[Foundation-l] Stalking Article

Mon Jun 9 23:21:39 UTC 2008

The hardest problem about this is that in the more severe cases, even
effective permanent bans from Wikipedia are irrelevant to the stalking
problem.  It may start in a conflict on-wiki, but the dangerous
stalkers find other venues rapidly which are friendly or neutral and
won't ban them, or create their own venues to proliferate their
activities.

Once that happens, Wikipedia is merely the activity which interests
the stalker, and less the media by which they express their
terroristic behavior.

Tracking these people down can be extremely hard.  I have a largely
Wikipedia-unrelated stalking going on in my real life right now, in
which knowing the person's identity already has done no good in us or
several law enforcement agencies actually tracking them down and the
police being able to arrest them.  I spent all morning in court...
Grumble.

Even if you know who it is, even if you know where they are, if they
haven't crossed the line into clearly criminal conduct then getting
law enforcement to stop them may be difficult or impossible.  You can
try a restraining order in some cases, or suing them, but that's not
always useful either.

What should Wikipedia / the WMF do here?  There are some things it
could do - make more explicit the policy that those who stalk are not
welcome at all on any project (sitewide bans).  Some en.wp gadflys are
friendly with some of the stalkers, and have "taken up their case"
because they see it as a power struggle against The Man (the cabal of
admins etc), even though the gadflys themselves don't in general
stalk.  That has become a rather bad problem, but it's a political
one.

Perhaps things like having the foundation get restraining orders
against serial stalkers, which restrain them from coming back to the
site and stalking again on-wiki.

We already provide checkuer info where legally requested, and stalkees
should file cases and have attorneys request the info.

But there are limits.  Because fundamentally, the really bad stalkers
can and do effectively completely detach the stalking from being
carried out on-wiki, by creating off-site focus sites, and encouraging
gadflys and vandals to keep a buzz going on wiki.  If stalker stops
editing Wikipedia themselves, what can the foundation do about it
directly?

We could theoretically try to take some form of legal offensive action
against those people, in the name of defending the community.  Sue
them over harrassing our community members, etc.  That seems like it
would be very hard, though, and borders on SLAPP territory (Strategic
Lawsuit Against Public Participation, in US legal talk).  Some people
in the community will likely find this approach offensive.

I'd like to see the Board take up the question of a harder policy
banning stalkers.

I'd also like to see the Board and Mike consider whether having the
Foundation take out restraining orders against participation in the
case of serial sockpuppet stalkers is an activity which the Foundation
can get into doing.

I'd also also like to see if people get any bright ideas on what to do
about the hard cases, either as the Foundation, as the Community, or
as individuals.  How do we push back and get these things stopped?  Is
there a way to do so under US laws which is effective?

-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 3:41 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com> wrote:
> You're preaching to the choir here with me Sarah. I fully support that
> principle being applied, and not ignored. I was just pointing out that
> there's a policy based reason that allows us to say "You know what,
> lets quit blathering about this and do something about it", if we can
> grab our collective balls and do it.
>
> -Dan
> On Jun 9, 2008, at 4:46 PM, SlimVirgin wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 3:29 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> I believe on English Wikipedia we have an arbitration finding to
>>> that effect
>>> (MONGO 1), that says that we should support victims of harassment
>>> (which
>>> stalking certainly qualifies as).
>>>
>>> -Dan
>>
>> We do have that ruling, but it's consistently ignored, including by
>> ArbCom members. We allow people to use Wikipedia (posts to articles,
>> to talk pages, to AN/I, RfCs, and RfArs) to harass others; and then we
>> allow the harassment to be discussed; and then the discussions are
>> discussed, all of which creates more harassment for the target --
>> which is often the intent. It's a situation that has been going on for
>> a couple of years and is only getting worse; it's the reason the
>> cyberstalking list was started, but despite a lot of talk, there has
>> been no fundamental change. The bottom line is that we have to stop
>> giving people who have engaged in harassment a platform in the name of
>> free speech and AGF.
>>
>> Sarah
>>
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-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com