Talk:Brian Wong

Legal issues

I believe the stricter application of WP:BLP is required in Brian Wong’s case, and that the current material about his legal issues should be removed from the article. In particular:

1. The charges are misdemeanours, not felonies.

Wikipedia’s BLP standards are especially cautious with low-level, non-felony offences, as routine or minor criminal matters do not usually merit permanent inclusion in a biography.

2. The charges are expected to be dismissed in 2026.

Including material about charges that are time-limited and likely to be dropped risks giving them disproportionate long-term weight in the article, even though they may soon have no legal standing.

3. He has not been a public figure since 2019.

Under WP:NOTPUBLICFIGURE, extra restraint is required for people who are no longer in the public eye. For a non-prominent living person who has stepped away from public roles, minor offences and charges likely to be dismissed should not dominate their biography.

Taken together, these points mean that the current treatment of the case gives it undue weight in the article, contrary to WP:UNDUE and WP:BLP. For a living person who is no longer a public figure, routine or minor legal issues that are expected to be dropped should not be preserved indefinitely in an encyclopedic biography.

In summary, per WP:UNDUE, WP:BLP and WP:NOTPUBLICFIGURE, I suggest removing the controversial legal material from Brian Wong’s article. Phantomaxel (talk) 19:25, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

The criminal proceeding issues ended up being removed without further consultation of other Wikipedia experts and input from others. I hope others could provide input whether such info should be completely removed or at least some form of reference.

1. While the charge ended up via a plea deal into a misdemeanour, it is still a guilty plea. This is not petty theft or other low level offense. It is sexual assault. This is especially relevant since universities to high schools invited him to speak. An example is Bodwell High School interacting with children under 18 and vulnerable adults and any offenses of a sexual crime nature is relevant in school background checks when experts are brought to interact with them especially with interacting with children. He doesn't think he did anything wrong as opposed to event not taking place and this is particularly dangerous due to his influence and power dynamics when interacting with youth and young adults that is his target audience and most school background checks often don't go beyond the first page of Google which includes this article. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zbhOU40rp8

2. There are legal proceedings which took place and it is documented extensively in Travis County Court Docket Case No. D-1-DC-19-300030. There is coverage by Bloomberg Law which is highly respected until end of case. See: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/private-equity/kiip-co-founder-brian-wong-pleads-guilty-to-indecent-assault-3 "One-time startup leader Brian Wong pleaded guilty to criminal charges that he assaulted a woman during the 2016 South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas."

The state compromised due to limited resources to pursue each case, he hired two of the best criminal defense lawyers in Texas that money can buy, first criminal offense consideration, as opposed to this event not taking place or lack of evidence or physical and psychology damages to victim.

Wikipedia has general guidelines like documented fact (yes. Info appears in court records and was followed through by major outlets including Bloomberg Law as one example), it is written with neutrality, notability (Brian Wong was portrayed himself as a respected public figure and expert. The numbers are noticed in prior comments below).

3. In 2019, he stepped down from being a public figure not because he didn't want to but the seriously of the case and reputable media background checks and the mention of Wikipedia article in general search meant media companies considered it a liability. Brian Wong is trying to get this criminal charge information removed from biography so that he can continue to be a public figure and get exposure via media. We see evidence of this "comeback" via his changing of his profile pic on here to 2026 one supplied by himself. His appearance as speaker in major events like Paris Blockchain: https://www.parisblockchainweek.com/speaker-2026/brian-wong along other attempts like Youtube interviews.

In Summary, he is a public figure as of 2026 including speaking at major conferences. He recruits and interacts with youth and young adults via his mentorship program giving him undue influence. Interaction with youth and vulnerable adults given a crime of a sexual nature is given special consideration to protect the public. This is a serious crime. WP:BLP public records of serious criminal charges and convictions (including those resolved by plea bargains) are considered factual information rather than speculation or original research with the three criteria mentioned above. If the person is notable enough to have a Wikipedia page, their significant legal proceedings are considered encyclopedic. DeerGlasses (talk) 21:11, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

External links modified

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Brian Wong sexual assault indictment inclusion consensus

Also, it's a little weird to call it a "lawsuit," which is a term generally reserved for civil matters. This is a criminal matter. I'm going to change the heading of that section to "Criminal Charges". Dear fellow Wikipedians,

Background: Over a month ago, there was intense discussion on the WP:BLPN which has since been archived

Administrator Bbb23 wanted someone to put on this talk page for further discussion regarding this issue.

"What needs to be done here - and probably better on the Wong Talk page - is a discussion (RFC?) as to that issue. If there's a consensus that Wong is a public figure, there still has to be a discussion about what material/how much material may be included in the article.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:11, 2 May 2019 (UTC)"

The two main concerns are:

1) Is Brian Wong a public figure?

2) If 1) is met, then how much material to include.

Wikipedia definition of public figure: A public figure is a person, such as a politician, celebrity, social media personality, or business leader, who has a certain social position within a certain scope and a significant influence and so is often widely concerned by the public, can benefit enormously from society, and is closely related to public interests in society.

The reason for these two main questions is to determine if BLP:Crime which is applicable to non-public figures apply.

Various arguments were put forward both for and against the addition of the indictment of sexual assault. A big concern is whether social media popularity constitutes part of the definition of public figure.

Arguments for being a public figure:

Does having a large social media influencer part of the reason for being a public figure?

Brian Wong is a Linkedin influencer given exclusively to 500+ people in the world and has over 715,800 followers: In addition to the hundreds of media interviews and news articles which I won't list, his Linkedin is followed by over 715,800 people. These are professionals with real profiles and linkedin considered him a business leader and influencer.

Linkedin definition of an influencer:

Argument against proposed by user:Collect "Having a "blue check mark" does not mean one is a "public figure". More clear? Collect (talk) 12:49, 3 May 2019 (UTC)"

Does identification by Brian controlled Facebook public page self identifying as public figure enough evidence to be a public figure?

Potential arguments against: It could be a Facebook auto option if one wanted a public page.

Does self identification in an interview that one is a public figure enough to meet this definition? As an analogy, Wikipedia policy on coming out regarding sexuality is that this info cannot be included in any bio until one comes out publicly which can later be included on their bio. Following this analogy, does coming out with the intention of being a public figure and later performing actions consistent with this goal such as numerous public speaking, interviews, writing for major papers among others constitute as a public figure?

“I always wanted to be a public figure, so I wanted to have that formal educational experience. And for four years of those classes,”

This is not about notability guidelines and strictly focused on whether or not Brian Wong is a public figure and meets Wikipedia's standards. "This has nothing to with notability guidelines. The IP is clearly saying that a blue checked Instagram account means that the person is a "public figure", not that a blue check means the person meets our notability guidelines. We wouldn't even be arguing over this if the Wong article doesn't satisfy WP:GNG.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:11, 2 May 2019 (UTC)"

Thank you very much for drawing attention to this discussion and eventually a consensus. 2001:569:7E43:7900:A93E:65D0:4C24:2F58 (talk) 08:51, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Brought in from BLPN, I am skeptical that he is a public figure under WP:BLPCRIME and removed details about the allegation with exception of how it impacted his career. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:47, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 18 August 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (non-admin closure) Colin M (talk) 18:30, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

---

• Brian Wong → Brian Wong (Canadian entrepreneur)
• Brian Wong (disambiguation) → Brian Wong

– There are three other people listed on the disambiguation page, and it's not at all clear that this one would be highly meganotable enough to claim WP:PRIMARYTOPIC rights over all of the others. Bearcat (talk) 14:39, 18 August 2021 (UTC) — Relisting. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:33, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support per nomination. WP:NOPRIMARYTOPIC. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 02:12, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
• Move to Brian Wong (entrepreneur). I have not found any other entrepreneurs named Brian Wong who are discussed on Wikipedia, so "Canadian" seems unnecessary. I removed a red link from the dab page that failed WP:DABMENTION. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 13:17, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment struck through after seeing remark from Dohn joe below. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:41, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. The entrepreneur article gets 96 percent of pageviews. That is a huge margin, and a clear primarytopic by usage, and no argument that the other articles compete on long-term significance, either. This move would make things more difficult on readers and editors alike. Dohn joe (talk) 21:59, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

And how do you propose to prove that 96 per cent of people intended to get to the Canadian entrepreneur, instead of expecting a different Brian Wong and being surprised to not see the different American entrepreneur or the politician instead? Pageviews only prove anything if they're comparing dabbed-to-dabbed or undabbed-to-undabbed, so that you know that every pageview represented somebody landing at the topic they expected to land at, and prove nothing if they're comparing dabbed-to-undabbed so that you have no way of really knowing whether every one of those viewers actually got where they intended to go. Bearcat (talk) 16:24, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I used to think more that way myself, but in my later experience, I have gotten the impression that having a particular topic at the base name has less of an effect on its traffic flow than you might expect. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:03, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

I can't guarantee that every person who goes to the current primarytopic wanted to go there. In fact, I can guarantee the opposite; there is such a thing as a basename bump. However, the evidence we do have is a strong indicator that a vast majority of readers do get where they intend. The usage numbers for the other two articles and the dab page are tiny. The driver article at least is well cross-linked in other driving articles - it's no hidden, orphan article, and people still don't visit in any numbers. If a large number of people wanted a different article, we would see unusually large traffic to the dab page, which we don't. If you want to set up special redirects on the dab page to see where people actually go from there, that could be useful. Otherwise, moving the page as proposed guarantees that everyone who searches for "Brian Wong" will go to the wrong page, i.e., the dab page. When we have no evidence that people are currently being misdirected, that's making the WP experience worse for readers and editors. Dohn joe (talk) 13:42, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Canada has been notified of this discussion.  — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 02:09, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. I am sympathetic to this overall sentiment, in that we shouldn't be too eager at declaring a primary topic among several not-too-famous people where one of them manages to get like 60%. But 96% is a totally different ballgame. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:19, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Prove to me that even half of that 96 per cent represents people who wanted the entrepreneur and thus got where they wanted to go, as opposed to expecting the politician or the race car driver and thus not getting where they wanted to go. Bearcat (talk) 00:26, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

We've had cases where a disambiguation page was initially in place, with one of the topics getting around, say, 80%. A successful RM would cause the percentage to go up a little, but never by more than 10%. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:51, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.