It's not our moral role as Wikipedians and it's not the role of the
Wikimedia foundation to take a deeply investigative role of harassment. We
can block harassers when proof is brought to us, but finding them is
difficult and is a task that should be handled by the respective platforms
themselves. If someone is harassing someone off-wiki, we shouldn't play
detective when we can just share the information we have (in accordance
with the privacy policy) and let other places perform their own
investigations.
On Feb 9, 2017 12:43 PM, "Carol Moore dc" <carolmooredc(a)verizon.net>
wrote:
Hopefully having a metric will make it easier to stop obvious harassment
within Wikipedia. I complained for a year to several admins and in at least
one ANI on a related topic about the one male ideologue who followed me to
many and then eventually most articles to criticize, insult and revert me.
But it wasn't til a male editor noticed and complained to ANI about an
obviously biased revert being part of a pattern of his harassing me that an
admin - and eventually Arbitators- finally sanctioned him with one way
interaction band.
I agree defacto therapy is a good way to deal with guys who psychologically
can't handle having women criticizing and reverting them. It won't stop
committed ideologues like the above, but at least it will slow them down
and discourage them.
As for the offline harassers, I had my problems in 2011 when Wikimedia
Foundation was pretty slow to respond even though they'd dealt with aserial
harasser of men and women who was kicked off wikipedia years go. He just
decided to pick on me over some issue he disagreed with, including a 1000
odd death threats delivered via email through the wikifoundation email
system. It took several months after my complaints to them before it
stopped and I don't know if foundation stopped it. A year or so later I got
a short string of threats. (Since he was on other side of country and known
for this I didn't contact police cause who needs feds rummaging around
their computer? If he was in neighborhood I might have.)
Re: other harassment in multiple forums. One thing they could use the money
for is a couple internet detectives who could identify the harasser's
various handles and get them kicked off forums where they are harassing
(twitter/FB/etc.). Even get them kicked off their internet provider if
possible. Of course, there'd have to be some adjustment of the outing
policy. Like, it's OK for the foundation to do it if it's a serious
problem? Or is that the policy now?
CM
On 2/7/2017 5:09 AM, Fæ wrote:
I find it depressing that the only actually *planned*
way that this
money is going be spent is on developing reports and tools to hunt
down apparent harassers so that they can be blocked. Meh.
For those of us that have experienced obsessive harassment, we know
that this is not a cure. When the harassment continues off-wiki,
sometimes for years, the only advice from the WMF or on-wiki groups is
for the *victim* to vanish, meaning that those that were outed have to
close down their Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. accounts with all the
associated damage that comes with being forced to take a paranoid
path; not even mentioning how the rest of the Wiki-community is
affected by seeing how trolling does not stop until the target
vanishes or goes in to hiding for a few years. A better use of this
money would be to try new methods of engaging with the apparent
harasser and consider ways of encouraging them to change their
behaviour.
I doubt that many of the trolls that post misogynistic, racist or
homophobic rubbish believe in these views, they are seeking attention,
for personal reasons they may not even understand themselves. An
approach to harassment that offers experienced counselling and support
to both victim and attacker has a much better chance of being both an
effective and long-term solution.
Based on the related email discussion, the WMF seem to think that
long-term solutions are a community problem, so that's not something
they have any plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on. I'd
much rather see the smaller part of the money spent on more software
development, and the majority spent setting up support services that
handle alleged harassment in a more mature way, even if the people who
are doing the real support work end up being us volunteers.
Fae
On 27 January 2017 at 20:16, Carol Moore dc <carolmooredc(a)verizon.net>
wrote:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/craigslist-founder-donates-
500k-to-curb-wikipedia-trolls-1.3259781
Wow! When I think of the 2 plus hrs a week x 385 odd weeks of hours I
spent
dealing with guys who just didn't like the idea that a "female" dared to
edit - or worse, change their edit - I still tear my hair out.
I just hope it helps!!
I'd like to go back in a few years when hopefully have accomplished other
goals. Or ENCOURAGE women to edit, as opposed to now having to warn them
all
the time about what they have to do to edit safely!
CM
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