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: -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.

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:

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: _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

Good point... On 2/9/2017 1:01 PM, JJ Marr wrote: