[Foundation-l] Stalking Article

[SlimVirgin]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 3:26 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com> wrote:
> When we talk about real out-of-wiki harassment, we should also keep in mind
> that the experts here are really the police.  We should be encouraging
> victims to reach out to the authorities for help, and not pretend that a
> community of volunteer editors can really solve these problems.

The police will only deal with the most serious of cases. They're not
going to get involved in a case where people are speculating on
websites as to whether a woman wants to be raped, what kind of
underwear she wears, and how many people she had to sleep with to get
a job. This kind of talk has led to me receiving threats of violence,
and even death, by e-mail, but they're from throwaway accounts, and
there's no telling whether there's serious intent; in fact, there
almost certainly isn't, but who knows whether there will be one day.
The police need to see something solid before they can act.

In the meantime, it would help enormously if the Foundation would
prevent wikiprojects from actually *helping* the people who are
targeting volunteers -- for example, by promoting them to bureaucrat
on other projects, or to admin on Wikipedia; by making sure their
websites aren't on the spam list; by allowing their harassment to be
discussed and linked to on Wikipedia -- which is what's currently
happening.

Sarah