One problem is that we don't give someone something which they then
loose if they start acting out. We have no experience points invested
in our character as one might have in a MUD, usually no special
powers or privileges to loose. This is complicated by no requirement
to create an account, no confirmation of accounts or of identity. So
access to any ip is sufficient to come aboard and edit without limit,
and to return to the subject, be as nasty as you might want to be.
Fred
On Oct 22, 2005, at 9:52 AM, Tom Cadden wrote:
Maybe I didn't notice it before but since my
Skyring
'experience' a number of other users have approached
me to say they have having the same experience.
Among the things happening are a NUMBER of users are
eperiencing:
* PERSONALLY targeted attacks on individual members by
another individual (a different individual in each
case), who follows the user around adding abuse to
talk pages. (Another user has just emailed me and said
that has been happening to them too. Someone else said
they had experienced it a few weeks ago.)
* users who standby and the moment an individual is
criticised, jump in to add in venomous attacks of
their own that are unconnected to the current dispute.
* users spamming other users with smears about someone
on Wikipedia.
* off-Wikipedia public attacks, some of them
libellous, many of them offensive and distressing, on
Wikipedians.
* One abuser, Skyring, even accused another Wikipedian
of physically stalking his house!!! (She obviously
didn't, but was shocked at the claim, which was in a
longer personal attack he launched on her.)
Two people in the last 24 hours, having witnessed
Skyring's antics against me, have emailed me to say
that they too are being targeted others. Both said
that they are on the brink of quitting WP altogether
because of the unending cycle of abuse they are
getting from an individual (a different individual in
each case).
I can't help wondering if Skyring's antics (which are
proving difficult to stop - he has now started again
creating phoney sockpuppet 'users' to sneak back in
attacks under the guise of innocent edit summaries)
has inspired others to act in a similar way.
Simply deleting attacks doesn't solve the problem if
merely the fact of editing an article opens one up to
the attack to start off with. The offence will have
been caused by the time the attack is deleted. And
with some users spreading attacks like confetti, not
every attack is spotted if it is in the talk page of a
little read page. Offensive attacks also remain in the
archives for anyone to read.
This problem could destroy Wikipedia, by driving away
genuine users and having WP swamped by abusive trolls
stalking individuals throughout the database. The
danger is that genuine users who may themselves not be
a victim of this problem may see such stalked attacks
appearing all over the place and decide 'I don't want
that to happen to me' and so leave. One already left
two months ago, having emailed me to ask "what is
happening here? It is disgusting."
What strategy do we have for dealing with what seems
like a growing problem?
Thom
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