You're seriously being an asshole with your offensive comparison. ArmedBlowfish's "rape" analogy is trolling, pure and simple and Jay should stop posting this troll's comments immediately. On 8/2/07, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Continuing his behavior after he's been told that how and why his actions are offensive is trollsome. The analogy is deeply offensive and for Jay and AB to continue after this has been made clear is unfathomable. On 8/2/07, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/2/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com> wrote: Also, another thing: we are now at like four levels of recursion on the message subject; it is perfectly acceptable to trim them a little :) --Oskar

On 8/2/07, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote: That's what it means, irrelevant of how much meaning it conveys. "A loaded word"? As opposed to... I don't know... say... rape? --Oskar

On 8/2/07, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote: As I read Armedblowfish's post (from memory), he compared this situation to rape, violence, OR harassment, and his point was one about people being attacked for being attacked. It would make more sense to take that point, rather than focusing on a provocative word. (This isn't directed at Matthew, by the way, but at the other editors who complained, though I've lost track of who they were.)

To those who say I have trivialised rape / violence - I'll not quote, it's been more than one person by now - I am afraid you are mistaken. Let's see... I am a victim of long term sexual abuse... I have friends who have been raped... I have friends who have been stabbed with knives and thrown down staircases. And I am quite sure that, were those friends to read this, they would not be offended. Some of them would probably be proud of me. I'm doing this to help victims and potential victims of abuse. I cannot honestly expect people to provide helpful responses to a sort of pain they do not understand - hence, I've been trying to explain it. Also see this article by Deborah Orr entitled 'Deborah Orr: How can juries understand rape unless the full horror is explained to them?': http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/deborah_orr/article2201075.… SlimVirgin may not, to our knowledge, be the victim of violent stalking... yet! But one thing leads to another - once they can find you, it is quite possible that they will, and then the violence can start. We can reduce the likelihood of that happening by providing social support, making her less vulnerable. But even if it doesn't happen, there is still such a thing as 'emotional abuse'. Consider this USENET posting as quoted by Judith Donath of MIT Media Labs in the article 'Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community' which was published in 'Communities in Cyberspace', 'As far as letting you know my name or giving you my fingerprints or whatever else you demand, no I don't think so. There is more going on in this net than just misc.fitness.weights. I'm involved in the net war in alt.religion.scientology. Those cultists have so far raided 4 of their net critics on bogus copyright violation charges, and in one case they placed a large amount of LSD on the toothbrush of a person who was raided, a couple of days before he was to undergo a video deposition. In my city they have been convicted of several crimes, including infiltrating the municipal, provincial, and federal police forces. No, I will not give out my name just to satify your curiousity. Deal with it.' Armed Blowfish On 02/08/07, Stephen Park <stephenpark15(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 02/08/07, Kamryn Matika <kamrynmatika(a)gmail.com> wrote: Life is pain. Empathy will get you through it better than whose-pain-is-worse competition... and my friends know that. That would imply I know what I'm doing. I'm too insane to troll. I've never been concerned about disagreeing with SlimVirgin before, and I'm not concerned about it now. What did you expect me to do, take revenge? (As if I haven't been through worse?) What would that accomplish? I've tried anger and hatred - I didn't hurt anyone with those more than I hurt myself. SlimVirgin is a human being, and there are some things no human being should have to go through. Armed Blowfish

Matthew Brown wrote: And while this is all going along, the -real- trolls (those who throw these idiotic outing theories out there, whether they're true or not) are eating very well. Can we all please just say that nothing very good is going to come of this discussion at this point, and it's best just to drop it?

On 8/2/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote: Oh, come now. Your devotion to the cause is commendable, but that's no reason to engage in needless invective against unnamed third parties. As for limiting the damage: what people have been trying to tell you -- and what some people just don't seem to get -- is that the measures being taken *aren't* limiting the damage. For one, the outing itself is already done; the worms can't be stuffed back into the can. Beyond that, though, the people whose questions are being silenced are *not* the ones you need to be defending against. The people who would harass SlimVirgin over this are not watching her talk page for news about this; they have rather more effective methods of finding such things out. The people who *are* asking, on the other hand, aren't doing so out of malice, and lashing out against them accomplishes nothing useful. Kirill

On 8/2/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote: And now you *do* have an idea, despite all the efforts to the contrary. Maybe I'm missing something, but what exactly does Zionism have to do with SV getting outed? (I'm not talking about the sillier politicking with Jayjg et al. after the fact, but the original outing effort itself. That's the core "problem" that we're trying to resolve here, not our own reaction to it.) Which matter are you expecting us to act on? Kirill

On 8/2/07, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin(a)gmail.com> wrote: I wasn't aware that she had been outed. Should I phone MI5 headquarters on Millbank to tell them her cover has been blown? Let's get serious. Slim Virgin has not been outed. A loony has tried pushing some kind of conspiracy theory and for some bizarre reason he's got a lot of otherwise sensible people trying their best to outdo the loony.

On 8/3/07, ElinorD <elinordf(a)gmail.com> wrote: I've stopped responding to the thread because we're not going to go anywhere productive with it, but the fact is, we don't punish stupidity done in good faith. I am also wondering why it's fine to discuss potential outings on the list, but not on SV's talk page. Since both are public fora, if we delete good faith discussions from SV's page, should the list mods now be placing whoever originally brought up this topic on moderation? Johnleemk

On 8/11/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote: In other words this cabal was just a bunch of people who independently decided they weren't going to let shit happen to another human being? That's kinda disappointing. And boring. As boring as this whole thing has been. I would like the next set of accusations, besmirchments, and flaming failures to connect two dots to make a line to have some substance. KP

On 8/2/07, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin(a)gmail.com> wrote: Kirill, you're quite right that the damage can't be undone. Whether or not Sarah is the person that Brandt believes her to be, removing a message from her talk page at this stage won't prevent people from finding out that Brandt believes her to be this person. (Or if it does, in a few cases, it also causes other people to find out, as removing posts can draw more attention to them. So we lose and gain at the same time.) But something very important has been overlooked: preventing people from seeing who Brandt thinks Sarah is is not the only possible motive for removing those posts. Another reason is the strong likelihood that she doesn't want those posts. How do we know that? Well, common sense, to start off with, and then the fact that before the recent increase in attacks on her privacy she had frequently argued in favour of removing links to sites that out people, and finally, the fact that some of the people removing the posts are known to be friendly with her, and might have a better understanding of her feelings than those who have criticised the removal of the posts. It's not possible to hush up this rumour, but it should be possible to create an environment where contributors who have given a lot to Wikipedia and have been harassed as a result can feel that they have the support of the community. Creating such an environment is good for Wikipedia, but I sometimes feel that's overlooked. As one of the MONGO rulings said, "Wikipedia users, especially administrators, will not permit a user under attack to be isolated, but will support them. This may include reverting harassing edits, protecting or deleting pages, blocking users, or taking other appropriate action." Allowing people to indulge in a long discussion on Wikipedia as to whether or not Sarah really is a spy and whether or not she really is the person Brandt believes her to be creates an environment where stalking victims who have contributed a lot feel vulnerable and betrayed. That's not good for the project. As you yourself endorsed in the Abu badali arbcom case, "the feelings of other users matter". Sarah's feelings matter. Some people have suggested that it's not possible to make things worse by posting about it. I scalded my hand once, and for some time afterwards, it hurt more when I sat near the fire or when I washed in warm water. Touching a wound can make it worse. We don't say, "Oh, this person is wounded anyway, so there's no reason to take any special care. Let's poke to our hearts' content." At least, if we're kind, we don't. Does all this "suppression" make Wikipedia look bad or ridiculous? If handled properly, it shouldn't. It should be possible to remove threads calmly, stating that Wikipedia has a policy of not engaging in, encouraging, or promoting speculation about the identities of anonymous contributors, and another policy of removing any poorly sourced material that might affect a person in real life. And that article, frankly, is a not a credit to journalism. The fact is, we remove material all the time, because of OTRS complaints, or because we see that it could affect people. Think of Jimbo's courtesy blanking of the Badlydrawnjeff ArbCom page. Think of the deletion of the Daniel Brandt discussion page. I've been very impressed with some of the things written by arbitrators, and especially by you, Kirill, when it comes to the respect we should have for the feelings of people who might be affected by material on Wikipedia. There were some amazingly sensitive and wise rulings in the Badlydrawnjeff case, particularly "Basic human dignity" and "Do no harm", and I think they were drafted by you. But you never said, "Unless, of course, the person affected happens to be a Wikipedia editor." As Jimbo said, "Wikipedia is not here to make people sad." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OFFICE#Intent Elinor

Tony Sidaway wrote: Let's tone down the rhetoric, please. Yes, the attempts to "out" Slim and other editors have been vicious. But no, no one (that I have seen) has blamed Slim or the others for those outings.