[WikiEN-l] Re: The difficulty of retaining volunteer writers

Mon Dec 5 19:30:05 UTC 2005

On 12/5/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I feel there is a general direction for failing to support the "victim"
> during the conflict, either by lack of time, or by lassitude (because we
> have seen that happening so many times) or by fear, to support her only
> at the last point (when she is threatening to leave).
>
> Sadly, most editors actually support the person inside themselves, but
> do not say so either because they believe the "victim" is strong enough,
> or because they fear becoming targets themselves.

Hello Anthere, I agree with you very much, and I'd like to try to come
up with a solution. Following on from Steve Rubenstein's idea
yesterday, I'm thinking it might be good to have a page where people
can go to report harassment, and where editors can sign up if they're
willing to be part of a fast-response team. Like bullying of any kind,
the best thing is to nip it in the bud before the behavior becomes
entrenched and before, as you say, the victim starts responding in a
way that might make things worse.

There are two difficulties. First, we need to come up with a working
definition of "harassment". Often, editors who are subject to admin
action claim they're being harassed, and editors whose contributions
are being closely watched because of editing problems often feel the
same. There's a page about it here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Harassment  that describes some
of the behavior, but I'd like to write something about the effect it
can have on the victim.

Secondly, I want to avoid pages that are made available to support
victims turning into platforms for more attacks by the perpetrators,
who may turn up to defend themselves in a way that in fact causes more
grief. I know that the person who was following me around turned every
query and every objection to his behavior into another opportunity to
write a several-thousand-word essay repeating all his allegations. So
the team of editors who sign up to help victims would have to be able
to tell the difference between a genuine defense and an excuse for
further attack.

For both these reasons, it may take some time to get it right, but
I'll let you know if I make progress, and thank you for your input,
Anthere.

Sarah