On Dec 11, 2007 3:56 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
No, I was asking why people who were trying to develop the Wikipedia Anti-Harassment and Anti-Stalking program were doing so off-site. Hardly any of the victims were at the tea party; it was by invitation only, and if you didn't get the invite you didn't know the party was happening.
Because the cowardly little creeps who stalk and harass take pride in the discomfort of their victims. That seems to be the whole point of their behavior. "Oh look, I made XXX so upset she told on me!" This is compounded by the adolescent mentality that says things like "If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen", "Your skin is too thin", and "you're a lightning rod for troublemakers, you should leave". Such discussions are of necessity done in private; the privacy was intended to create a safer place to air such issues.
A natural part of the stalking discussion related to sockpuppets. One particularly pernicious stalker -- one who has been jailed in meatspace for his actions -- has used well over a hundred sockpuppets (and that's just counting the ones we bother tagging with {{sockpuppet}}; I'm of the opinion that we should [[WP:DENY]] even that, but it's something of a bookkeeping issue.) . It's a favored form of attack. So the discussion dealt with how to recognize sockpuppets from the start. That's the context in which Durova's "sleuthing" arose; but the infamous email was (at least in my eyes) just a "by the way, this is how I do it", and since many -- most? -- of the participants in the discussion were already pretty familiar with sockpuppet-identification techniques, nobody so much as responded to the email.
I was disappointed when Durova gave up her sysop bit; ArbCom certainly wasn't going to remove it for a single faulty (and quickly reversed) block.
The walls of this tiny teapot have been expanded far more than is reasonable by an essentially pointless tempest.