Wikipedia talk:Volunteer Response Team

The redirect Wikipedia:VRT permissions agents has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 25 § Wikipedia:VRT permissions agents until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 17:51, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm wondering if perhaps it would be helpful if there was some sort of notification of how many items were in particular queues and what the average response time has been recently? I recently declined an unblock request because the blocked user had not responded for a week after being told to contact the permissions queue. I assumed they didn't like the answer they got and/or just gave up, but according to them all they have gotten so far is an auto-generated "we'll get back to you" message twelve days ago. It hadn't occurred to me that it was so backlogged, knowing that certainly would have changed my response. Beeblebrox ^Beebletalks 23:48, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

I was considering reviving User:Technical 13/Scripts/helpOTRS.js script, while creating my JS page I got this error message, I don't understand, I am a VRT member. How can this be resolved, any and all will be appreciated. - FlightTime (open channel) 16:41, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

It happens with some frequency that the subjects of Wikipedia articles write to VRT asking to change some detail of personal life which is not covered in secondary sources. Some examples of such information include

• name changes
• marriage status changes, particularly wanting to change Wikipedia naming a married spouse as now being a divorced ex
• gender or pronoun changes, including for error, or transgender, or nonbinary
• ethnicity
• nationality
• their employer (which can change without public notice, and remain out of date in Wikipedia for years)
• any other demographic detail
• any other biographical detail

Some of these items can be high stakes. For example, actors and performers have professional industry pressure including tabloid journalism which affects reporting a person's age and relationship status. Sometimes in some of these cases, the changes seem personal and lower impact, such as when Wikimedia LGBT+ gets requests from people who gender transitioned to update their names and gender labels. I expect that VRT has received 1000s of these requests over the years.

I am not sure where to draw the line, but I would like for VRT to have more defined process for when and how to make biographical data changes on request of the subjects of Wikipedia biographies based on primary sources from the article's subjects. Informally and in roundabout ways, this already happens some. I do not think we need perfectly clear lines, but I would like to more definitively make the least controversial sorts of changes easier to do formally, and to identify more controversial changes so that we know when to be more strict. I am also more sympathetic to people who request changes based on incorrect reporting which is already in Wikipedia with outdated or in error fact-checked sources, as compared to people who want a more full biographical picture in Wikipedia and to include details which reliable sources never covered about their lives.

Here are some issues which arise:

• How can we recommend to subjects writing in to provide some kind of evidence that lets us fact-check the claim in the change request?
• How can we verify the identities of the subjects of articles when such requests come?

Typical cases which I have seen are that someone got a Wikipedia biography, but is fairly low-profile, and has been out of the media for 10+ years. Their Wikipedia article is a time capsule, and still reports personal details from a point in their life. Now things have changed, and the content in the Wikipedia article is affecting the person's life in a way that is neutral from Wikipedia's editorial perspective (name change, their pronouns, their marital status, their employer) but have a big affect on the person's personal life. I am more sympathetic to people who are not rich, and who are not trying to be public figures. Such people may not have social media accounts, their own websites or web domains, or any other self-publishing platform. I want there to be accessible options for general people.

I am aware that more rich and more privileged people can do extraordinary things, like do private publishing in public media channels where they maintain a public identity. This is a lot to do for people without those resources, and I do not want our basic processes designed around elite access to publishing resources.

So, what do we do when someone writes in, claiming to be the article's subject, and wanting biographical data in Wikipedia changed?

@Josve05a: I was having an off-wiki email conversation with you about this, following the recent publication of your article "The inbox behind Wikipedia" in The Signpost. Thoughts? Bluerasberry (talk) 15:50, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I broadly agree that we need clearer, more consistent handling here, but would emphasize that verifiability should remain anchored in publicly accessible, independently checkable sources. VRT can help confirm that a requester is who they claim to be (or that a website is "official", even if only a blogspot site), but it should not become the place where the underlying biographical claims themselves are "sourced", since that information is not publicly reviewable and may not be durable over time. Where possible, even low-bar self-publication on the open web (for example a simple blog or public professional profile) is preferable, as it allows any reader to verify the change without relying on internal processes. The challenge, as noted above, is ensuring that such expectations remain accessible to subjects without resources or media presence, which is where clearer guidance and proportionality in low-risk cases would be valuable. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 11:41, 19 March 2026 (UTC)