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.
I don't think it's fair to imply that those of us who oppose specific
"anti-stalking" measures are somehow unfamiliar with the issue. Many of
us have experienced crazy people going on crusades and sending out
flurries of crazy and often threatening messages and/or phone calls. I'm
just more jaded about it, and consider it part of the cost of doing
business, so to speak, when dealing with electronic communications
systems. That sort of thing has been a part of the internet for as long
as I can remember, and the internet hasn't fallen apart because of it,
so people muddle through as always. Nobody came up with a way to solve
the problem on Usenet in the mid-1990s without making other things
worse, and I don't think you're going to come up with a magic solution
today on Wikipedia without breaking something else either.
-Mark