[Foundation-l] Stalking Article

Thu Jun 12 13:57:02 UTC 2008

On 6/11/08, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I rather appreciate that suggestion -- it's both an immediate problem and
> something we can hopefully fix within our current means. The global sysop
> proposal on meta might be relevant, here. I'll also mention that IRC has
> proven very useful to me in dealing with cross-wiki problems in real time,
> before.

I'm not sure a "global sysop" could keep an eye on 784 projects[1]
without at least having a "global watchlist". In practice, admin-bots
would probably be needed.

> Off-site and especially real world harassment and stalking are nothing short
> of heinous. Unfortunately, it's very difficult for most of us to help, once
> things go outside the WMF-sphere or offline altogether. That's a key topic:
> what can we do, as individual users and as a community?

Focus on prevention rather than perpetually ineffective treatment. By
more actively discouraging (perhaps outright prohibiting) the use of
real-life identity or any information traceable to it. Ask Florence to
buy some paper-shredders for the Office. Be creative.

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix

—C.W.