[Foundation-l] Stalking Article

Tue Jun 10 17:59:51 UTC 2008

I think this is the most realistic analysis of the situation in the thread.

I'm assuming from your statement that you ended up in court, that your 
stalker at least lives in the same state as you.  When you add 
jurisdictional issues to the mix the problem becomes even worse.  Law 
enforcement people would rather have a clear-cut case that they can take 
to court for a quick conviction.  They don't want to be spending a lot 
of resources in cases where there is a lack of solid evidence.  It's on 
a par with a law that says that you can't kill a rattlesnake unless it 
has bitten you.

Sitewide banning is a problem when the alleged stalker's behaviour on 
the secondary wiki has been exemplary for a considerable time.  The 
regular participants on the secondary site likely know nothing of the 
dispute until the ban is applied.  For them the dispute is starting from 
square one.  They have never expressed their view, or even had an 
opportunity to express their view when the problem was first heard.  
When someone from another project begins his pursuit on the secondary 
project the pursuer becomes identified as the stalker.

You are right in saying that the most effective and serious stalkers are 
not going to do their worst damage on the site.  Often the evidence is 
nothing more than a claim that threats have been made in a private 
e-mail or a phone call.  I don't doubt that the person making the claim 
believes that there has been a threat, but not everyone would treat the 
same words as a threat.  We are dealing with a one-sided interpretation 
of the facts.

I can agree that questions of real illegality need to be dealt with at 
the Board level, but the risk is that too easily leads to simplistic 
solutions which can be either ineffectual or overkill.

Ec

George Herbert wrote:
> 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?