[Foundation-l] Stalking Article

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
I think you should take a closer look.. It is way beyond a pissing contest.
Belittling it as "people taking it way to serious" negates the real chilling
effect it has.

There are good people, some of the very best in my book, that are leaving
and have left our projects because they feel threatened, because they do not
want to be the next road kill, the next statistic. If anything, once people
start leaving our project because of stalkers, when you can force your way
by this type of behaviour, there is no longer a NPOV Wikipedia.

When you suggest that it is part of a tit for tat game, you may be right but
it does not matter. This type of behaviour is not acceptable and the most
important part that we can to address it is to deal with it in a
professional way. This means serious attention of the issues from within our
organisation and it may include contacting the appropriate police
organisation and following up / monitoring the further evolution of this
behaviour.

Suggesting murder, rape, the disfigurement with sulphuric acid is not
acceptable either on wiki or off wiki. It is not only a threat to the person
involved, it is a threat to us all. This is not a figure of speech, this is
not freedom of expression, this is the stuff where we have to defend
*our *freedom
of expression. My and your freedom is limited by where the freedom of
someone else starts and so is the freedom of the hoodlums who behave in this
way.

Thanks,
     GerardM

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 7:19 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 11:54 PM, Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd at 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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