The assumption here is that harassing users are the same as blocked users, to which I say a great big "citation needed". As I recall, one of the big reasons Kevin gave for moving discussion of gender to this mailing list is that list moderators are able to keep out harassment, which they were unable to do with the gender gap project on enwiki. So if admins failed to deal with harassment in the past, why is the problem of harassment now being turned over to them. But that is exactly what it looks like the WMF is doing, i.e. they say "we want to partner with admins", plus apparently the updates are going to be published on enwiki to something called the "administrators' newsletter". [1] Since most people believe the admins to be primarily male and heterosexual, this leaves the problem of harassment to be defined by those who are the least likely to have experienced it or to understand what it is.
The WMF already announced this on the Wikimedia mailing list back in January, not sure why they decided to bypass this mailing list. [2]
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_health_initiative [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2017-January/086013.html
On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 5:09 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com 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@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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-- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
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