Hi all,
As someone who deals with a lot of long-term abuse on the community side, I
can give a bit of a comment here. Most of the abuse response comes from the
community, not the WMF- they only get involved through their Trust & Safety
team on the worst cases.
Our ability to deal with block evasion is limited at best. Anyone who wants
to is able to by-pass a block through a mobile range or a proxy, and often
times to deal with block evasion we end up blocking ranges which include a
lot of collateral damage. The Inspire campaign doesn't seem to be directed
at this, but there are ways that we could improve our abuse response - the
primary one being an email requirement on account creation, and giving some
users the ability to check accounts based on their email. This has been
done on Wikia, and when combined with IP blocks has been very effective in
reducing long-term abuse. But it is very unlikely to happen here.
It will never be possible to totally remove this sort of harassment,
because these are cases where the system has initially worked, but the user
is evading the system. As an open website, we only have a limited ability
to protect against that, and that will always be the case. And
unfortunately, this isn't an area that a code of conduct or any of those
proposals would help with.
Adrian Raddatz
On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Pax and Pete,
It sounds like part of the issue in this case may be that may we need more
effective tools for dealing with troublemakers who are banned but continue
to return and cause problems. I'm wondering if Patrick Early can comment on
what efforts WMF is making in terms of dealing with persistent block
evasion.
Pine
On Jun 5, 2016 07:13, "Pax Ahimsa Gethen" <list-wikimedia(a)funcrunch.org>
wrote:
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(a)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_Correctnes…
>> !
>> [4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Don't_feed_the_trolls
>> [5] Queer, trans, and black, in my case.
>> [6]
>>
>>
https://medium.com/humane-tech/the-immortal-myths-about-online-abuse-a156e3…
>> [7]
>>
>>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IdeaLab/Inspire/Meta#Blaming_th…
>
>
--
Pax Ahimsa Gethen | pax(a)funcrunch.org |
http://funcrunch.org
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