[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Draft Terms of Use for Review

[Sue Gardner]

On 8 September 2011 17:28, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> As I am speaking as a steward, I have to say that it's very good news
> for us. Instead of being harassed because not dealing with harassment,
> since the implementation of ToS that would be WMF's job. That's really
> good news for stewards!


The purpose of the new TOS is to support the community, not to take
over its work.

Geoff and members of the Community department have been speaking
recently with community members who are concerned about harassment on
the wikis, about what kinds of actions we might collectively take to
help prevent it. Making it clear that harassment is against the rules
seems like an obvious step, and indeed I've seen research that
suggests an inverse relationship between sites that have a TOS that
prohibits harassment, and incidents of harassment on those sites. [1]

Explicitly and publicly forbidding harassment on the wikis is a pretty
basic and straightforward thing to do.

Thanks,
Sue

[1] I wish I had that study at hand, but I don't. I found it, I think,
through a Google Scholar search related to danah boyd. The researcher
was an expert in online harassment, either at Berkman or maybe MIT.





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Sue Gardner
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