Grants talk:IdeaLab/Harassment on Wikimedia has been exaggerated and overbearing harassment policies may prevent content creation

Echo chambers already exist on Wikipedia. Harassment helps keep them free from dissent

This proposal raises some important concerns and makes one suggestion worth considering. But it is too sanguine about the current state of affairs in the Wikipedia editing community and expresses paranoid fear of change (presumed to be "overbearing," "Orwellian," and "chilling"). For a proposal that recommends that WP editors be thick-skinned, there is an exaggerated sense of danger from any effort to curb harassment. The proposal gives pride of place to the term "crybully," coined in right-wing discourse to characterize activists for gay rights as being -- well -- overbearing, Orwellian, and so on.

We know that WP editors are overwhelmingly white, male, and nerdy. The editors don't resemble the readers. This is not a problem, the current proposal assumes, or it is less of a problem than the danger of "overbearing" intervention, which could reduce Wikipedia to an "echo chamber" of political correctness.

But there are clusters of Wikipedia articles that are already staked out as echo chambers. Groups of editors have been known to coordinate their efforts to ensure that their shared POV is the only one represented in an article. Often these efforts are short-lived. But editors burn out, or their attention is drawn elsewhere. Zealots return, and an echo chamber is established. And how are the boundaries of these NPOV-free zones patrolled? In large part, by harassment.

As a thick-skinned white male from the American South, I haven't encountered enough harassment to run me off from Wikipedia, but I can understand those who do leave despite having much to contribute. And there are subjects I decline to edit, despite my own interest and knowledge, because I've decided it is not worth my time to deal with zealots who already know The Truth. I've tacitly ceded parts of Wikipedia to them.

True, these same zealots would no doubt try to use anti-harassment measures as a tool to suppress discussion and advance their agendas; many of them are old hands at wikilawyering. But as long as there are any policies at all, certain editors will deliberately abuse them. That's not an argument against adopting a sound policy.

That's why I have a concern that this proposal to assign anti-harassment procedures to the WMF may be a bid to make the idea irrelevant. Sequestering it from the Wikipedian community ensures that the community develops as little awareness of or concern about harassment as possible. -- Alarob (talk) 13:55, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Just a few thoughts ...

• Harassment is a problem for any community - WP is not an exception
• WP has a problem with people using agressive methods in general - harassment being one of them (nothing special for a mal white dominated online community granting anonymity)
• The idea of people being nice to each other not being productive is ... weird to me.
• None of WP rules has ever prevented me from creating content. --ChristophThomas (talk) 15:41, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Inelgible for the Inspire Campaign

The idea is out of scope for this campaign, and I'd like to comment on the premises in the idea here:

• First, the title. I've been hearing this sentiment from some during this campaign that harassment isn't a big deal, that it's happening much less than presumed, and that it's not really that big of an issue. I can respect that these are sentiments based on personal experiences/observations, but people's experiences on Wikimedia projects vary, and anecdotes (alone) are not data. The other sentiment is that we shouldn't deal with harassment using policies or new systems because they can be gamed. And it's true that they can be gamed. But lots of other processes in our projects can also be gamed, and attempts to do so are common enough. On English Wikipedia, sockpuppets show up to Articles for Deletion and Administrators' noticeboard discussions. Folks who want to disrupt things can vote in the request for adminship process. But we don't stop using those systems because they can be and are sometimes gamed-- we figure out how to detect when people are being manipulative. And we can talk about how to do that regarding this issue as well. Folks just need to allow those conversations to happen, and this idea actively hinders any kind of exploration of how we can do this effectively.

Harassment is, by nature, subjective.

• A lot of concepts on our projects are also subjective: Consensus, notability, and due weight are a few examples. They have some definition, but they're subject to editors' and administrators' judgement in addition to circumstances not explicitly spelled out on the project pages. And those definitions have changed over time, too, with various edits to the guidelines/policy pages. As an admin on en.wiki, I can tell you that I and many, many others have been challenged on what we perceive to be the consensus of a discussion, whether a topic is notable, and whether a particular aspect of an article is being given due weight. People cry foul over disagreements in these matters as well, and we still continue to use these concepts. And in spite of that subjectivity, articles continue to improve and be created, people continue to edit, and the project hasn't died. One possibility is that harassment can also be subjective in the same manner and would allow us to more meaningfully deal with it: That it has some degree of definition, but is subject to evaluation of the circumstances, and subject to change over time.

2. Wikipedia is not a safe space.

• It's also not a forum for unregulated free speech. I'm not convinced people are generally talking about routine content disagreements when they are talking about harassment. There is usually something else more to it. When it is just a simple disagreement, and there's not any associated behavior that's threatening or discouraging participation, then it's probably not harassment -- and again -- if folks are trying to manufacture this definition, we should think about how to deal with situations like that rather than assert that people shouldn't be expected to engage with others constructively.

Anti-harassment rules encourage tone policing.

• Every time we write something on-wiki, there are at least two components we can evaluate that are relevant here: the substance of their argument, and their tone. I think both of these components can be evaluated by others, and they should be. Everyone should be capable of expressing themselves constructively, and if they choose not to, their participation is problematic, regardless of how sound their arguments are or how good their ideas may be. It is the same with people who make arguments that are fundamentally problematic and express themselves in a pleasant manner, a case that has also come up in my time on en.wiki.

Fear of being accused of "harassment" creates a chilling effect

• Projects have not stopped having guidelines/policies that have grey areas even when being accused of violating them can produce a chilling effect on discussion: conflicts of interest, legal threats, accusing someone of disrupting things to make a point are a few examples. Again, just because these things can happen does not mean we should not make efforts to improve how cases of harassment are handled.

False harassment charges creates a chilling effect.

• See above. The fact that false accusations can happen shouldn't prevent us from being able to discuss and decide on appropriate actions when harassment is really occurring. There is considerable harm involved in failing to deal with harassment in our projects and it's a bigger problem than the issue of false charges.

Current Wikipedia harassment guidelines are generally effective.

• Are they? I'm not aware of any convincing evidence to support this notion, but I am open to changing my mind if there is something concrete to support it. The results of the harassment survey 2015 notes that for folks who reported their incident of harassment on their Wikimedia project, 40% reported that the result of doing so was "not at all effective", and 17% found it only to be "a little effective." You could argue this is better than some of the other options (like reporting to law enforcement), but when 57% of people who report instances of harassment on-wiki come away feeling that it did nothing or little to help them, it is a system that is failing.

Discourage crybullying.

• Again, we ought to encourage evaluation of both the quality of someone's argument and how they are expressing it. Clearly, there are inappropriate ways to conduct yourself in conversation with other people., and no amount of "but I am right / I have a good argument" should legitimize or minimize harassing conduct.

Harassment cases should be handled not by the community but by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• This is the only argument I see voiced here that actually addresses harassment. And I think that idea deserves serious consideration, if only because the aforementioned survey suggests that the WMF could be doing a much better job of it (69% reported that reporting harassment to the WMF was "not at all effective.") During this campaign, I am actively looking into and talking with WMF employees who may be able to help in this matter. Hopefully, a proposal may be pitched during this campaign about how we can do a better job of directly handling cases of harassment.

Other than this last point, the assumptions and solutions made in this idea about harassment discourage others from participating in this campaign, they attempt to minimize the importance of the issue, and they disproportionately place the responsibility of dealing with harassment on those who experience it. There doesn't appear to be much in the way of evidence supporting these assumptions here, either. It is therefore out of scope for this campaign, and has been removed. I'd be willing to reincorporate it based on the last point or some other idea that actually addresses harassment. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 02:20, 7 June 2016 (UTC)