On Oct 17, 2007, at 5:24 PM, William Pietri wrote:
* Legal or investigative support to someone pursuing criminal charges against a harasser.
This has never happened, nor, to my knowledge, come close to happening.
* Legal or investigative support to someone pursuing a civil suit against a harasser, especially when seeking a protective order.
See above.
* Public relations assistance for the target of a high-profile harassment campaign.
Issues arise here - most notably how, if at all, to coordinate that PR assistance with the Foundation. This may be something better subsumed into the Foundation.
- Compensation for cash costs of dealing with harassment, like changing phone numbers or moving.
Possible - again, I'm unaware of cases of things getting anywhere near this far.
* Legal support to someone frivolously sued for legitimate and beneficial on-Wikipedia activity.
It has always been my assumption (though an untested one) that the Foundation would step in on this level.
We also have to watch out, though - for fuckheads like ED and even Bagley we're, honestly, well-equipped to handle them as-is because they're so self-obviously stupid. But we have to remember, we are the 800 lb gorilla in most conflicts with people. We are huge. We are a huge fucking website staffed by people who do not know how to run the ninth biggest website on Teh Intarwebs. We are bigger than Blogger, bigger than eBay, and bigger than Amazon. We have no clue how to deal with that. And I count myself in that we - I have no fucking clue why I am a powerful and trusted administrator on the ninth biggest website in the world.
The point here being that we have a lot to lose by making a fund such as this. We can be a somewhat... doggedly insular group. Any such fund or body needs clear measures in place to make sure that it does not become a tool for smacking down people who are legitimately wronged and are simply choosing ineffectual or overly hostile ways of airing their grievances.
-Phil