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]
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:
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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