On 9/20/07, Matthew Britton <matthew.britton(a)btinternet.com> wrote:
SlimVirgin wrote:
On 9/20/07, Matthew Britton
<matthew.britton(a)btinternet.com> wrote:
Brian McNeil wrote:
Stalkers are not a nice thing to deal with and I
think you're underplaying
the seriousness of the issue. They may be no serious risk of physical threat
and thus your comments about bodyguards are appropriate. However, you're not
taking into account what it is like when you get death threats by email and
snail-mail.
About 6 years ago I had to deal with the divorce of my current partner when
she left her husband after he assaulted her. I was made aware through a
third party that he had obtained a shotgun and was looking for me. In the
end - thanks to me employing good legal representation and hiding my
location - he decided to turn the aforementioned weapon on himself.
Don't joke about stalking, it happens.
Brian.
Yes, stalking happens. It happens in situations such as that which you
describe; this is certainly a problem and such incidents should
certainly be taken seriously.
But it doesn't happen because someone was banned from a website.
I don't have time to respond in full to this, but I'm afraid it very
much does happen because people are blocked or banned, and some of it
has been quite serious. Nothing rising to the level of being pursued
with a weapon, but very upsetting threats of violence to family
members, and attempts to destroy people's careers and reputations.
Sarah
There is stalking, and then there is trolling with intent to cause the
maximum amount of fuss and emotional distress.
"I'm going to kill your family" is, in terms of emotional distress per
word, about as efficient as you can get. It is therefore hardly
surprising that it is a common trolling tactic.
One or two unfortunate cases aside (which I cannot help but feel were
not entirely unprovoked) it is this latter issue, not stalking per se,
which Wikipedia is experiencing.
Furthermore, the issue isn't limited to administrators -- it's perfectly
possible to make enemies on-line without having any such extra abilities
(though one could argue it helps) -- so discussion of the problem as
though it is a phenomenon unique to administrators, as has been
happening in this thread, is hardly useful.
-Gurch
While I agree that 90-something % of "death threats" and the like
online amount to extreme cases of trolling (people who have no
real-world intent or practical mindset / opportunity to actually
commit violence against the threatened target), there is a small
fringe of actual legitimate threats of violence, and some are followed
through on.
Enough of them are real credible threats that it's not unreasonable to
treat them, categorically, as a legitimate risk.
A focusing phenomena has been noticed where more of both trolling and
legitimate threats are made to people percieved to be in positions of
authority - newsgroup moderators, AOL forum moderators, ISP staff, and
probably Wikipedia administrators.
That said, I don't agree with going into a bunker mentality about
this. If you go into hiding afterwards, the bad guy / troll won.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com