With a little help from my friends

Warm thanks to the dozens of people who have been supportive. The group Gerard started has blossomed and my personal friends list hasn't grown this fast since I joined Facebook.

It wasn't an easy decision to step forward. And I hadn't intended to do it in quite this way. Sometimes a well-meaning misquote or two makes all the difference in the world.

But here it is. I'll be talking to the press soon. As in...erm....already. And tomorrow morning. The point is to speak up and represent the people who aren't in a position to step forward. Basically David Shankbone and I want to change things so that reporting serious online harassment is like reporting a stolen car.

• If your car gets stolen, you don't have to explain to law enforcement what car theft is.
• If your car gets stolen, people don't accuse you of being unwilling to defend your car.
• If your car gets stolen, people don't laugh and tell you to turn off the car.
• If your car gets stolen, people don't lecture that you'd still have your car if only you'd used better locks.
• If your car gets stolen, it's a hassle. But society and the law know how to deal with the hassle.

We're talking serious stuff. Things a reasonable adult would understand as threats of violent assault. Not one-offs, but sustained. Or other actions that really endanger a person's safety or livelihood.

Part of changing things for the better means a handful of people want them just like they are. And are very aggressive about keeping things that way. It is an honor to report that several members of Wikipedia Review support the change. Thank you, each of you.

Please note that this is presently an off wiki dispute. I ask anyone who wishes to discuss the matter to please contact me rather than migrating the discussion onto Wikipedia.

If you're talking about Area 51, you're obviously not playing with a full deck (hides ace in sleeve)

Last night Wikipedia Weekly recorded Episode 51, where we joked about Area 51 and had a serious talk about cyberstalking. The two concepts are not comparable.

Reposting something I wrote at the Digg page on David Shankbone's article:

So what's behind this? Some of Wikipedia's systems are seriously flawed and we've got negative feedback loops. That doesn't cause the problem but it makes it worse. Wikipedia is counterintuitive in a lot of ways, but it's counterintuitive in more ways than it needs to be. And in the long run it does not help us that our blocking and banning policies are constructed in the way the presently are.

Because it's flawed we get uneven results. Obviously uneven results. We leave people in a poorly defined limbo between indefinite blocking and banning. Often we block first, then decide whether to ban them, and shut the person out of the discussion. Our usual template (the unblock request) implicitly encourages people to say they've done nothing wrong at all, when obviously there have been problems, and sets up a binary discussion when an open-ended one would be more appropriate. And some of our best contributors have been so frustrated and overworked that they've gotten rude. It's one thing to show a person the door, which is sometimes necessary. It's another thing to kick them on the way out.

None of this justifies the stalking David endures or the harassment I face. Yet it contributes to poisonous atmosphere that makes our problems happen. Those factors (and a few others) leave people who might otherwise accept a lengthy hiatus frustrated and angry. It defies elementary expectations of justice and fair play. It is easy to construe that situation as bullying or corrupt, from the point of view of the person on the outs. And unfortunately the site's regulars fail to appreciate that in sufficient numbers. We also need a clear path back to good standing for banned users. Not for ones who threaten violence, but for most of the people who get banned—the situations that just didn’t work out. I have volunteered for over a year and a half to work toward a better system in those areas.

So what that means is the pool of people who have been ejected from the site is angrier than it needs to be, which encourages them to network. Some of them might adjust to site standards, more wouldn't, and a minority are really deviant people. When a person who cannot think rationally gets shown the door politely, that person may go quietly. But the chances of a quiet departure are significantly diminished if a Google search quickly turns up a series of sites that complain about the individual who showed that person the door. Whether those complaints are sound or baseless, it's very tempting to a person in that position to believe the complaints are true.

We need to stop joking around and fix this stuff.

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Image credit:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Joker_red_02.svg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Area_51_640x480_grey.png

What if the target were you?

Suppose this image were your userpage and you logged in one day to discover a randomized IP had written all over it. You knew the person who was using it operated out of a set of IP addresses that all resolved to location within driving distance of your home and workplace. The text appears small in thumbnail so I'll quote.

Warning

Looking at the things that have been said throughout WP about you and to you over the last several weeks, it's apparent that somebody really doesn't like you or something you've said or something you've done or the company you keep, or some combination of these. The overall tone of what's been written conveys more than simple mischievousness.

If I were you, I would be particularly wary and vigilant, and careful of where I go and who I meet. Further, I would not advertise my whereabouts or plans to attend any event open to the general public, or where the public would have easy access. In particular, I would not attend the Wiki event at Columbia this Sunday -- anyone wishing to do you harm would have no trouble getting to you and then getting away.

Within WP you've written about the general area where you live in the city, though wisely you've never pinpointed it. Nevertheless I would be cautious in my dealings and encounters anywhere, particularly with strangers. You really never know.

Keep a watchful and suspicious eye wherever you go. I sense that you are not safe.

Special note to anyone considering deleting this post: This message is intended for David Shankbone and should only be removed my him. Should any harm befall Shankbone, and this message is removed without his seeing it, the person removing the message would be complicit in whatever happened to Shankbone. Forewarned is forestalled.--72.68.113.11 16:40, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

David wasn't the person to log in and find that message; I was. And in spite of the warning I went ahead and removed it. Then I notified a Wikinews administrator, who protected the page from further editing, and I contacted David. Usually I keep quiet about this sort of event. Now that David has gone public about his experience I'll say that this example was far from the only disturbing message that targeted him. David did attend that event at Columbia University in spite of the problem.

But it's not really a simple matter of go or don't go. Messages like that one turn an ordinary outing into an undertaking of tactical logistics. First one plans notifications: friends, event organizers, campus security. Then there's the question of how to get to the event and away from it while minimizing the chances of being followed by a malicious stranger. Of course there's also the issue of what to do if a physical attack actually happens, and balancing that there are doubts about whether the danger is serious or only a bluff.

It's not a fun way to live. And it's especially not fun to interact with people who are usually sensible and ought to know your character well enough to trust your judgment, but who treat the problem as a figment of your imagination. Or worse, who dismiss you as a liar and a selfish bluff.

Another dilemma that David faced, and I face, and a core of Wikipedia's most productive and dedicated volunteers face is the question of how much of the situation to disclose.

If you don't expose the problem, dismissive people accuse you of being a drama queen.

If you do discuss the problem, some of those same people play a game called It Isn't Bad Enough. Did you actually get knifed? Did he actually break into your home? No? Pshaw.

If you expose the whole problem those naysayers may stop nettling you, but they won't help you. They'll say the law ought to handle it even if it doesn't. Then they'll walk away. Those naysayers won't care that the trouble you've taken to persuade them a problem exists at all actually worsens the problem. The stalker becomes more engaged and the real danger increases. New individuals who are fundamentally parasitic take an interest in you too.

So I look at Dan Tobias's response to my last post.

Neither David's article nor your response, however, get into the prevalent use of exaggerated accusations of "stalking" and "harassing" that are used constantly on Wikipedia as a "Get Out of Criticism Free Card" by certain people who like to cultivate their victimhood and wear it on their sleeve.

Dan, I agree with you up to a point: outright false and frivolous claims are destructive. Those aren't unknown. Yet we don't have the data to draw a conclusion that exaggerated accusations are prevalent. Nobody has ever done a scientific or scholarly study of Wikipedia with regard to stalking and harassment. And as I outlined above, there are powerful dynamics that discourage open discussion. My firsthand experience and anecdotal data say that harassment and stalking affect a very small portion of Wikipedia's volunteers overall, but among prolific contributors to controversial subjects it is not nearly as rare as you suggest. The problem is real, serious, and underreported.