Statements by WMF or ArbCom concerning harassment/threats

[Volunteer Marek]

Anyone got a compilation of statements made by WMF members or ArbCom members about how 'serious' they are about dealing with real life harassment and threats against editors? I seem to recall that after that kind of thing on Twitter and Facebook got a lot of publicity, some Wikipedia top honchos (can't remember which ones and whether it was WMF or ArbCom) came out and made these awesome sounding statements about how they will never tolerate that kind of thing on Wikipedia.

[tarantino]

You could start with the community health initiative, which is helpfully translated in to eight of the 288 active language wikimedia projects.

The Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech and Community Engagement teams are underway on a multi-year project of research, product development, and policy growth to help the Wikimedia volunteer community to reduce the level of harassment and disruptive behavior on our projects.

This initiative addresses the major forms of harassment reported on the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2015 Harassment Survey, which covers a wide range of different behaviors: content vandalism, stalking, name-calling, trolling, doxxing, discrimination, anything that targets individuals for unfair and harmful attention.

[Kumioko]

Whats funny is all they have to do is watch ANI on the English Wikipedia and they'll see all they can stomach. Editors like Binksternet, Beyond My Ken, Floquenbeam, Fram, etc. They need to start getting rid of those losers if they expect anyone to take them seriously.

[Anroth]

Anyone got a compilation of statements made by WMF members or ArbCom members about how 'serious' they are about dealing with real life harassment and threats against editors? I seem to recall that after that kind of thing on Twitter and Facebook got a lot of publicity, some Wikipedia top honchos (can't remember which ones and whether it was WMF or ArbCom) came out and made these awesome sounding statements about how they will never tolerate that kind of thing on Wikipedia.

Doubt it was Arbcom (but I could be proven wrong). They only tend to make statements in relation to a case and most of the actual victims of genuine harrassment who ended up at Arbcom tended to get banned for their own bad actions.

[Poetlister]

Especially if it's a member of Arbcom who did the harassment!

[Kumioko]

Well there was the comments from AGK and NewYorkBrad about calling my employer and outing me to try to get me fired, both were members of Arbcom at the time.
There are the countless comments from Floquenbeam tell people to F off, etc.

[tarantino]

There's an interesting appeal to the board of trustees made by Neotarf on meta last November and the thread continued until the middle of January. They accuse the arbitration committee of various violations of the terms of use.

The arbitration committee has made some very serious accusations against me. In some places, these offenses carry prison time, in others, they can prevent someone from working.

If you look at the requirements for membership in the Board of Trustees[3], for example, you will find that members must be of good character, which includes, "You must not have been removed from a position at a non-profit organization or other company because of mismanagement or misconduct."

These accusations made against me are not backed up with evidence. Even worse, no one has tried to discuss them with me, either on my talk page, or in a dispute resolution forum, prior to bringing them to arbitration. As I understand it, arbitration is for matters that the community has tried and failed to solve.

The accusations are in two groups. One group was presented by user:Two Kinds of Pork (TKOP) [4], who obtained them with a program he wrote that collected IP addresses, which he said he wrote to retaliate against me for asking him for diffs. [5] These were presented during the evidence phase of the WP:ARBGGTF case, but the community could not find anything wrong with them.

The other group was added by arbitrator Worm That Turned, after the evidence phase had closed, and the evidence page locked to prevent editing. No one informed me that new accusations had been made, or that new evidence had been presented, and there was no public discussion.

Board members Pundit, Doc James and Raystorm expressed an interest, but it was ignored by everyone else mentioned except for GorillaWarfare.

[Kumioko]

It has long been known that the Arbcom doesn't even follow their own policies and unfortunately the WMF nor anyone else holds them accountable. I remember some pretty serious problems with TheDevilsAdvocate case as well where they banned them due to "secret" evidence without on wiki discussion of any kind and that caused concern from a lot of people. As happens most of the time it blew over fairly quickly though and nothing was done about it.

[Poetlister]

It has long been known that the Arbcom doesn't even follow their own policies and unfortunately the WMF nor anyone else holds them accountable.

I expect thst the WMF would not want to intervene so it can say that "the community" runs the site and they can wash their hands of anything thst goes wrong. At the end of the day the community can refuse to re-elect an Arbcom member; that has happened. But it's a very weak sanction since many members don't want a second term.

[Kumioko]

It has long been known that the Arbcom doesn't even follow their own policies and unfortunately the WMF nor anyone else holds them accountable.

I expect thst the WMF would not want to intervene so it can say that "the community" runs the site and they can wash their hands of anything thst goes wrong. At the end of the day the community can refuse to re-elect an Arbcom member; that has happened. But it's a very weak sanction since many members don't want a second term.

Yeah and as we see from the crop of editors even applying for the position the pool is getting really weak of those who even want to do it and/or are qualified. Most of the people these days aren't qualified and those that are have done it before...most of which, like NewYorkBrad, no one in the community should trust given what they have done in the past.

[Poetlister]

It has long been known that the Arbcom doesn't even follow their own policies and unfortunately the WMF nor anyone else holds them accountable.

I expect thst the WMF would not want to intervene so it can say that "the community" runs the site and they can wash their hands of anything thst goes wrong. At the end of the day the community can refuse to re-elect an Arbcom member; that has happened. But it's a very weak sanction since many members don't want a second term.

Yeah and as we see from the crop of editors even applying for the position the pool is getting really weak of those who even want to do it and/or are qualified. Most of the people these days aren't qualified and those that are have done it before...most of which, like NewYorkBrad, no one in the community should trust given what they have done in the past.

NewYorkBrad was re-elected after his first term. I'd be surprised if he couldn't get re-elected again.

[Zoloft]

It has long been known that the Arbcom doesn't even follow their own policies and unfortunately the WMF nor anyone else holds them accountable.

I expect thst the WMF would not want to intervene so it can say that "the community" runs the site and they can wash their hands of anything thst goes wrong. At the end of the day the community can refuse to re-elect an Arbcom member; that has happened. But it's a very weak sanction since many members don't want a second term.

Yeah and as we see from the crop of editors even applying for the position the pool is getting really weak of those who even want to do it and/or are qualified. Most of the people these days aren't qualified and those that are have done it before...most of which, like NewYorkBrad, no one in the community should trust given what they have done in the past.

NewYorkBrad was re-elected after his first term. I'd be surprised if he couldn't get re-elected again.

Given the current competency level of most potential Arbcom 'candidates', I'd vote for NYB again. Kumioko, do you have some physical or electronic evidence of your allegations against NYB?

[Randy from Boise]

It has long been known that the Arbcom doesn't even follow their own policies and unfortunately the WMF nor anyone else holds them accountable.

I expect thst the WMF would not want to intervene so it can say that "the community" runs the site and they can wash their hands of anything thst goes wrong. At the end of the day the community can refuse to re-elect an Arbcom member; that has happened. But it's a very weak sanction since many members don't want a second term.

Yeah and as we see from the crop of editors even applying for the position the pool is getting really weak of those who even want to do it and/or are qualified. Most of the people these days aren't qualified and those that are have done it before...most of which, like NewYorkBrad, no one in the community should trust given what they have done in the past.

NewYorkBrad was re-elected after his first term. I'd be surprised if he couldn't get re-elected again.

I don't think it's even possible to come up with a slate of seven candidates out of the universal set of Everybody On Wikipedia that could outpoll NYB in an Arbcom re-election bid.

RfB

[Kumioko]

It has long been known that the Arbcom doesn't even follow their own policies and unfortunately the WMF nor anyone else holds them accountable.

I expect thst the WMF would not want to intervene so it can say that "the community" runs the site and they can wash their hands of anything thst goes wrong. At the end of the day the community can refuse to re-elect an Arbcom member; that has happened. But it's a very weak sanction since many members don't want a second term.

Yeah and as we see from the crop of editors even applying for the position the pool is getting really weak of those who even want to do it and/or are qualified. Most of the people these days aren't qualified and those that are have done it before...most of which, like NewYorkBrad, no one in the community should trust given what they have done in the past.

NewYorkBrad was re-elected after his first term. I'd be surprised if he couldn't get re-elected again.

I said they shouldn't trust him, not that they don't. Certainly he would get reelected because let's be honest, he doesn't really do anything other than pontificate Wikipedia legal nonsense.

To answer your question Zoloft, NewYorkBrad was the one that advocated, on his own talk page if I recall, that someone could and inferred should, contact my employer (along with AGK). He also made a lot of other comments and things directed at me and at others at various points in the past, that everyone in the community should be looking closely at and wondering if they could be next.

I understand he is a member here, but I really don't have any respect for him anymore and frankly I don't think he offers anything whatsoever to the Wikipedia project anymore. He has long outlived his usefullness to Wikipedia and the community and I hope he sees that eventually as I have.

[Malik Shabazz]

Anyone got a compilation of statements made by WMF members or ArbCom members about how 'serious' they are about dealing with real life harassment and threats against editors?

Well, there was this:

And let's not forget about this:

And there was that one instance when they put their collective foot down and said this:

[Beeblebrox]

I can tell you we talked about this a lot on the email list when I was on the committee, and we actually had a conference call about it at one point, and there was a subgroup that was in regular contact with the Foundation advocating for them to step in some of the more extreme cases, in particular those where acting ourselves could lead to real-world harassment or other such consequences. But of course this was all invisible to anyone not on the committee. The last thing we wanted to do was draw more attention for the wort of the worst trolls.

[Kumioko]

I can promise that although I may seem like a pain in the ass now, had I actually gotten fired due to the actions of the arbcom or worse, some member in the community acting on their through the arbcom's inferrance, it would have had the effect of making me far worse than better. Not only that, I would have made sure that everyone knew that I as a member of the community had been fired due to those actions and would have posted every bit of correspondence. The only reason I haven't done that now is because my work asked me not too, partly because they don't want every nut trying to get people fired for anything they do online via Wikipedia, facebook, etc.