FWIW (and I agree with Sean that, were I involved in a situation à la Phil's, I'd
not want my fellow Wikipedians to attempt to insinuate themselves into my life; I imagine
that most are similarly disposed), there is a profound difference, at least in the United
States, between that which inflicts emotional distress and that which is criminally
prosecutable as stalking/harassment (as well, for reasons of, you know, free speech, there
ought to be). The psychological trauma of certain forms of harassment may be real, but
not all of those forms of harassment are criminally proscribed (or even civilly
actionable), and there is nothing at all wrong, IMHO, with our telling contributors who
are disinclined to endure "harassment" that perhaps they ought to edit
elsewhere; even as the project might lose certain valuable users, the loss of the
disruption concomitant to those users and their expressions of woe over harassment would
likely outweigh the former (pace Phil, Wikipedia
isn't obligating users to endure harassment; at worst, we are saying that one may
edit Wikipedia and open himself to harassment or elect not to edit and forgo harassment;
I'm not at all uncomfortable with that). In any event, as to the meta-question, I
can't abide the suggestion that Brandt has done anything morally wrong; if he is able
to coerce Wikipedians into arguing for the deletion of his article, he ought to essay such
coercion. In Phil's case, his quarrel ought to be with law enforcement, who may have
violated his civil rights (or who, in any event, surely acted untowardly and ought to be
reprimanded, even as there may be no legal means by which to compel such reprimanding),
not with Brandt, et al., who acted simply to disseminate quasi-public information. The
question, of course, is whether the project ought to subjugate encyclopedic concerns to
(at best) tangentially encyclopedic concerns. We must weigh, I think, the potential loss
of editors/sysops to the
potential loss of encyclopedic content, and I think we must err on the side of preserving
encyclopedic content. As I noted at [[Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 May
10#Template:HurricaneWarning]], the loss of a few readers--or even excellent
contributors--is likely to have only a de minimis deleterious effect on the project. I am
eminently confident that, even as longtime editors might be intimated off-wiki, other
users will arrive to fill the vacated roles. Many, in other contexts (e.g., userbox
debates), often note that the community aspect of our project exists only to further
encyclopedic goals; we ought not to forget that. Just as we're not (or shouldn't
be) concerned with the external consequences of our editing (we are, after all,
disinterested encyclopedists, not harm-limiting journalists), so too ought not we to be
concerned for the extra-Wiki harms that befall individual contributors, until the loss of
contributors becomes so great that the project
cannot survive; I do not believe our loss will ever reach that level.
Cordially,
Joe Hiegel
[[User:Jahiegel]]
poore5(a)adelphia.net wrote:
I made my name and my information publically viewable
because I don't
believe that these people can actually hurt me in any concrete way. Maybe
that was naive but I still can't think of how. They can be annoying and
harassing, but if I don't let it get to me, it won't. Part of administrative
responsibility is having the force of will to brush aside the people who
don't deserve the recognition that giving a damn about them or what they do
gives them.
Ryan
Ryan,
Harassment and stalking are crimes for a reason. Though you probably don't mean to be
dismissive of victims of these crimes, you come across that way when you say that you
"don't let it get to you". The psychological trauma from harassment and
stalking is real. Wikipedia needs to do a better job identifying the people that have
harmed by this abuse and supporting them through the experience. This is a wise course of
action for many reasons.
Sydney
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l