Grants talk:IdeaLab/Community discussion on harassment reporting

Comments about the submission

I think this is a great idea and has a lot of value. There is a very active culture of harassment, wikistalking and outing on Wikipedia that needs to be addressed. Additionally, there needs to be a way, outside the Wiki community, to report problems to the WMF. Currently, it is common for a couple people or even just one admin to single an editor out and run them out of a project with no valid reconciliation of the process. The Unblock team are the same admins that do the blocking, the people who review the blocks are the same ones that do the blocking, the Arbcom are the same people that do the blocking and they all support each other. Additionally, there needs to be a way to remove a bad block from a person's record. There are a lot of occasions when a block is done in error but once its there that editor is marked for life. Reguyla (talk) 18:38, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes it is also good to be able to talk the situation through. One of the most useful calls I made when I was harassed was to UK Victim Support. Though they were not all that well briefed about cyber-bullying, they listened and took time to understand my experience, then gave me practical advice about reporting a police case and having realistic expectations. Currently if you write to an official Wikimedia address, you can expect having appropriate wiki policies pointed out, provided with boilerplate text and being firmly told nobody can give you legal advice so get your own attorney. --Fæ (talk) 18:47, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

And that's assuming that you can even figure out the right venue and the right process to follow. Submitting a simple complaint about conduct is so complicated and convoluted that its nearly always futile and frustrating. The result is also based more on the status of the parties involved where there is a clear line drawn between trusted admins and untrusted regular editors down to IP's and then to subjects of articles. If you are the subject of an article the most likely thing to happen will be someone will tell you your "Involved" and have a "POV conflict". Reguyla (talk) 13:06, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

What can we do for the victims who are/were harassed?

Hello, everyone. I am glad that we can have the discussion on harassment reporting, as I have the experience of being harassed by another Wikipedian, which I consider as sexism. I think that there are other people who have the similar experiences as mine, but I am wondering what we can do to solve the issue. Can anyone provide some suggestion? * Venuslui (talk) 01:19, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

We can enforce policy fairly and evenly. If someone violates the rules, they should not be exempt because they are an admin or because they have done a couple featured articles. When editors see that the rules are only enforced when the are convenient, then it has negative effects on morale, the culture and of the reputation of the project.

I think the resolution to the problem you present is going to depend on several factors. First, you call it sexism and it could very well be true, but this can vary a bi by culture and geographical location. What you may consider sexism may not be to others. I think its important to take every incident seriously though and it should be addressed appropriately. Unfortunately the projects do not have the support and infrastructure to address these types of problems. The ENWP Arbitration committee probably wouldn't do much, the WMF probably wouldn't either and its likely the outcome would depend more on the individual doing the harassment than the the rules. In order to address these types of harassment IMO there should be a person or group at the WMF that had an EEO/harassment POC that editors could contact in private, outside the community, when these things arise. That person should have the ability to block and address the situation as necessary, but again, its unlikely to happen. Reguyla (talk) 02:02, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

I understand and I think that might be possible for us to start with listing all the factors of harassment, like what should be defined as harassment and what should not be. Maybe we should ask the WMF to do something to protect the Wikipedians. Even though it might take us a lot of time, I believe that it is very important, as it seems that the WMF is the one who is legit to handle the situation like this. Venuslui (talk) 17:25, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Research into harassment claims and actions

I think it would be great to do a study of possible double standards in application of harassment policy to males versus female editors. Basically there could be a chart or database showing over, say, the last 4 years: complaints about harassment at WP:ANI, WP:Arbitration, other relevant forums, and to WMF (where available); who made them against whom, severity of allegations and any administrative outcomes. In my experience women's complaints tend to be ignored even when the allegations are serious, while even trivial male allegations against women are taken more seriously and sometimes dealt with more severely.

I can think of a few examples, besides several in my own experience. Obviously, it would have to be done by someone who had not been personally involved in such harassment-related proceedings. It must be fertile territory since some who poo-poo increasing female editing input had quite a fit at such a proposal last year. I don't know if it's too late for actual funding for such research? Thoughts? Carolmooredc (talk) 16:19, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

@OR drohowa, Carolmooredc, and FloNight: Other than the write up, is there anything else that needs to be done with this we can start working on? Even if no funding is provided I feel like there are still some things we can do to start this ball rolling. Maybe setup a staging area and start developing a plan of attack for how we want to do this, what we want to look at, how we want to look at it, etc. Reguyla (talk)

Thanks for this, Reguyla. The first stage for me is developing bibliographies of the problem / research on harassment on Wikipedia. I've started a bibliography here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Research publications/harasssment. I also think we need to do more investigation into how ArbCom and OTRS deal with and investigate harassment reports, and the kind of nuances they are dealing with. A really succinct bibliography of all those policies I believe would help push this along. Another thing would be to formally request from the Foundation, what they currently do and don't do regarding harassment. This is (hopefully) in the works. Another step might be to create a Wiki where we start aggregating resources on how to deal with different types of harassment. I may start one of these in the next few days. If you are interested in making demo models of what a harassment reporting system might look like, that might be very useful as well. Vaughn88 (talk) 13:32, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Ok thanks for the update. I think you are going to need to Bibliography each topic separately, particularly the OTRS and Arbcom like ones. There is an element of secrecy and non transparency to those processes that are problematic from a Harrassment standpoint and are historically unnecessarily restrictive on the information they give. They frequently use wording of Privacy and Security loosely even though the actual instances where privacy and security are related are extremely rare. As it is right now we don't really even know how many cases either get, how many are addressed, what the results are or if they are summarily ignored, which many often are that they do not want to deal with. As far as a wiki is concerned I think a good place to start that would be either here under a Meta project or in the Incubator until and if its gains sufficient size. A WikiProject type structure could be setup but I'm not sure if that's needed, at least not yet. As far as what the WMF does, I would agree it would be good to identify but from my experience they do almost nothing. They occasionally ban someone globally but that has only happened about 10 times in the history of the projects as far as I know. One thing they really should have is an appeals process of review outside the community in question, regardless of the community they claim harassment in. Maybe the Board of Trustees or the Community liaison team. It really should be some actual employed person though with consultation of the legal department. This would likely lead to an increase the number of global bans by the WMF office but it would also bring to light abuses and harassment within the communities and help to stem the problems that are getting worse day by day.Reguyla (talk) 16:41, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Discussion moved from main page

1. There isn't a single claim on this list that is an actual community claim. Every one of them (including this one) are unsigned and unsubstantiated claims by individuals, mostly involved individuals.

   @Guy Macon: Could you move your observation to the talk page or a section intended for feedback about this page? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:06, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

   If there is a consensus or a policy-based reason to do so, I will, but considering that this poorly-thought-out list is already a list of unsigned opinions and contains such blatant POV pushing as "mediators are not qualified" and "men are allowed to get away with conduct that would cause a woman to be blocked or banned", I see no good reason why I shouldn't add my own statement in the same place as the others. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:01, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

   Because your observation is not a community claim. This section is not intended for general criticism of this proposal. Please move it to somewhere appropriate as it is disruptive here. --Fæ (talk) 16:08, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

   Neither are any of the other claims. Nonetheless, I am striking my comment because at least one person objects to it. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:10, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Code of conduct for technical spaces

This discussion should probably be coordinated with that at mw:Talk:Code of conduct for technical spaces/Draft. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 11:28, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

And Event Ban policy is now also relevant. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:55, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Discussing off-wiki harassment in the German community

Hi, I have been asked to give a talk about off-wiki harassment at this year's Wikicon Germany in Dresden in mid-September. You can find an outline of my thoughts here. I would be happy if you could share any resources that can help me with my research, especially any points that might be missing. If Google translate doesn't work for my draft, please let me know and I'll do a quick translation. Thanks a lot! --Gnom (talk) 14:29, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Question about dealing with harassment on Wikipedia with this new grant

Hi Wikimedia community,

Apologies if I am posting this question in the wrong space. I am the publisher of Wikipedia, We Have a Problem. My website is listed as a study in this project. I've had to deal with over two years of on wiki and off wiki harassment from a small group of Wikipedia editors and I still cannot find any channel on Wikipedia or Wikimedia to address what has been happening. I'm happy that Wikimedia is addressing this issue via a grant - but I still have no idea what that means to my individual case.

What do I do? My only recourse is blogging about what is happening, and all it is doing is getting me harassed further. Please, I need some kind of support and diligence in this issue and have no where to turn.

This is my latest entry and it should give you an idea of what has occurred. Thank you. SAS81 (talk) 16:55, 27 March 2016 (UTC)