Geez... it took me a while to get through all the messages posted here in the last two days, and none of them were even posted by myself (though my name came up once or twice).

OK... let's see what's going on with regard to the secret... oops, I mean private (really, the only difference between "secrecy" and "privacy" is that "privacy" spins better when you're trying to support or endorse it) mailing list to discuss "harassment".

People on that list, or alleged to be on it, are becoming the subject of vague calumnies from others who intimate that all sorts of sinister things are getting plotted there for the purpose of causing trouble for others outside the list. Presenting actual evidence for the purpose of either supporting or refuting such claims runs into difficulties due to aggressive enforcement of rules that get in the way of it, so the discussion mostly takes the form of wild speculation on the part of the accusers and defensiveness on the part of the targets. Some claim that the list is doing actively malicious things; others who don't go so far still say that being on that list is likely to cause one to be enmeshed and reinforced in a cluster of memes, kept alive and magnified through the sounding board of a group of like-minded people, which will tend to bring about a bad attitude that is perhaps incompatible with being a good, non-drama-stirring member of the Wikipedia community.

Sound familiar? How does it feel to have the shoe on the other foot for a change?