On 10/16/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Will Beback wrote:
The aim of creating some kind of policy or guideline to cover the issue is to give editors a road map of how to handle this type of problem to minimize the disruptions that have resulted from off-site harassment. Simply saying it doesn't exist doesn't help.
No one is claiming the off-site harassment doesn't exist or that off-site harassement is not disruptive. The observation being made is that this form of attempting to deal with it, by banning links, appears to be creating more disruption than it is stopping.
What form of dealing with it do you recommend?
W.
I don't think we have a good solution identified yet.
I don't know that either the Foundation or "Community" *can* solve the problem... acknowledging it's real and being in a position to actually change things are two very different things.
People expect the Foundation and/or Community to be things it isn't.
The link bans... might have helped. But I think it's worthwhile revisiting the underlying problem and review whether they really did any good at all.
I think it's clear that they were largely ineffective at slowing down or stifling the off-wiki abuse, which is where most of the problem seems to be. It may have reduced the harrassment on-wiki, but I don't know to what degree over and above blocking abusers just for being abusive does.