[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[George Herbert]

On 10/16/07, Will Beback <will.beback.1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu wrote:
> > Will Beback wrote:
> >
> >> The aim of creating some kind of policy or guideline to cover the
> >> issue is to give editors a road map of how to handle this type
> >> of problem to minimize the disruptions that have resulted from
> >> off-site harassment. Simply saying it doesn't exist doesn't help.
> >>
> >
> > No one is claiming the off-site harassment doesn't exist or that off-site
> > harassement is not disruptive. The observation being made is that this form of
> > attempting to deal with it, by banning links, appears to be creating more
> > disruption than it is stopping.
> >
> What form of dealing with it do you recommend?
>
> W.

I don't think we have a good solution identified yet.

I don't know that either the Foundation or "Community" *can* solve the
problem... acknowledging it's real and being in a position to actually
change things are two very different things.

People expect the Foundation and/or Community to be things it isn't.

The link bans... might have helped.  But I think it's worthwhile
revisiting the underlying problem and review whether they really did
any good at all.

I think it's clear that they were largely ineffective at slowing down
or stifling the off-wiki abuse, which is where most of the problem
seems to be.  It may have reduced the harrassment on-wiki, but I don't
know to what degree over and above blocking abusers just for being
abusive does.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com