On 4 July 2014 00:35, Sarah <slimvirgin@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Valerie Aurora <valerie@adainitiative.org> wrote:

I agree, policies against harassment can be co-opted to further harass
marginalized people and there is a long history of this in other areas
(see SLAPP and anti-SLAPP in U.S. law for example).
.
.. [snip] ...

A major problem with our dispute-resolution processes is that the person being harassed has to endure more harassment to draw attention to the problem. All experts in harassment will tell you that this is the wrong thing to do. Almost always, the best thing for a victim of harassment is to do nothing further to attract the person's attention. But that leaves the problem editor free to choose the next victim.

I have long thought the Foundation ought to employ a team of specialists who can take up those cases when they see them, so that the pursuit of sanctions is not laid at the victim's door. This is perhaps similar to Sumana's suggestion that communities need dedicated helpers who will do the emotional labour in conflict situations.

There was a point in time where there was an "editor advocacy" group that proposed to take these sorts of cases to Arbcom. The basic idea was fairly good. The problem was that the couple of individuals bringing it forward were...ummm...highly combative in their own right, shall we say? As in, it might have been hard for Arbcom to tell whose behaviour was worse...

It takes the right kind of people do to this successfully. And I fear that the "right kind of people" are in short supply on Wikipedia, and most of those are busy doing things they like to do instead. On the other hand, I have a hard time imagining the WMF coughing up the cost of even a couple of genuine "editor advocates" when the community advocacy department (covering all 800+ projects) is so small.

Risker/Anne