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

On 12/5/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: 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