[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting Will Beback <will.beback.1 at gmail.com>:

> Steve Summit wrote:
>> I may disagree with everything Michael Moore says and stands for,
>> but I will defend pretty strongly not only his right to say so,
>> but also the right of our encyclopedia readers to evaluate it for
>> themselves.
>>
>
> I think we need a new example. The Michael Moore issue us barely even
> real harassment. Here's the story of "user:Joe". This is a true, recent
> story, but with the information changed because it was indeed harassment.
>
> Let's call the editor in good standing "Joe" and the the issue
> cockfighting, though it wasn't. It's a topic with an eager and engaged
> group of proponents. There's a website called "RoosterChat" and
> Wikipedia had an article on it (that was eventually deleted as
> non-notable). Joe took some actions and edits to correct the NPOV of
> articles on the topic and became the target of that community's ire.
> They posted messages on their chatboard with his personal information,
> including phone number, and a request that board members call him at
> work to convey their feelings. The immediate situation was handled
> through diplomacy, but in the long term the editor was forced to reduce
> his involvement in the topic and take other steps to restore his privacy.
>
> How should a policy deal with this situation? Should we maintain our
> link to the chatboard (which could only used because it was the subject
> of the article). Should we link to the harassment as an example of that
> community's activism? Should we tell valued editor that the link is more
> important than his privacy or well-being?

As I've attempted to explain before, having the link to their article doesn't
substantially reduce the editor's privacy or wellbeing. It is especially
ridiculous in either your RoosterChat case or the MichaelMore case because
anyone who is looking for information about RoosterChat will want to know what
the website is anyways and can google for it. So all we are doing is
compromising NPOV and losing the moral highground of not involving our
encyclopedia with our disputes.