[WikiEN-l] Violent threats and Armed Blowfish

[Mark Ryan]

Forgive me for resurrecting a topic which has previously been written
off by trolling by a 'known troll', and further forgive me for linking
to Wikipedia Review.

Armed Blowfish claims to have received a series of threatening emails
from an anonymous Wikipedian, in what seems to be a sloppy and
worrying vigilante action. The guy who runs Wikipedia Review has
supported Armed Blowfish's story (not that I'm sure that says a lot),
and posted the whole lot of emails, with certain names redacted, to
Wikipedia Review. Take a read for yourself:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=16053

I tend towards believing Armed Blowfish's account, but even if you
don't, it raises some important questions about how we deal with such
off-wiki behaviour of Wikipedia users and editors.

Firstly, if we were to find out who this user was, should we allow
them to continue as part of the community? How appropriate is it for a
user to threaten to cut off the fingers of another person unless they
get discredited by the ArbCom? If the evidence is off-wiki and shaky,
how does that change things?

Can Wikimedia/Wikipedia take any further steps to emphasise that such
vigilante-style idiots are not acting on behalf of the Foundation? Did
anything like this happen with the Daniel Brandt situation? Anyone
demanding things of him on behalf of the Foundation when they had no
right to do so?

Should Wikimedia do more in the way of reducing online crime, by
establishing relationships with the online branches of law enforcement
agencies?

Finally, if the ArbCom member whose name is redacted in the Wikipedia
Review emails really did receive those threatening emails, is he or
she prepared to publicly acknowledge that they were indeed sent to
him/her?

~Mark Ryan