Greg;
Thanks for your concerns. I believe that the Foundation should take the step of affirming that they will not stand for stalking of users, not necessaily a huge banhammer. The group of users would be more productive in hunting down and bringing justice to the stalkers.
As a side digression, there is a measure in Congress, HR 6123, that would outlaw stalking over the internet.
----- Original Message ---- From: Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, June 8, 2008 10:19:00 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Stalking Article
On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 11:54 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.plrd@yahoo.com wrote: [snip]
RickK left because his family was threatened.
Not to belittle your concern about Cyberstalking... but ... RickK 'left' after being blocked for 3RR in a dispute with SPUI of all people. (A tangent, I know but I've found that uncorrected statements have a terrible tendency of becoming 'the truth'. ... )
At the end of the day no one on Wikipedia or at Wikimedia is empowered to stop real staking (can we drop the 'cyber'? It makes it sound like a video game. If you're being stalked does it matter how it got started?)... Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a vigilante posse, not law enforcement.
Stalking which is serious and real.. rather than an extended online pissing match... stuff that endangers people can't be improved by anointing a few more users as holy emperors of the Wiki. Take a look at DavidShankbone's comments on Digg: David's a nice guy and I have a lot of sympathy for what he's gone through... But he writes: "The Wikimedia Foundation needs to publicly support the creation of a group of Wikipedia volunteers who have the authority to define harassment and stalking and take action against it. They will advise the Stewards of cases that require a full block across all projects of an IP range." ... Now seriously, if your problems can be actually resolved by smacking the enemy with a ZOMG WMF WIDE BAN, thats not stalking... it's an internet pissing match between people who are taking Wikipedia far too seriously.
Is it a problem that so many good contributors have a problem avoiding Internet Drama? Sure... But to call random internet drama stalking is akin to yelling "rape" every time you get some unwanted flirtation. Overuse of the a serious word diminishes its importance and makes it insufficiently expressive when we really need it.
In fairness, there are a lot of people on English Wikipedia who have been stalked, attacked, and otherwise mistreated in serious ways. Yet, many of those people have also been among those calling for more impressive ban hammers. I don't think that just because someone is asking for an internet-drama solution doesn't mean they don't haven't been harmed in a serious way.
But the ZOMG WMF WIDE BAN can't actually solve their real problems... but the real stalking is always intermixed with regular Internet drama, so I guess that internet drama solutions are what get called for because actually addressing the stalking is much harder, if not sometimes impossible, and perhaps when you're looking for revenge you'll take what you can get... ::shrugs:: I can only guess.
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