[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[Will Beback]

William Pietri wrote:
> Will Beback wrote:
>   
>> [story snipped]
>>
>> 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?
>>   
>>     
>
> My view:
>
> We should not alter article content one iota in response to external 
> badgering. The only thing that has changed is our view of them, not the 
> NPOV view of them. Ergo, we behave exactly as if they were harassing
>
> Editors in good standing should be able to link to the harassment to the 
> extent that they believe it serves some legitimate purpose in 
> furtherance of Wikipedia's mission. If they are linking for some other 
> reason (e.g., or gossip or furthering the harassment) they should be 
> dealt with through our usual mechanisms for miscreants and the 
> clue-deficient.
>
> We should tell the editor that we hope they understand that articles 
> should not be affected in any way by internet drama. To the extent that 
> the editor wants to take defensive legal action (like getting a 
> restraining order) we should support them. 
Why would we support an editor in getting a restraining order, but not 
support them by doing any restraining ourselves? What form would this 
support take?

> And we should encourage them 
> to ask for a fellow editor to take over maintaining the article(s) in 
> question, hopefully from a pool of people with thick skins and 
> diplomatic skills.
>
>   
So you're saying that if an editor is harassed by an outside group then 
the editor (and Wikipedia) should give in to that harassment. And you 
think that won't affect the POV of a topic? If a group succeeds in 
driving off one editor after another, how many thick-skinned editors are 
there willing to take their places?

> And in my opinion, we should always reach out to the offended party or 
> community to at least make nice, and hopefully to work with them to the 
> extent possible. A vast amount of this drama comes when all sides 
> believe that we should have a great encyclopedia, and they just have a 
> different idea of what that means than us. Often that's just because 
> we've thought about it for years and they've thought about it for minutes.
>
> William
>
>   
Let's think about it long enough to come up with a formal policy or 
procedure to handle it. You make some good suggestions, but mail-list 
posting don't write policies.

Will