Wikipedia:Harassment

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WP:HAR
WP:HARASS
This page in a nutshell: Do not stop other editors from enjoying Wikipedia by making threats, nitpicking good-faith edits to different articles, repeated personal attacks or posting personal information.

Harassment is defined as a pattern of disruptive behavior that appears to a reasonable and objective observer to have the purpose of causing negative emotions in a targeted person or persons, usually (but not always) for the purpose of intimidating the primary target. The purpose could be to make editing Wikipedia unpleasant for the target, to undermine them, to frighten them, or to encourage them to stop editing entirely.

Harassment is sometimes described as a violation of don't disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point or no personal attacks, but is properly both a subset and special case of both, while at the same time being separate from both for definition reasons. The policy of "no personal attacks" is primarily about content, not behavior (for example, calling certain editors "assholes" is a violation of NPA, but is not in itself harassment), while the policy of "don't disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point" covers many less malicious behaviors that, while unacceptable, are not as bad as harassment (for example, disruption intended to support a cause). And yet, it is a subset of both, in that it is disruption to prove a point, and it is an attempt to personally attack another editor of Wikipedia.

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[edit] Types of harassment

There is no way to spell out all the behaviors that can be considered harassment. One of the tendencies of harassers is to come up with new and inventive ways to plague their victims. However, in the past, harassment on Wikipedia has included:

Following an editor to another article to continue disruption (also known as wikistalking)
The term "wiki-stalking" has been coined to describe following a contributor around the wiki, editing the same articles as the target, with the intent of causing annoyance or distress to another contributor.
This does not include checking up on an editor to fix errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, nor does it mean reading a user's contribution log; those logs are public for good reason. The important part is the disruption - disruption is considered harmful.
Targeted personal attacks
Not all personal attacks are harassment, but when an editor engages in repeated personal attacks on a particular editor or group of editors, that's another matter.
Threats
Threatening another person is considered harassment. This may include threats to harm another person, to disrupt their work on Wikipedia, or to otherwise hurt them.
Legal threats are considered a special case, with their own settled policy. Making legal threats against another person or organization involved with Wikipedia may lead to being blocked on the basis of that policy.
Posting of personal information
Posting another person's personal information (legal name, home or workplace address, telephone number, email address, or other contact information, regardless of whether or not the information is actually correct) is harassment, unless that editor voluntarily provides or links to such information himself or herself. This is because it places the other person at unjustified and uninvited risk of harm in "the real world" or other media. This applies whether or not the person whose personal information is being revealed is a Wikipedia editor. It also applies in the case of editors who have requested a change in username, but whose old signatures can still be found in archives.
User space harassment
Placing numerous false or questionable 'warnings' on a user's talk page, restoring such comments after a user has removed them, placing 'suspected sockpuppet' and similar tags on the user page of active contributors, and otherwise trying to display material the user may find annoying or embarrassing in their user space is a common form of harassment.
A user page is for the person to provide some general information about themself and a user talk page is to facilitate communication. Neither is intended as a 'wall of shame' and should not be used to display supposed problems with the user unless the account has been blocked as a result of those issues. Any sort of content which truly needs to be displayed, or removed, should be immediately brought to the attention of admins rather than edit warring to enforce your views on the content of someone else's user space.
Blockable disruption not defined above
This sort of behavior is blockable on its own (for example, moving another user's User Talk page), but should be considered an aggravating factor for the purposes of the block. For example, behavior that would earn a 1 day ban might become a 1 week ban if the Administrator believes the behavior was for the purposes of harassment.

[edit] Precedents/examples of note

[edit] Personal attacks

There exists a list of Arbitration cases involving Personal Attacks that might be illuminating to those seeking further information at Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Precedents#Personal attacks (and associated principles).

[edit] Wikistalking

Shortcut:
WP:STALK

Wikistalking has been a subject in at least two Arbitration Committee proceedings (and a peripheral matter in a third). In both cases below, the action of "following someone around" was not the only offense, but rather compounded the harm that the stalker was causing to the project.

[edit] The Recycling Troll (TRT)

The matter of The Recycling Troll (TRT) occurred from February to March 2005. The incident involved an editor who was banned for an overall pattern of trolling, including stalking of one administrator. User:Jimbo Wales wrote in his final decision:

Because the Recycling Troll was making a pest of himself by harassing RickK and hammering the mailing list with facetious strawman arguments, I see no reason for us to make a big deal of it.

[Our policies] are in place to help us write the encyclopedia. Going around pestering RickK pointlessly and writing inane messages to the mailing list are clearly not attempts to help us do that, but are rather just someone disrupting wikipedia to illustrate a point. So I'm blocking User:The Recycling Troll indefinitely. He's been a very successful troll, he's caused a lot of trouble, and he's most likely a sock puppet anyway.

Also reported on Wikipedia Signpost.

[edit] Skyring

In the matter of Skyring — a separate case decided August 12, 2005 — a user was found by the Arbitration Committee to have committed "wikistalking". The committee voted 5-0 that:

The term "wiki-stalking" has been coined to describe following a contributor around the wiki, editing the same articles as the target, with the intent of causing annoyance or distress to another contributor. This is distinct from following a contributor in order to clear repeated errors.

On 13 June User:Skyring followed User:Jtdirl, editing a large set of articles that had recently been edited by Jtdirl (see contributions for 13 June). While it is not possible to fully assess intent, this action, and some of the edit summaries used, seem designed to provoke: "enfeebled minds", "Some professional standards, please!", "A common pattern for this editor to produce poor English", "Low quality of Irish editor"

Skyring banned for wikistalking - User:Skyring is banned from Wikipedia for one year for wiki-stalking and acting in bad faith towards other contributors, as demonstrated in evidence.

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Skyring.

[edit] Coolcat, Davenbelle, and Stereotek

In the matter of Cool Cat (talk • contribs) (aka User:Coolcat) — a case decided on October 5, 2005 — the ArbCom voted that wikistalking was unacceptable in the following circumstances:

It is not acceptable to stalk another editor who is editing in good faith. (Note that everyone is expected to assume good faith in the absence of definite evidence to the contrary.) Once an editor has given reason to suspect bad faith, monitoring is appropriate, but constantly nit-picking is always a violation of required courtesy.
There are hundreds of administrators available to monitor problem users. [1]
Davenbelle (talk • contribs), Stereotek (talk • contribs), and Fadix (talk • contribs) monitored Cool Cat (talk • contribs) with the view to bringing problems he caused to the attention of the community. However, this has tipped over into effectively "wikistalking" or "hounding" Cool Cat, and so disrupting Wikipedia and discouraging his positive contributions. [2]
For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Coolcat, Davenbelle and Stereotek.

[edit] Other

  • This user's story is an instructive example in the aggravating enhancing factor of harassment; the editor in question moved another user's talk page, which was disruption sufficient to get him blocked for 24 hours; however, as it was part of a pattern of harassment, the ban was extended indefinitely.

[edit] See also

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../h/a/r/Wikipedia%7EHarassment_9843.html"
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