As someone who really did open an FBI case last year about a credible threat
that arose from wiki-stuff, some of y'all need a primer on Goin' to the Cops
101.
1. Their time and resources are finite.
2. They don't like paperwork.
3. Part of their job is to quell people who want to misuse the system for
frivolous complaints.
So you get a series of questions. Stuff like:
* Why do you consider this a threat?
* Are you really scared by that?
* Have you contacted the ISP?
* What have they done?
* Have you contacted the folks who run Wikipedia?
* What have they done?
* Why didn't you call us sooner?
And if you don't have good answers to all those questions plus records of
the doors you knocked on before calling law enforcement, you'll end up
looking pretty foolish. And when you think how many people who really deal
with criminal stalkers have trouble getting rudimentary help from the law
because they're the needle in a haystack of frivolous complaints, you may
feel regret.
Grawp targeted me too. It was an annoyance. Be reasonable, people. Start
up a petition to the ISP.
-Durova
On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 1:49 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
Brian wrote:
Marc, your argument does not address the article
I posted. In fact, it
contradicts it. You say it plays into his "turf," but as I pointed out,
the
method pits him against himself.
The future of vandalism bots on Wikipedia is *certainly* machine learning
techniques. The question is, is the community going to waste their time
contacting the police, or figuring out what it would take to get the
source
code and some funds from the Foundation?
I say it again, contacting the police and the FBI is not the solution.
Fixing the bots is.
I can only marvel at the blind religious faith that IT people exhibit in
technical solutions to human problems. It's as though the magic formula
that will make all the problems go away is is a form of God's creation
that is just around the corner. At least the Scientologists had the
decency to call their science a church.
Calling the cops may indeed be uncreative and heavy-handed on the
individual vandal involved, but sometimes it's the right way to go; at
least it's a tool that can be kept handy in one's kit. (I don't know
enough about the specifics of this case to say this is the place to
apply it, and I don't want to know.) The magic solution can be just as
heavy-handed on many who have nothing to do vandalism.
Ec
On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 4:55 PM, Marc Riddell
wrote:
> on 12/29/08 6:43 PM, Brian at wrote:
>
>> Contacting the police and the FBI. It is an uncreative, heavy-handed
measure
>>
>> that does not solve the problem. It will not stop this vandal and it
will
>> not stop future vandals.
>>
> I disagree, Brian. Dealing with him using the computer as the mechanism
is
> playing right into him. The computer is his
turf, and the far-reaching
> exposure is exactly what he's wanting. The computer setting is something
he
> feels he can control - the authorities would
be something he could not.
>
> Marc
>
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