[Foundation-l] Sexual harassment in Wikipedia

[Titoxd@Wikimedia]

I'm not entirely sure that a random user of an online site qualifies as an
employee of any site, so I don't think that *workplace* sexual harassment
laws have anything to do with this case. After all the commotion lately with
MySpace, it seems quite real that these situations do have some sort of
legal backing under some sort of sexual harassment statute, although IANAL.
In many of these cases, it is just safer to report the case, and if the
police asks for anything, just provide them access to the Apache and Recent
Changes logs.

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jeffrey V. Merkey
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 1:29 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual harassment in Wikipedia

THD wrote:

>Hi, Everyone,
>
>Yesterday, one guy registered an offensive username, "Rape XXX" (XXX is a
>female wikipedian's name in real life, but I want to kept the victim
>anonymous here) in Chinese Wikipedia, and this guy left a message on the
>female's user talk page: "You are in my sexual fantasy. Are you a virgin?"
I
>was furious about this guy's action and sexual harassment speech. I have
>blocked this id forever, and I also suggested the female user to report to
>police office. I want to know is there any policy on this issue? In this
>kind of situation, will the Foundation cooperate with different countries'
>police authority, and reveal the user log record to the authority?
>
>Thanks.
>
>THD
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>  
>
In the United States, sexual harassment and sexually hostile work 
environment claims require that:

1. The company/organization have more than 15 employees or its exempt 
from compliance with Federal EEOC Laws.
2. The subject of the harassment must be an employee who reports to the 
person doing the harassment.
3. Any employee, irregardless of reporting structure can make claims of 
sexually hostile work environment, but the damages
are a lot less.
4. Damages are statutory for sexual harassment claims.

An online forum cannot make claims of sexual harassment or enforce such 
claims. If anything, its a violation of site policy and may
qualify as stalking or obscenity, but its not sexual harassment under US 
Law.

Jeff
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