Template:Defwarn

This notice has been left for you because another Wikipedia user suspects that, perhaps innocently, you may have defamed someone in your contributions. Please recheck your edits. Do not make allegations against someone unless you have provided evidence from a reliable publication, and then make sure you describe the allegations in accordance with our content policies, particularly Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research. Don't rely on hearsay, rumours, or things you believe without evidence to be facts, and don't use sources to create a novel narrative. Wikipedia requires reliable sources for all claims. Please see our policy on biographies of living persons.

Comments that defame an individual may leave you open to being sued by them. While Section 230 of the United States Communications Decency Act may protect Wikipedia from being sued for defamation, it may not protect the person who posted a defamatory claim on a Wikipedia page. The Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has ruled that: "Where the user has been vandalizing articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, [personal information] data may be released to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers." (Wikimedia privacy policy in full)

If you may have inadvertently defamed someone in an article, do two things:

1. If the material is still there, remove it immediately. You may wish to use an edit summary like "Removing possible defamation" to prevent it from being reverted.
2. Leave a note on the administrator's noticeboard saying that you have accidentally included defamatory claims in a named article or articles. Do not repeat the claim(s). The revision(s) containing the material can then be deleted from the page history.