On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 8:46 AM, Carol Moore dc carolmooredc@verizon.net wrote:
On 9/9/2014 7:51 PM, LB wrote:
I'm going to keep at it, for now. Honestly, I'm tired of it being a mostly internally discussed problem... Perhaps I'll change my mind at some point, but that's my thinking on it at this time.
Lightbreather
You are braver than I! On the other hand this is what [[User:Jayen466|Andreas]] wrote when I complained the woman editor was being harassed off line:
Criticising the quality of an editor's work, whether here orelsewhere, is not harassment. This is not a private project, but a public one, with a significant impact on public life. Any such public project should be prepared to be criticised. If someone writes nonsense in a science article read and relied on by a million people a year, that is a matter of public interest, just like stories like [http://twkozlowski.net/the-pot-and-the-kettle-the-wikimedia-way/ http://twkozlowski.net/the-pot-and-the-kettle-the-wikimedia-way/ this], [http://twkozlowski.net/paid-editing-thrives-in-the-heart-of-wikipedia/ http://twkozlowski.net/paid-editing-thrives-in-the-heart-of-wikipedia/ this], [http://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/revenge_ego_and_the_corruption_of_wikipedia/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/revenge_ego_and_the_corruption_of_wikipedia/ this], [http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/is-the-pr-industry-buying-influence-over-wiki... http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/is-the-pr-industry-buying-influence-over-wikipedia this] or [http://www.dailydot.com/politics/croatian-wikipedia-fascist-takeover-controv... http://www.dailydot.com/politics/croatian-wikipedia-fascist-takeover-controversy-right-wing/ this]. If you would like to curtail editors' freedom to speak out about Wikipedia's failings in public, this in itself will be a media story, and rightly so. Such ideas belong to places like Azerbaijan and North Korea. *Thus one would think quoting nasty sexist things, especially when an editor's name not mentioned should be ok. This really was a test case, wasn't it? (Or not in a community that still applies double standards to male vs. female actions.)
Here's the link to the ANI in question:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incide...
Where were the sexist comments? The user complaining of harassment and the user accused of harassment were both women, and I see no comments about gender in either the AN/I or the extensive editor review. The harassment complained of was the persistence of an editor in following another editor around and pointing out errors in many of her articles, and the argumentative and derisive attitude of the first towards the latter. Andreas' point is that criticism, by itself, is not harassment. Many agreed with the criticism but advised the critic that she needed an attitude adjustment. At that point she disengaged.
So it's a problem when we conflate circumstances which do not implicate gender or sexism with those that do. Calling this an example of sexism muddies the waters, particularly when there are many examples that are perfectly clear cut. It *is* an example of the hassle and angry debate involved in contributing to Wikipedia, though, and I can certainly see how that would drive all sorts of people away from the project.