[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[K P]

On 10/14/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/14/07, Will Beback <will.beback.1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I disagree that protecting our editors from harassment must come at a
> > cost to the encyclopedia's content. We remove links, sources, and
> > participants  day and night in order to improve it. Let me compare this
> > to three other situations: spam, fan forums, and lawsuits.
> >
> > I remove dozens of commercial spam links to every week. Arguably, those
> > many of those links could provide some benefit to readers. An article on
> > recreational vehicles may, in some folks mind, be improved by providing
> > links to stores selling RV accessories or used RVs. Yet we've decided
> > that commercial links are inappropriate because they would overwhelm the
> > articles and because they do not provide any actual content. Their harm
> > outweighs their good. Likewise, links to external harassment that drives
> > away valuable editors also cause more harm than good.
>
>
> Is this an appropriate parallel to the official website of a famous person?
>
> Fan forums and blogs are routinely deleted (with very few exceptions)
> > because they do not provide reliable information for our readers whether
> > used as a source or for further reading. Forums and blogs that engage in
> > active harassment of editors of a reference work are even less reliable
> > as sources for that reference work.
>
>
> So michaelmoore.com is an unreliable source, period? Last time I checked
> self-authored blogs were one of the few sources considered acceptable for
> biographies.
>
> Finally, we do not allow people who have said they are planning to sue
> > the WMF to edit Wikipedia because they have an unavoidable conflict of
> > interest. So does someone using harassment. The person in charge of a
> > self-published site that is harassing Wikipedia editors is trying to
> > affect the project in inappropriate ways. We can't stop them from doing
> > so but we should not view them as neutral or even reliable sources while
> > they pursue their agenda against the project and its volunteers.
>
>
> Ironically, it is just as arguable that the person being harassed has a
> conflict of interest as well.
>
> In all three of these cases restricting inappropriate links, sources,
> > and participation improves the encyclopedia instead of harming it.
>
>
> Nobody's disputing that in some cases, these restrictions improve the
> encyclopaedia. To assert that we improve the encyclopaedia by removing links
> to any blog or forum which harasses our editors is a bit of a stretch,
> nevertheless. In most cases, we don't link to these sites because there is
> no good reason to; you are now asserting we should go further and never link
> to them even if there is a good reason to.
>
> Johnleemk
>
> W.

This is in fact the case, there is simply no reason to link to most of
these sites.  In the case of the article on Michael Moore, the link is
to a site BY the subject person of the article.  It's like discussing
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn but never mentioning the title of the
book because it's offensive.

We have plenty of other good, non-torturous reasons to not to link to
blogs.  They're not reliable sources of information.  But if the
article is about the blog, there should be a link to the blog that is
being discussed.

If there is no reason to discuss the site, if it's not notorious, or
famous, if there's no reason for it to be in Wikipedia, then there's
no reason to link it.

Blogs are not reliable references for articles, they are opinion pieces.

If the blog is known and has an article, or the website is the
official site of a celebrity, it should be linked.  This is a
cyberspace project, to pretend that cyberspace does not exist is just
going to make us look ridiculous and lead to no end of conversations
and bad behaviour and notoriety.

However, a victim of a stalker is not the equivalent of a stalker.

If someone is using Wikipedia as their medium for harrassing an
Wikipedia editor, that doesn't make the Wikipedia editor who is being
harrassed complicit in their victimhood and equally guilty of abusing
Wikipedia.

To say say that because you're being stalked by another person who
found you on Wikipedia gives you, the victim, a conflict of interest
in Wikipedia empowers the stalker to the point of the ridiculous--it
will make Wikipedia the favorite place in the known universe of
stalkers everywhere to be granted their every dream: entangling the
victim hopelessly without recourse and with plenty of blame in their
lives.  Do you realize that a stalker doesn't even have to know their
victim's name to begin stalking them?  Stalking takes place first in
the mind of the stalker.

Stalkers count on being able to manipulate others besides their victim
to create a tie where there is none.  Assigning equal quilt for the
problem of stalking to the victims is precisely what stalkers are
seeking--there are seldom any crimes today where this is still done.
It used to be everywhere, not just in some countries, that victims of
rape are held culpable for being raped.  This is the case in only a
few countries, though. Most of the world today does not assign a
victim guilt in the crime done to them. Stalking is abberant
behaviour, and it is a crime.  The victim is not the guilty party, and
is not equal to their attacker in this.

The courts and the psychiatric community has long since realized that
stalkers do not have to be aided by their victims, and that victims
are not the cause of their being stalked.  Please don't say that they
have an arguably equal conflict of interest, when they don't have to
ever engage their stalker in any way to be made a victim, whereas the
stalker has to actively target and attempt to engage not just their
victim, but the community on behalf of the stalker targetting the
victim.  Granting this to the stalker is way beyond acceptable.

KP