening (article 700 = court costs).

[Smultronstället]

When I brought Sulpyensid (T-C-L) to the French equivalent of AN, the result was his first block on fr.wp. He was indeffed 3 months later.

Now the WMF is being charged €500 a day as long as they withhold his IP info concerning another BLP matter. It appears that web platforms are required by French law to conserve IP data for one year after the closure of an account.

h/t Andreas § (Signpost)

Reading the ordonnance de référé it appears the WMF *also* was ordered to pay out €8000 (roughly 32,000 home-made espressos) to the company who sued them over Sulpyensid's scrivening (article 700 = court costs).

I am glad you are following all of this.

[Giraffe Stapler]

When I brought Sulpyensid (T-C-L) to the French equivalent of AN, the result was his first block on fr.wp. He was indeffed 3 months later.

Now the WMF is being charged €500 a day as long as they withhold his IP info concerning another BLP matter. It appears that web platforms are required by French law to conserve IP data for one year after the closure of an account.

h/t Andreas § (Signpost)

Reading the ordonnance de référé it appears the WMF *also* was ordered to pay out €8000 (roughly 32,000 home-made espressos) to the company who sued them over Sulpyensid's scrivening (article 700 = court costs).

Ha ha ha. That's not Sulpyensid's first block on French Wikipedia, only their first block on that account.

MODS: Perhaps the mods could split this off to its own thread in case in case more information comes out? I mean, who knows what could happen?

Moderator's note: Done.

[Midsize Jake]

Now the WMF is being charged €500 a day as long as they withhold his IP info concerning another BLP matter. It appears that web platforms are required by French law to conserve IP data for one year after the closure of an account.

I might not be reading this correctly since my French is "extremely rusty" at best, but it looks like the €500 daily fines only last for 3 months, not indefinitely. So, rounding that down to 90 days, that's only €45,000 — which is pocket change for the WMF. Hard cheese on the people who originally donated the money to them, of course, but that's only because the French prefer soft cheeses.

The order also states that the plaintiffs ("Noctis Event," i.e., Noctis Group, now known as "Paris Society" for some reason) want more than just IP addresses, so it's fairly clear that they have no idea as to how Wikipedia operates in terms of user registration. Specifically, they want "the surname and first name or company name, the birthdate, the associated mailing address, the associated e-mail addresses, and telephone numbers" of the user(s) in question. (LOL!)

This is all a bit of a rabbit hole, but it looks to me like the BLP subject in question is someone named "Laurent de Gourcuff," and this is the French-Wikipedia BLP he's unhappy about. That appears to have been "cleaned up" somewhat, but on the English WP, you can still see (for the next few minutes, at least) a fairly-similar draft version that was posted by User:Sulpyensid (T-C-L) around the same time. English is obviously not Mr. Sulpyensid's first language, but in any event, why either of these pages were not immediately deleted seems completely unfathomable, at least to me. These are obviously attack pages based on the most scurrilous tabloid "sources" imaginable — even Wikipedians should have been able to figure that out...? I'd actually started to think WP had gotten better about this sort of thing, but maybe I was wrong.

Frankly, the only thing positive about any of this is that "Noctis Event" is also the name of some sort of gaming event for Final Fantasy XIV, so that's what's getting most of the Google-juice for the term "Noctis Event," and of course "Paris Society" is an extremely common term. Still, there's only one "Laurent de Gourcuff" with a significant web footprint, which presumably is why the French court order doesn't mention his name.

Also, just so our own registered Wikipediocracy members are clear on this point, if someone here posted something like that in a public (or even a private) forum thread, I'm pretty sure we'd delete it right away — or at the very least, loooonnnnnnng before a French court ordered us to pay €45,000 in fines and a further €10,000 in court costs. Ideally, that should be sufficient to maintain our policy of not revealing IP addresses and other PII in the absence of a formal court order — as it probably would have been for the WMF in this case, if the WP editors involved had acted responsibly in the first place. So... nothing to worry about! It's all good!

[Smultronstället]

Also, just so our own registered Wikipediocracy members are clear on this point, if someone here posted something like that in a public (or even a private) forum thread, I'm pretty sure we'd delete it right away — or at the very least, loooonnnnnnng before a French court ordered us to pay €45,000 in fines and a further €10,000 in court costs. Ideally, that should be sufficient to maintain our policy of not revealing IP addresses and other PII in the absence of a formal court order — as it probably would have been for the WMF in this case, if the WP editors involved had acted responsibly in the first place. So... nothing to worry about! It's all good!

What about the biography is so objectionable that it doesn't fit Wikipediocracy policy?

[Bezdomni]

Repeating the specifics would likely only cause problems.

I think the person who commented on the Signpost brief Andreas worked up might well be right about the account currently editing fr.wp being the same person for a number of reasons. (In fact, I recently undid some of what they convinced someone else to add (§) to the Thinkerview page -- where I first encountered the said Sulpyensid, spinning out Catégorie:Confusionnisme (deleted more recently) to various programs and BLPs -- , and they're adding bare-linked refs to the de Gourcuff bio again (§) ... the one with a clickbait headline being paywalled such that one has to take on faith that the article delivers the goods.)

It also might be a really weird coincidence.

One thing is sure: If that case ends up becoming French jurisprudence, it could get expensive for the WMF.

[Smultronstället]

Repeating the specifics would likely only cause problems.

I think the person who commented on the Signpost brief Andreas worked up might well be right about the account currently editing fr.wp being the same person for a number of reasons. (In fact, I recently undid some of what they convinced someone else to add (§) to the Thinkerview page -- where I first encountered the said Sulpyensid, spinning out Catégorie:Confusionnisme (deleted more recently) to various programs and BLPs -- , and they're adding bare-linked refs to the de Gourcuff bio again (§) ... the one with a clickbait headline being paywalled such that one has to take on faith that the article delivers the goods.)

It also might be a really weird coincidence.

One thing is sure: If that case ends up becoming French jurisprudence, it could get expensive for the WMF.

What if you used pseudonyms like Person A is mad because Person B wrote something about Person A's family/business/personal attributes that Person A didn't like?

[Bezdomni]

Here's another gratuitous example on en.wp:

search for "Hair transplantation" and move forward from there.

[Midsize Jake]

What about the biography is so objectionable that it doesn't fit Wikipediocracy policy?

We don't have a policy per se regarding what "biographical" details about an individual are objectionable enough to delete or redact. We rely on "common sense" and "social responsibility" here.

[Midsize Jake]

And now there's a guy from Estonia who's suing Wikimedia Estonia. Whee!