(cc'd to Foundation-l because of para 3)
School shootings are extraordinarily high profile events, nearly always followed by investigations of warnings and foreshadowing events - where blame is cast in a wide net on anyone who failed to notice what, in hindsight, was a "clear sign." Often these "clear signs" are only clear at all in hindsight, because as human beings we interpret what we see based on what we have seen in the past and few of us have encountered threats from children that turned out to be very serious.
Wikipedia is in a unique position to suffer from the recriminations associated with school shootings, and our role is only going to become more widespread and high profile as time goes on. Threats made on Wikipedia have the characteristics of being written, indelible, and traceable to a specific computer (given the right resources). Additionally, threats on Wikipedia are *seen* - this is key, because few threats of violence on Wikipedia get past recent change patrollers and watchlists of attentive editors. So, when a school shooting threat is posting on Wikipedia it is time stamped, indelible, traceable and seen more or less immediately.
The question, then, is what if any moral imperative does this impose on us? And if some of us feel compelled to report such instances to the police, and others do not, what if any should the extent of policy be on this issue? Personally I can't agree to any Wikipedia policy that mandates or punishes behavior off-wiki. On the other hand, I do think a policy that encourages all editors to report specific school threats to AN and (when willing and possible) to the police is workable and a good idea. Frankly, I'm surprised and I'm sure many others would be as well to learn that there isn't already such a Wikipedia policy. At a minimum, we should have a policy of forwarding all such threats to the Wikimedia Foundation for "official" action if necessary.
This issue is distinct from the issue of threats of self-harm, suicide or harm to public figures. While vague threats to celebrities and "I'ma kill Joe, he's a dickwad" are often reverted and ignored as simple and unserious vandalism, school threats have a unique nature in public sentiment and require a unique position in policy. I'm writing this to the two lists because its an issue that deserves a higher profile discussion than on a proposed policy page (already nominated for deletion) with a couple editors who think the policy is trying to force people in calling the cops when they don't want to.
Nathan
Nathan wrote:
While vague threats to celebrities and "I'ma kill Joe, he's a dickwad" are often reverted and ignored as simple and unserious vandalism, school threats have a unique nature in public sentiment and require a unique position in policy.
I don't agree with this leap of logic. They only "require" a unique position in policy if your only consideration is public relations. If your consideration also includes morality, then they require quite the opposite---carefully considering the situation and making an informed judgment as to the pros and cons of various courses of action. A policy that requires all school threats to be reported would probably be the best policy for cover-your-ass PR in hindsight if anything happened, but it would certainly not be ethical to ruin children's lives over obviously not-credible threats.
-Mark
Close to my sentiments on this.
Delirium wrote:
Nathan wrote:
While vague threats to celebrities and "I'ma kill Joe, he's a dickwad" are often reverted and ignored as simple and unserious vandalism, school threats have a unique nature in public sentiment and require a unique position in policy.
I don't agree with this leap of logic. They only "require" a unique position in policy if your only consideration is public relations. If your consideration also includes morality, then they require quite the opposite---carefully considering the situation and making an informed judgment as to the pros and cons of various courses of action. A policy that requires all school threats to be reported would probably be the best policy for cover-your-ass PR in hindsight if anything happened, but it would certainly not be ethical to ruin children's lives over obviously not-credible threats.
-Mark
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On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Voice of All jschulz_4587@msn.com wrote:
Close to my sentiments on this.
Delirium wrote:
Nathan wrote:
While vague threats to celebrities and "I'ma kill Joe, he's a dickwad" are often reverted and ignored as simple and unserious vandalism, school threats have a unique nature in public sentiment and require a unique position in policy.
I don't agree with this leap of logic. They only "require" a unique position in policy if your only consideration is public relations. If your consideration also includes morality, then they require quite the opposite---carefully considering the situation and making an informed judgment as to the pros and cons of various courses of action. A policy that requires all school threats to be reported would probably be the best policy for cover-your-ass PR in hindsight if anything happened, but it would certainly not be ethical to ruin children's lives over obviously not-credible threats.
However...
1. Most people aren't nearly as good at detecting credible threats as they (or you) think. Police and other authorities are - there are specific training and analysis methods involved, including psych consults if there are certain warning flags, etc. Ask any crisis-trained psychiatrist, law enforcement officer who investigates these, etc. It's a complex problem. They much much prefer that you hand it to them to figure it out.
And...
2. The actual degree of "ruin children's lives" that happens after a false report, absent other indicators of impending violence, is relatively small. In most cases there are no criminal charges, only a warning and report made.
Law enforcement emphatically encourage reporting, they would rather chase down leads on 100 false alarms than not get the call on the one kid who is about to go to school and try to kill someone (or themselves, or whatever).
I have not reported every single threatening thing posted by a school age user on Wikipedia. But I have reported a bunch or helped with reports on them, and will continue to do so. If it's credible enough that any administrator or other user is worried about it and reports it somewhere, they and others should hand it to trained authorities and let them figure it out from there.
George Herbert wrote:
- Most people aren't nearly as good at detecting credible threats as
they (or you) think. Police and other authorities are - there are specific training and analysis methods involved, including psych consults if there are certain warning flags, etc. Ask any crisis-trained psychiatrist, law enforcement officer who investigates these, etc.
Police and other authorities are actually quite poor at it as well. The fundamental problem is that there are not credible "warning signs" that don't have extremely high rates of false positives, to the point where around 100% of individuals distinguished by the criteria are false positives. That's to be expected, of course, since school shootings are extremely rare, so in statistical terms, the number of future school shooters in any population you care to distinguish is effectively 0---you'd have to track down not 100 false positives, but hundreds of thousands, and still might not find any legitimate positives (the number of actual school shooters in the history of schooling is below 200). In fact there is not a single documented case in which a report from the public averted a school shooting. I could think of some cases where it might at least have a nonzero chance, such as gun-shop owners reporting suspicious attempts to purchase weapons, but Wikipedia posts aren't among them.
-Mark, who probably fulfills a bunch of the "warning signs" himself but discourages harrassment-via-cop, please
Another problem is that once a policy is made to say "Take ALL of them seriously, always", it further encourages trolls to disrupt schools by making threats resulting in cancellations, delays, lockdowns, weapons checks and general panic.
Delirium wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
- Most people aren't nearly as good at detecting credible threats as
they (or you) think. Police and other authorities are - there are specific training and analysis methods involved, including psych consults if there are certain warning flags, etc. Ask any crisis-trained psychiatrist, law enforcement officer who investigates these, etc.
Police and other authorities are actually quite poor at it as well. The fundamental problem is that there are not credible "warning signs" that don't have extremely high rates of false positives, to the point where around 100% of individuals distinguished by the criteria are false positives. That's to be expected, of course, since school shootings are extremely rare, so in statistical terms, the number of future school shooters in any population you care to distinguish is effectively 0---you'd have to track down not 100 false positives, but hundreds of thousands, and still might not find any legitimate positives (the number of actual school shooters in the history of schooling is below 200). In fact there is not a single documented case in which a report from the public averted a school shooting. I could think of some cases where it might at least have a nonzero chance, such as gun-shop owners reporting suspicious attempts to purchase weapons, but Wikipedia posts aren't among them.
-Mark, who probably fulfills a bunch of the "warning signs" himself but discourages harrassment-via-cop, please
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Hoi, There is not much that we can do that is credible. There are things closer to home that we do not deal with which is a more credible threat. Problems with harassment, people leaving our projects because they feel unsafe. People who take pleasure in outing Wikimedians with name and address. People who find pleasure in maligning the people of our organisation and do whatever they can to make their life miserable.
These nasty activities are happening, they are observable, they are even punishable under the law. They do not only damage to the people directly involved, they make some of our best and brightest turn away from their Wiki activities in fear of being next. These are not theoretical dangers, some of them are arbcom cases, Some are outside what the arbcom wants to consider.
When you consider the risk of someone actually emptying a magazine of bullets in a frenzy of despair, it is small, there are few people who can adequately deal with such cases. This does not mean that we should not pay attention, We should but we should pay more attention to what is happening right in front of our face. We should not tolerate the nastiness of certain people with the argument that they have done some good as well. These two faced are deliberately maintaining a positive side in order to get away with their dark side.
If you ask my motivation for this rant, it is seeing people I cherish as the best and brightest of us telling me why they are moving away. They often tell only the people they trust why they are moving away. When I see them suffer under this barrage of evil it makes me really angry. It is this anger that makes me speak out. Thanks, GerardM
Threads like the school are playing for the audience. When doing a risk analysis you will find that
On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 4:59 AM, Voice of All jschulz_4587@msn.com wrote:
Another problem is that once a policy is made to say "Take ALL of them seriously, always", it further encourages trolls to disrupt schools by making threats resulting in cancellations, delays, lockdowns, weapons checks and general panic.
Delirium wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
- Most people aren't nearly as good at detecting credible threats as
they (or you) think. Police and other authorities are - there are specific training and analysis methods involved, including psych consults if there are certain warning flags, etc. Ask any crisis-trained psychiatrist, law enforcement officer who investigates these, etc.
Police and other authorities are actually quite poor at it as well. The fundamental problem is that there are not credible "warning signs" that don't have extremely high rates of false positives, to the point where around 100% of individuals distinguished by the criteria are false positives. That's to be expected, of course, since school shootings are extremely rare, so in statistical terms, the number of future school shooters in any population you care to distinguish is effectively 0---you'd have to track down not 100 false positives, but hundreds of thousands, and still might not find any legitimate positives (the number of actual school shooters in the history of schooling is below 200). In fact there is not a single documented case in which a report from the public averted a school shooting. I could think of some cases where it might at least have a nonzero chance, such as gun-shop owners reporting suspicious attempts to purchase weapons, but Wikipedia posts aren't among them.
-Mark, who probably fulfills a bunch of the "warning signs" himself but discourages harrassment-via-cop, please
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-- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/School-shooting-threats-tp17379956p17454005.html Sent from the WikiMedia Foundation mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 2:21 AM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
- Most people aren't nearly as good at detecting credible threats as
they (or you) think. Police and other authorities are - there are specific training and analysis methods involved, including psych consults if there are certain warning flags, etc. Ask any crisis-trained psychiatrist, law enforcement officer who investigates these, etc.
Police and other authorities are actually quite poor at it as well. The fundamental problem is that there are not credible "warning signs" that don't have extremely high rates of false positives, to the point where around 100% of individuals distinguished by the criteria are false positives. That's to be expected, of course, since school shootings are extremely rare, so in statistical terms, the number of future school shooters in any population you care to distinguish is effectively 0---you'd have to track down not 100 false positives, but hundreds of thousands, and still might not find any legitimate positives (the number of actual school shooters in the history of schooling is below 200). In fact there is not a single documented case in which a report from the public averted a school shooting. I could think of some cases where it might at least have a nonzero chance, such as gun-shop owners reporting suspicious attempts to purchase weapons, but Wikipedia posts aren't among them.
-Mark, who probably fulfills a bunch of the "warning signs" himself but discourages harrassment-via-cop, please
When I was in high school, I certainly displayed a bunch of what are commonly interpreted as warning signs now... I had access to and experience with firearms (target shooting with parents in the country, and after age 16 by myself at ranges around our house), explosives and pyrotechnics (only used for fun kabooms at beach parties), hung out with a small social group who were in many ways misfits in the larger school social circles, etc.
A close friend of mine was, in fact, investigated by the police and school administration over a joke which was made (by others) while he was on Homecoming Court our senior year. It was stunningly evident to everyone that there had been no "threat" per se, or any capability or intent to carry anything out, and no harm was done. Nobody got arrested. The police and school called my friend's father, and later met with him and his father in person at school, and it was all friendly and professional.
The idea that we're ruining people's lives by reporting things is balderdash. Police do not use SWAT teams to arrest kids on first indication that there may have been a threat. We are not contributing to societal abuse of kids who are merely different.
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