Wikipedia talk:Contributor copyright investigations

We've been adding inactive/blocked users to User:Moneytrees/requiredCCIs, so I was thinking that whenever we get a case request on someone inactive/blocked where we've found more copyvio, we add the user to Money's list with a permalink to the case request/archive anchor, decline temporarily, and un-archive when it gets opened. It would help keep the requests focused on currently active users without ignoring them, even while we're working towards getting our case count down. Thoughts? (MrLinkinPark333 and I workshopped the idea on Discord). Sennecaster (Chat) 02:58, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

For me, I think active cases are more of a priority. Inactive cases would eventually be opened if they're moved to Moneytrees' list. We can add a summary of the notes from the request on the list. If we move a request to the inactive list, a link to Moneytrees' list should be added to the edit summary. This would prevent users from thinking we're not going to open the case.
Since our backlog has continued to grow, I'm wondering if we should only focus on the active requests. Once the backlog has shrunk to a good number, any of the inactive ones from Moneytrees' list can be opened. There should probably be a limited number of opened inactive cases at a time to prevent the backlog from growing a large amount. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 03:06, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Would there be like a hard limit of how long the inactive ones can languish archived (say 4 months or something), or just sort of unarchived when there's time at some point? Sophisticatedevening^(talk) 03:19, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I previously added a goal to Moneytrees' list of total CCI cases before any from the list to be open. I wouldn't give a time limit on those, especially since there's ones added years ago on the list. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 03:29, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

We're an extremely backlogged project, so inactive/blocked users where a case would possibly be needed tend to sit around for a while. Some of the smaller ones that only have ~100-200 mainspace edits are easier to sift through, I've done that in my userspace, but unfortunately it will be a bit before anything gets addressed at the rate we are going. Sennecaster (Chat) 04:01, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm going to go with the silent consensus or lack of opposition here that we're good to start doing this. I'll rewrite the header/instructions when I get a chance. To summarize: we are going to temporarily archive (possibly in a new archive subpage?) cases that need to be opened, but are on inactive users. They will be opened when our case backlog goes down, much like the ones on Money's list will be. This should both alleviate the incoming request backlog and also allow us to better prioritize users we've already checked to need a case. Sennecaster (Chat) 19:43, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Honestly I'm not really a fan of this, as it just feels like pushing the problem downstream. It's basically saying that since they're not active it's fine that they violated copyright. Wizardman 22:17, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I mean, I'm also fine with opening those cases immediately, but the appetite really doesn't seem to be there from other people. I really just wanted this to basically be Money's requiredCCIs list where we've already done the check and can just open it when we hit the threshold. Sennecaster (Chat) 04:11, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

If archiving them isnt the best idea, maybe we can discuss when to open a case from moneytrees' list. An example is 2 inactive cases per 1 opened case request. Alternativelly, we could focus on opening the oldest inactive case each time we close 2 cases overall. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 07:33, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights § Paste Check feature - coming next week. That post has details about this upcoming feature, which should help to remind editors (especially newcomers) to think carefully about pasting larger quantities of text, thus hopefully helping to reduce the quantity of copyvio problems. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 27 February 2026 (UTC)