On 6/23/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I think people are seriously underestimating the seriousness of some personal privacy violations.
I am curious as to what situations could have happened here.
Coming from almost 20 years experience in Usenet, having trolls and kooks show up and sometimes post people's home addresses and phone numbers and work contact info including boss and so on... most of these blow over without any notable harm other than people's sensitivity.
I would be less happy with my Social Security Number or Drivers License going up somewhere, but I've had my home address and phone number spammed by nuts.
You take your victim as you find them. If you kill a person with a thin skull it is still manslaughter.
Some of our editor are not very tough characters. Perhaps they have led sheltered scholarly lives.
We do what we can to prevent harassment.
I certainly don't intend to stand for the proposition that we should encourage or stand passively by in cases of harrassment. Deleting it when inappropriate personal info is inserted somewhere is clearly good policy. Taking action against chronic abuser accounts is fine by me, too.
What worries me is the apparent prevailing opinion that this is such a terrible, serious problem. I don't see it that way, based on my prior internet experience. I don't see it that way, based on the cases I have seen on Wikipedia in the last year. I don't see it as necessary to exaggerate how serious a problem it is, to justify continuing to remove the material and block or ban accounts which post it.
The responses are justified to end attempts to cause serious harrassment of WP editors, whether those attempts are ultimately successful or not. As a rule I would expect them not to be successful, based on prior experience. They should still be responded to as a legitimate attempt to harrass someone, and all such attempts should be taken seriously, ineffectual or not.