[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] School shooting threats

[Delirium]

Nathan wrote:
> If an essay is the most that will ever be achievable, so be it. I for one
> would not like to be the one being interviewed when someone from the Times
> or USA Today says "Can you explain why Wikipedia editors don't think
> reporting threats against schools to the police is a good idea?"
> At the least WP:SUICIDE should also be shortcutted by WP:THREATS and it
> should deal more specifically with the various types of threats, including
> threats of violence at schools.
>   
I'm not sure a policy would actually help anything. If something bad 
actually happened (with any sort of threat, schools or workplaces or 
subways or restaurants or public parks or otherwise), the only sort of 
policy that would satisfy people would be the extremist cover-your-ass 
policy that is used in airports---anything that sounds even vaguely like 
a threat will be treated as if it were an extremely serious and credible 
threat, reported to as many authorities as possible, the full available 
action taken, etc. But in practice most people have to exercise some 
degree of judgment, lest they spend their entire time giving interviews 
to police about spurious threats they encountered on the internet. There 
is no real way to formalize that into a "policy" that will satisfy 
anyone, though.

-Mark