On Dec 11, 2007 3:08 PM, Michael Noda michael.noda@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 11, 2007 2:59 PM, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 11, 2007 2:30 PM, Michael Noda michael.noda@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. I haven't been directly involved in a harassment or stalking incident (yet; I figure that as long as I'm an active editor here my number's bound to come up eventually), but I'd like to be of use in the creation of a real Anti-Harassment and Anti-Stalking incident, because it's a Big Serious Deal. The seriousness of the issue, and my depth of caring about it, are also why I the current main advocates for victims of harassment annoy me so much; they handle their own cases poorly *and then turn around and encourage others to emulate their errors.* This is then compounded by displays of hostility towards anyone fool enough to question whatever the current approach is. Unlike the entire rest of the project, this is not an area we can give amateur opinions in and let our mistakes work themselves out; for the vast majority of victims, there <s>will</s> should be only one incident, and only one chance to get it right.
For the serious cases that are our real concern, we need involvement of professional law enforcement more than amateur sleuthing, restraining orders more than whack-a-mole blocks, and we need people to know when and how to invoke these things. Right now, our standard modus operandi is to blither around like drunken giants until things blow up out of control. We need to do better.
I think the problem here is that unless the stalking is egregious, it's very hard to get the police involved. As far as I know there has been one successful instance of that, and in that case not only was the stalking beyond scary, but the stalker made the mistake of stalking several individuals, including one who happens to be quite well-known and wealthy. Even so, that stalker was out of jail within months, and continues to sockpuppet on Wikipedia.
So, what do you to in the cases where it's not serious enough to involved the police? Say, for example, people start investigating your edits, discover who you are, and call your elderly father, or an old girlfriend, or old work colleagues, or your boss. Perhaps they manage to get some scurrilous and damaging bit of invented nonsense published on slashdot or some sensationalist online rag. If the harasser doesn't do anything overtly threatening, then the police won't get involved. How can Wikipedia respond?
As it happens, Kelly Martin outlines exactly how one does this (and otherwise successfully create an anti-stalking policy environment) in a blog post that went up in the last couple hours.
Relevant excerpt:
"Had the Foundation formally notified a stalker that he or she was denied permission to access Wikipedia, the Foundation could then press charges for computer trespass against the stalker when he or she subsequently accessed the site. Such charges would give the authorities leverage to put the perp away; proving that case is far easier than proving the much harder stalking or harassment case -- especially when the victim refuses to personally identify himself or herself to authorities."
(The rest of the post is definitely worth reading. It can be found at http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/2007/12/wikipedia-al-qaeda.html It is, of course, in Ms. Martin's inimitable style; but she's not wrong on this.)
Well, it's an opinion, anyway. This sentence "Wikipedia instead established its own investigative office, where they basically sanctioned the stalking of people they identified as stalkers" is at best an enormous misunderstanding, at worst a deliberate falsehood, and it's not the first such I've seen from that blog, so I'd take everything posted there with an equally enormous grain of salt.
Regarding Wikipedia's legal options, it would be good to get the opinion of a lawyer on this - for example, Mike Godwin, Wikipedia's legal counsel.