[WikiEN-l] Violent threats and Armed Blowfish

[Nathan]

Does anyone actually think that this "AnonymousWikipedian" person represents
anyone from en.wiki, let alone the Foundation? Its some teenage piker,
probably, who should be either ignored with alacrity or reported to the FBI
at the same rate. If you find good evidence of who did this, I don't see a
problem with blocking them permanently from the 'pedia. People who make
illegal threats of violence to anyone, in even the vaguest association with
Wikipedia, ought to be banned. Evidence should probably be good, though -
like Alanyst/CHL good. As to your last point, does it matter which (if any)
member of ArbCom received any of those e-mails? Receiving an e-mail doesn't
make you complicit.

Nathan

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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