I am defining harassment primarily as personal attacks, not merely disputes (even strongly-worded disagreement) over content.
Some examples of what I consider harassment:
- Vandalizing an editor's user or talk page (hence my Inspire proposal: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Protect_user_space_by_default)
- Making derogatory comments about an editor's gender, sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or (dis)ability
- Posting personal information about an editor that was gathered off-Wiki
- Evading bans with IP-hopping to do any of the above.
These actions not only cause "net harm to community health," they cause unnecessary, avoidable harm to specific individuals, and discourage marginalized people from participating in the project.
- Pax
On 6/5/16 5:09 AM, Pine W wrote:
Hi Pax,
I agree that blaming the victim is an unsatisfactory resolution.
On the other hand, defining what is meant by "incivility" and "harassment" can be very tricky. Just because there is a strong disagreement doesn't imply that people are being uncivil, and we cannot expect that no one will ever lose his or her temper when provoked. Similarly, a pattern of disagreement doesn't necessarily imply harassment, and the presumption of good faith is rebuttable which means that questioning the motives of others is occasionally OK.
So, as Sumana once said, we have a tricky situation with regards to balancing free speech with hospitality.
I think there are situations in which behavior is egregious enough that it is a net harm to community health and cannot be excused. For example, comments that demean someone on the basis of race, gender, age, nationality, or religious or political beliefs, are generally out of bounds.
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about how we should define harassment, and how we should seek to reduce the frequency of it on Wikimedia sites.
Thank you for speaking up.
Pine On Jun 4, 2016 19:15, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" list-wikimedia@funcrunch.org wrote:
Hi all, I'm Pax aka Funcrunch [1]. I've been a Wikipedian since 2008, but this is my first post to this mailing list. (I've been reading list messages on the archives page occasionally for the last several months.)
I'm writing because of a concern I have about the community's attitude toward harassment on Wikipedia. I got a Wikinotice about this month's Inspire Campaign, which specifically asks: "What ideas do you have that can help prevent and generally address cases of harassment?" [2] As a victim of several of the harassing behaviors mentioned as examples - " name calling, threats, discrimination, stalking, and impersonation" - I was encouraged to see that this problem was (hopefully) being taken seriously by the Foundation, and submitted a proposal.
Looking at the other proposals submitted, I soon noticed that the most popular "ideas" on the list included complaints of "political correctness" and suggesting we shouldn't be so sensitive [3], and that we should just get some sleep and exercise and reconsider why we're so offended. [4] (That first "idea" has since been recategorized by a WMF staffer to remove it from the current campaign.)
It really bothers me that a campaign specifically designed to combat harassment - which is a very serious and real problem for people of marginalized identities like myself [5]- is being co-opted by people saying things like " Harassment doesn't cause actual damage," " The existence of harassment is an opportunity to improve ourselves further through self-discipline," and " Harassment on Wikimedia has been exaggerated." I suggest that people who honestly believe this, but are willing to accept that they might be wrong, read a recent essay about online harassment by Anil Dash: "The Immortal Myths About Online Abuse." [6]
I'm not "looking to be offended," and I'm not trying to "censor" people who simply disagree with me. I'm trying to help build an encyclopedia, without being harassed by block-evading stalkers hurling hate speech my way. The existing tools and policies are *not* sufficient to deal with this. That's (what I thought was) the point of this Inspire campaign, not complaining about censorship and " crybullying."
I've posted a much shorter version of this concern on the Inspire Campaign talk page [7], so feel free to weigh in there instead of here on the list if that's more appropriate. Thank you for reading.
- Pax, aka Funcrunch
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Funcrunch [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Stop_%22Political_Correctness... ! [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Don%27t_feed_the_trolls [5] Queer, trans, and black, in my case. [6] https://medium.com/humane-tech/the-immortal-myths-about-online-abuse-a156e33... [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IdeaLab/Inspire/Meta#Blaming_the...