User:Iadmc/Harassment on Wikimedia Projects

Editor's forward: I was alerted from the Gender Gap task force's Talk page to WMF's Statement on Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity, and Safe Spaces and from there to the "Results Report" on their Harassment Survey 2015 and started replying to the original post but ended up writing the following essay! — Iadmc♫^talk  22:00, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Harassment on Wikimedia Projects

Wikipedia Policy— Wikipedia:Harassment

Introduction

For too long now, the Wikimedia projects and especially Wikipedia have been blighted with systemic discrimination against any editor who isn't part of the typical demographic of English-speaking, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, well-educated, white male living and working within the mainstream of Occidental culture. Being all of those things, I can assure you that not all of the members of the typical demographic are misogynistic, homophobic racists with prejudices against the "inferior minded"—whoever they are... aren't we all learning all of the time? But too many are so prejudiced and it appears that they come in swarms...

My reaction to the report

The report (put together by the Support and Safety team) is from a survey of editors' answers to various questions put to them in November 2015. These were my initial reactions:

1. Almost half of those surveyed say that they neither agree nor disagree with the statement "Other users seem to enjoy collaborating with me": one would hope that at least half say they strongly agree, surely? Otherwise, what are we here for? This is a community of editors who are meant to work together, not in isolation. Scary.
2. It doesn't surprise me that people tend not to share their beliefs, racial group or sexual orientation. Why should we? These are not relevant to the vast majority of our edits, say, on music, art, science or technology articles. Frankly, even on articles related to gender issues, political theories or religious doctrines, a single editor's views and orientations should have no relevance as one hopes other editors with opposed views and different orientations will edit also and thus help give a rounded world view. Anyway, we are supposed to use Reliable Sources with out spinning them to our point of view... never easy with the more "controversial" subjects, but there it is. And that's why we need to collaborate.
3. It is extremely worrying that 38% have experienced personal harassment and 51% have witnessed it happen, though those figures are tempered a little when you read that around two-thirds of that is trolling/flaming plus vandalism plus name-calling. Not that these forms of harassment are not bad! It's just that they are, unfortunately, what we expect on the internet: Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/etc all have similar statistics. It is indeed, however, unfortunate that we have come to expect them...
4. More worrying are the statistics for the most serious types of harassment: stalking, discrimination and threats of violence. (Why the hell would anyone become violent over an edit... anyway.) And revenge porn...?!
5. Even more telling (and worrying): 53% of incidents were perpetrated by "multiple people through several episodes". If that's not systemic, I don't know what is.

How to deal with this?

1. Read Community discussion on harassment reporting and respond.
2. Read A Wikipedian’s perspective on gender imbalance, harassment, and the way forward and respond.
3. It occurs to me that the problem is not with those who are harassed nor, generally, the the under-represented demographics—these people are generally already engaged in the debate, even if only because they have been harassed: the problem is that the harassers and too many of the majority demographic (i.e. men) don't engage in debate or are unaware of the issues. Therefore, we need to engage with these people:
   1. Educate them on how to interact appropriately with other editors
   2. Teach them that there is an issue, what exactly this issue involves, and how people are affected by harassment and gender-bias etc.
   3. Encourage the silent majority to engage with their peers—discouraging (and reporting, if necessary) the bullies, harassers etc; engaging the apathetic; and generally encouraging debate and pro-active edits to close the gender gap etc.
4. Encourage more women to edit. Men make up by far the largest editorship: the more women who edit, the more balanced the Encyclopedia will be. After all, women make up half the population of the world...
5. Encourage more non-white people, disabled people, LGBT people, etc.—i.e all people not in the overwhelming demographic—to edit.
6. I have never agreed with segregation: the way to tackle bias and discrimination is not by separation (except as a short term solution, perhaps). Rather, it is through inclusivity, collaboration and empathy that we build an understanding, supportive and welcoming community. Segregation only serves to intensify the problems, in my opinion. That has been attested to so many times in history that it seems self-evident.
7. WikiProjects like Countering systemic bias (and its task forces) and UO Weaving Women Into Wikipedia that work within the community are to be fully encouraged. We just need more people to get the message out and stand up for those being harassed/bullied.
8. There are some fantastic videos floating around social media at the moment about how to tackle racism. They are absolutely on the mark and the advice applies to all forms of harassment, in my opinion. Fortunately, we can point to edits here on Wikipedia as evidence of harassment, though anything off-site is problematic, obviously. Their advice (paraphrased to include all harassment on Wikimedia projects):
   1. Don't be a bystander—this can be as bad as actually engaging in the harassment
   2. Report harassment, pointing to edits etc.—someone needs to... (See How to deal with harassment (Essay) and Dealing with harassment (Policy))
   3. Stick around for the victim—the effects of harassment often kick in later and can have devastating consequences
   4. Tackle the culture of harassment—be proactive; teach/remind fellow Wikipedians about the policies and guidelines on no personal attacks, civility, inclusion and etiquette; and discourage bullies, misogynists, racists, homophobes, etc.
   5. Actively fight harassment—engage in the processes put in place by Wikipedians (Harassment) and Wikimedia Foundation (Friendly space policy)
9. I like Emily Temple-Wood's approach (co-founder of WikiProject Women Scientists): write an article about a notable woman (in her case, a scientist) every time you receive an inappropriate email, PM, social media comment etc She's also created a useful Systemic bias kit: see File:Systemic bias workshop kit.pdf for the way it works.

Further reading

• meta category: Addressing_harassment
• Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Britannica – Joseph Reagle, Lauren Rhue; International Journal of Communication
• The Wikipedia Gender Gap Revisited: Characterizing Survey Response Bias with Propensity Score Estimation – Benjamin Mako Hill, Aaron Shaw; PLOS
• Cultural bias in Wikipedia content on famous persons – Callahan, Ewa S., Herring, Susan C.; Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
• It's a Man's Wikipedia? Assessing Gender Inequality in an Online Encyclopedia – Claudia Wagner, David Garcia, Mohsen Jadidi, Markus Strohmaier; Cornell University Library
• Google Scholar: harassment on wikipedia; gender bias on wikipedia