[Foundation-l] Stalking, an attempt to clarify.

Wed Jun 11 20:46:41 UTC 2008

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> ...and perhaps advising users how to avoid becoming a target:  There
> are plenty of active and involved users busily doing both content and
> administrative work who manage to touch controversy without becoming
> embroiled in it.
>
> An admission that we can each do things to avoid these problems *DOES
> NOT* mean that the victim is at fault any more than advice against
> walking through the bad part of town at night is a claim that mugging
> victims are at fault.  .... but at least I feel that if I point out
> ways users can avoid these problems the current culture here would
> torch me as a victim blamer.  We need to get over that.  It's time for
> Wikipedians to get street smart.

Strongly agreed, with an acknowledgment that everyone's experience is
different, due both to the scope of the project and to the fact that
you never really know what topics or actions are going to attract
someone who is crazy or deeply deluded and unstable or angry. There is
definitely no foolproof advice -- you can be the most street-smart
Wikipedian in the world and you still might, while doing some routine
action, stumble across tinfoil hat guy who takes a sudden interest in
you and wants to visit you at your place of work and post pictures of
your kids on the internet.

It's certainly possible to work for years on Wikipedia and never get
in a serious dispute or be seriously harassed, beyond the occasional
ranty email or talk page message (I've done it). It's also possible to
make about five edits on a controversial article and find yourself in
the middle of a raging argument between two irate IP addresses, both
accusing the other of stalking (I just watched this happen to some
poor newbie on a BLP article).

But there are probably strategies to mitigate the chances of drama and
harassment, and we can give advice for new contributors at the very
least. Things like: if you self identify as female, you might be
harassed for it. If you use your real name, people may well track you
down in real life. If you *don't* use your real name, some people will
see it as a challenge to track you down in real life. If you edit
controversial articles, you're going to have to deal with people who
take it as a personal challenge to shout down opposing views. If you
become an administrator, flame-proof armor is an advisory investment.
And so on and so forth.

Somewhere or other I say an essay page with tips for new contributors
choosing an account name/starting out that had similar pieces of
advice; does anyone know what I'm talking about?  It'd be nice to see
if we could gather our collective wisdom on how to avoid harassment as
an established user, as well. Sometimes I think just a serious,
renewed commitment to *really* follow our core principles of civility
and assuming good faith -- and not tolerating dialog that strays from
this -- would help a fair amount with internal problems between
editors; but it's hard to legislate how people speak to one another,
on or off wiki.

-- phoebe