[Foundation-l] Stalking Article

[Lars Aronsson]

Brian McNeil wrote:

> Most of the people commenting on this issue have not experienced 
> anything like this, or are significantly more stress-resistant 
> than myself. The same is most definitely not true for all 
> people. Call us "delicate" if you like,

First, I'm not calling you delicate.

However, this is a situation where, if all I say is "poor you" and 
*hug*, then I will be viewed as sympathetic, but if I start to 
analyze the problem and ask questions, then I will be perceived as 
cold-hearted and doubting your personal story and whatever.  
Trying to *solve* a problem like this is very unrewarding.  It's a 
lot easier to utter empty phrases.  So, are we here to utter empty 
phrases, or are we here to seek a solution to the problem?

When it is said that the Foundation has to act, this implies that 
no-one else can act, and absolutely nothing else can be done 
against the problem.  I refuse to believe that this is true.  A 
troll who just wants to stall the finding of a solution could in 
fact say exactly that. In everything we do, the Foundation is 
going to be a bottleneck with limited resources.  Every salaried 
hour, we need to cover with more donations.  It doesn't scale.

> So, I'm all for some measures to size up and deal with on-wiki 
> harassment and stalking. I don't know what is needed,

So apparently we need to get some idea of what can be done, not 
only centrally by the Foundation but by the local community, such 
as the language community or national chapter.  There has to be 
some "expert" or current best practices on how to deal with 
stalking (not just an expert on how to stalk) out there, that we 
can verify through sources.

In addition to dealing with stalking, we also need a way to 
determine what is stalking and what is a false alarm or trolling.  
This is not because Brian's or David Shankbone's stories are 
false, but because false stories could have sounded exactly the 
same.  How do we tell the difference? The anonymity culture of 
Wikipedia means a completely anonymous username can claim to have 
been stalked and still refuse to reveal their identity to anybody.  
I just don't know how such a case can be handled.



-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se