What is ReportIncident?

ReportIncident is a MediaWiki extension that is currently being developed by the Trust and Safety Product team at the Wikimedia Foundation. The purpose of this extension is to help users flag harassment and other harmful incidents, and route them to the appropriate entity that can offer support.

Wikis and namespaces where ReportingIncident is enabled

How to use the ReportIncident

• To use ReportIncident visit any discussion namespace where the tool has been enabled and click on the overflow button (ellipsis) next to Reply to open the menu.
• Click on Report to open up the report form.
• Choose the type of incident you want to flag and click Continue.

If you chose to flag unacceptable behaviour (non-emergency situations).

• Further select the type of unacceptable behaviour you want to flag and click Continue. A private record will be made for statistical purposes.
• Follow the links available on the confirmation page to get support from the local community.

If you chose to report an immediate threat of physical harm

• Select the type of threat you want to report and click Continue.
• Fill in additional information and click Submit.
• A message will be sent to the WMF Emergency team who will be processing your report.

Here are some screenshots to further illustrate report making.

Flagging unacceptable behaviour (non-emergency situations/Non-emergency workflow).

• 
  Click on the overflow button/menu (ellipsis) next to Reply to open the menu
• 
  Choose Unacceptable user behaviour and click Continue
• 
  Select the type of behaviour you want to flag and click Continue
• 
  Follow the links available on the confirmation page to get support from the local community

Flagging an immediate threat of physical harm/Emergency workflow

• 
  Click on the overflow button/menu (ellipsis) next to Reply to open the menu
• 
  Choose Immediate threat of physical harm and click Continue
• 
  Fill in additional information and click Submit
• 
  A message will be sent to the WMF emergency team who will be processing your report

Troubleshooting

If you are unable to submit a report, please take note of and fulfil these requirements. Make sure you have:

• Logged into your account. The account should have been created for over 3 hours and you have at least 1 edit.
• Confirmed your account email address.
• Have enabled DiscussionTools. If DiscussionTools doesn’t load, the Report button is also available in the Tools menu:

In case you can’t file a second report, there is a limit of 1 report per day for non-confirmed users and 5 reports per day for auto-confirmed users.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What’s the Incident Reporting System MVP about?

A: The MVP that has been deployed to pt-wiki is not meant to be the final product. It is a barebones version trying to make it easier for people to report problems and find help, starting with the most essential features. The purpose of this is to offer a basic, minimal experience that we can learn from. This version won’t solve everything yet, but it sets the foundation for a system we can improve together. This is not a one-time launch, but the start of an ongoing cycle. The plan is to roll out the system across different Wikimedia projects, and refine it based on what we learn from real usage, feedback, and community input.

The IRS purpose is to enable users who have experienced harmful incidents to get help. What the system is trying to do is to route the user to the right channel that can provide that help. The type and severity of the incident will determine the help pathway.

For the first version we have explored situations of emergency (where the user is routed to the WMF T&S team) and non-emergency situations where the user is routed to policy self-help pages. We have not yet started to explore other non-emergency community help pathways such as routing to a public board or filing reports to a private community support channel. This will happen at a later stage.

Q: Can you file a report for a non-emergency situation in the current version of the system?

A: No, right now filing a report via a form is only available for emergency situations. For non emergencies the user is asked to indicate the type of incident they’re experiencing and then they are directed to self-help policy pages as established by community practices.

Q: Is there rate limiting?

A: Yes, there are several rate limitations and anti-abuse measures in place. First users need to be logged-in and have a verified email address. There’s also limitations in place related to account age, number of edits and the amount of reports that can be filed per hour.

Q: Are there plans to support reporting the on-wiki problems (i.e. non-emergencies)? What about reporting specific diffs, as opposed to comments?

A: Right now we’re only focusing on abusive comments. The main thing we need to do is figuring out the help pathways. We can look into expanding entry points once this is done.

Q: Do we collect data about duplicated non-emergency reports?

A: Right now filing a report is only available for emergencies. We’re collecting data about the type of incident etc. We can talk more about duplicated reports once the help pathways are figured out.

Q: Do we collect data about the different namespaces reported from?It would be useful to collect this data to allow the TSP team to recommend which namespaces to enable the tool on.

A: Currently IRS is enabled on all talk-enabled namespaces on pt-wiki. Instrumentation (data collection) should be enabled on them all.

Q: Does the tool only work for recent discussions after its implementation?

A: No, once implemented, it works for all discussions. All comments that are still live on a wiki can be reported.