Joseph Hiegel: It'd really help if your words weren't in one
indigestible lump of a paragraph (and without linebreaks). Makes it
hard to comprehend, and all that.
I'd agree that the last thing I'd want is a crowd of well-meaning
Wikipedians trying to help me without waiting for my saying I needed
help or telling them how. There are a lot of circumstances where
unguided 'help' would harm. Wikipedians should refrain from knee-jerk
complaining to anyone (e.g. an employer) seen to be giving a
Wikipedian trouble - it might not be in that Wikipedian's best
interests.
Also agreed that there are a lot of circumstances where someone's
behaviour is distressing but not criminal (or even civilly
actionable). I would, however, argue that we retain the right to
consider behaviour morally reprehensible even if totally legal. The
law is not designed to be a guide to moral behavior - this neither
means that staying on the right side of the law makes you a moral
person, nor that we should be persuaded to not criticise someone
simply because their actions are legal.
Daniel Brandt's actions, I believe, have been reprehensible in this,
as have some others'. It seems likely that most if not all of his
actions have been wholly within the law. The one field in which they
possibly have not is that he persisted in editing Wikipedia, through
sockpuppet accounts, even after being told to leave.
It seems to me that because you see Brandt's actions as wholly legal
(probably correctly), you enjoin us to consider them /moral/ - with
which I disagree. I don't think we have to consider this a war in
which any tactics are fine, so long as they breach no law.
I do agree with you that Wikipedia should not bow to any pressure to
'help' users who have been harrassed by changing content to appease
their harassers. Better indeed that we lose contributors than bend in
this way.
However, I don't see why the project or its contributors should be
constrained from assisting those who are harassed in other ways.
And yes, Phil should be more annoyed at the University's law
enforcement, who were quite willing to use a baseless complaint as
grounds to harass him. Brandt and those who have worked with him are
simply taking advantage of flaws in the way organisations like this
handle complaints - that a baseless complaint may be taken seriously
and cause someone trouble if the complaint arrives in the hands of
someone placed highly enough in the organisation, and the wording of
the complaint 'pushes buttons' in regards to issues that may be given
undue emphasis.
That doesn't mean that the action of lodging that complaint was
anything other than a malicious attempt to get Phil in trouble, and it
disturbs me that you consider it moral to do so.
-Matt