Nathan wrote: Shouldn't this be taking place on Wikipedia and not on the Mailing List? It would allow more to comment. --CWii

David Gerard wrote: Yes. With the number of issues under discussion at any one time it would go unnoticed by a large segment of the population. That's a big problem with policy development in the first place. Nobody can effectively track them, and we don't encounter those policies until we are personally affected. By then they are well past the discussion stage, and it becomes an uphill climb to instill any kind of sanity. You have examples of "balanced" net stalkers? :-) Ec

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote: On the English Wikipedia, we do have an informal policy, in the form of the [[Wikipedia:Responding to threats of harm]] (which is short-linked from WP:SUICIDE and WP:VIOLENCE ). It says pretty much exactly what you're asking for, if I understood your comments right. There have been four attempts to address this question in policy. Attempts 1 and 2 went down in flames because there wasn't enough consensus on what to prescribe and how, in terms of prescriptive and blockable policy. Attempt 3 was my essay WP:SUICIDE, which is what the current essay directly derives from. As it's an essay, it's not subject to the need to get formal policy approval, and didn't fall over and die as a result. There was a fourth attempt, about four months ago, to make a formal policy. It crashed and burned, because there still isn't enough consensus on what to prescribe and how, in terms of prescriptive and blockable policy. I believe that making a prescriptive policy which is sufficiently agreeable and understandable and enforceable is an extremely difficult proposition. The essay strongly encourages anyone who thinks something is, or might be, a credible threat to report it to law enforcement and ANI and other venues. That's common sense, plus what we've heard from Psychiatrists and Law Enforcement and so forth. Writing down the common sense so that everyone knows "yes, that's what we understand you should do, reporting it is appropriate and you are encouraged to do it and we won't blame you or get angry at you if you do" is good. That's what we did. I don't know that this is the sort of thing that's amenable to a prescriptive policy from the Foundation. I don't think that we should not do it, for some philosophical or operational reason, and I won't oppose another attempt by anyone to form such policy. But the historical record is that it's very hard to write such prescriptive policy and very hard to get buy in for it if you do. A number of people have gotten extremely upset, frustrated, and burned out trying to make that happen. I believe that the current essay is a decent balance and it involves no additional stress on anyone. If it needs to be promoted better, such as to other projects or as a Foundation-wide essay rather than just for en.wp, those would be easy and valuable expansions. If you want to do a real prescriptive policy, before you start, please look at the history of the 3 failed attempts before you set out. Perhaps the next try will be the one that succeeds, but I suspect that all that will happen is that decent positive contributors who are clearly trying to do a good thing for the project will get burned out and disillusioned and likely leave. I encourage people not to get burned out, disillusioned, and leave. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com