Misplaced Pages

Just because arbcom and Jimbo mention wikistalking doesn't mean it needs to be codified into policy. WIkipedia is not following a "rule of law". It is a benevolent dictatorship at the head, and a rule of law for admins to enforce. If the admins can't handle something with objective policy enforcement, then the executive decisions and subjective interpretations should be kicked up to arbcom and/or jimbo. Making this a policy will make matters worse, not better. The fact that it will be almost impossible to clearly prove an accusation to be wrong should be red-flag enough. You accuse me of violating 3RR, I can easily prove it wrong. You accuse me of stalking, and show edits that happen on common pages, there is no straightforward way to prove it wasn't stalking, even if it really wasn't stalking. That is not good policy because it isn't straightforward and it doesn't have an objective application. Combine this with the user-enforced RFC system, and you've got problems. This will create more problems than it will solve. The number of false accusations, and the number of manhours needed to sort them all out, will far out-weigh the few real cases of wiki-stalking that can be handled by arbcom and Jimbo. Leave the executive decisions to them. FuelWagon 18:28, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

SqueakBox - looks good so far! I also added a couple sentences encouraging new users to politely contact other editors and try to figure out exactly why it is they're being followed before shouting at them with an allegation of "you're stalking me." I think anything that could be done to discourage or avert the frivolous stalking allegations while simultaneously making it clear that genuine ones carry a stiff penalty is an improvement to the article. Thanks again for the additions. Rangerdude 04:50, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

What stiff penalty? This is only proposed as a guideline. If penatlies are involved it should be cast as a policy. -Willmcw 07:18, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

The penalties have been applied by Wales and the Arbcom, not something prescribed by the guideline itself. One purpose of the guideline is to inform users that Wales and the Arbcom have applied stiff penalties for wikistalking. Rangerdude 17:55, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

This seems to be the core definition: "an evidenced distinctive editing pattern in which one editor continuously follows another editor over an extended period of time and a wide variety of unrelated articles for the purpose of making excessive "followup" changes to the original editor's work"; so tag teams (or the gang-bang) remain legal. nobs 15:58, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Description of edits

Edits I just made and their purposes:

1. I added links to specific Misplaced Pages policies that may apply under the "good" stalking section (e.g. Vandalism, NPOV) and sentence encouraging editors to familiarize themselves with these if they are following for that reason. The purpose of this is to augment and clarify the previous sentence "it is a good idea to have a justification for such activity."

2. I removed the phrase "POV pushing" from "bad stalking" section and replaced it with a reference to violations of "Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines." This includes the NPOV policy, which I believe to be the object here. My concern is that while WP:NPOV is spelled out as a policy, the term "POV pushing" is not and is subjectively applied. It concerns me that the addition of this term may have been to create a loophole by which an otherwise discouraged type of stalking could continue so long as the stalker simply declares "But you're a POV pusher" in his/her own judgment. A loophole of this type is very dangerous because it provides an easy out for otherwise abusive stalkers while in reality doing very little to enforce the real POV policy at WP:NPOV.

I'd just point out that this entire proposed guideline provides an easy out for anybody wishing to advance an agenda of any type, including vandalism. · Katefan0 18:41, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

3. I restored another editor's deletion of disruption and deconstruction of work for reasons other than WP policies and guidelines as potential types of wikistalking. The Wales precedent explicitly named disruption as a type of stalking. Deconstruction is self evident and applies to the type of stalking in which a stalker goes through and reverts or deletes his subject's edits for reasons other than those permitted by WP policies and guidelines. Rangerdude 18:17, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Deconstruction is a literary phrase. It means, essentially, a type of literary criticism. I don't see how you can include "deconstructing" (i.e. criticizing) someone's edits in a definition of "bad stalking." Anybody is free to express an opinion, as long as it isn't a personal attack. But this can't be written into a guideline in the fashion in which you suggest; it's essentially meaningless. · Katefan0 18:39, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

And "deconstructionism" is also a philosophical phrase, but in its most common usage "deconstruct" is a verb meaning simply "To break down into components; dismantle" (American Heritage Dictionary). In its literary/philosophical use the term is not commonly employed as a verb but rather as a school of thought called deconstructionism. If you prefer though, I'll gladly change the wording here to a synonym such as "dismantle" or "delete." Rangerdude 18:49, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

It already says vandalize, which is arguably what deleting would be. I'd prefer it just be removed. · Katefan0 18:54, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Not all deletion and not all disruption is vandalism though, and deconstructing a stalked subject's work is a particularly stalker-prone area. Editors who go around dismantling somebody else's work for non-policy related reasons may not necessarily be adding content that is vandalism to an article and in fact may not even get noticed, especially if they do so a few minutes or hours after the contribution was made. Since wikipedia is "written to the masses" so to speak, I don't believe the risk of a deconstructionism/Derrida confusion with the more common usage definition of the verb "to deconstruct" is a particularly high risk - especially given that there is no link to deconstructionism here. Rangerdude 19:04, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

If someone's edits aren't vandalism or otherwise a violation of policy, then there's no problem, right? So if they are vandalism or otherwise a violation of policy, then punitive actions should be able to be pursued as a violation of that policy. I just don't see how a case can be made for this "guideline;" all it's doing is creating something with which bad faith editors can bludgeon someone else. · Katefan0 20:08, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Vandalism is not the only type of disruption on Misplaced Pages. In fact the Wales precedent on stalking found that an editor's behavior was disruptive - even though that editor was only making minor changes such as wikilinking that would otherwise go unnoticed - because those changes were made specifically for the purpose of harassing another editor's work. Rangerdude 20:14, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

And those two isolated cases were dealt with appropriately, proving the current system works. · Katefan0 20:16, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

That's a circular argument, comparable to citing the conviction of a single child molester as "proof" that child molestation is not a problem anymore. The standing precedent of Wales with The Recycling Troll obviously did not deter Skyring from stalking only a few months later. Instead we got a repeat of the same, and it required a drawn out arbitration process that occupied the time and attention of the already backlogged arbitration committee to effectively decide the exact same thing Jimbo Wales had already found to be a violation before. The entire point of a guideline is to inform Misplaced Pages editors that certain behavioral conventions exist on wikipedia, and that harassment of editors by stalking them is not tolerated here. This in itself is a deterrant to potential stalkers by way of providing information about its nature and consequences. IOW a stalker can no longer claim ignorance of two certain but relatively hard to locate precedents as a defense, and a potential stalking may be deterred from the offense if he or she is directed to the guideline in the early stages of the act before it becomes a problem requiring Arbcom intervention. Rangerdude 07:44, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Your arguments aren't parallel with mine. I never suggested that the current system means it's "not a problem anymore." (Personally I never felt it was a problem to begin with.) Regardless, I simply said that the current system is adequate for dealing with problems when they arise. There have only been two arbcom cases dealing with this pseudo-issue so far, and I don't see any great backlog of people crying for a new guideline preventing "wikistalking," so I'm inclined to think that what we have now isn't really broken enough to warrant this guideline, particularly when it's so problematic. · Katefan0 19:53, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

When Wales or the Arbcom determine that "deconstructing" edits is against policy then we can add that here. -Willmcw 20:35, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Round two

• These changes are done for the purposes of harassment, disruption, and dismantling legitimate contributions of the stalked editor for reasons that are not in compliance with Misplaced Pages policies or guidelines.

This text, particularly the part about "dismantling edits", goes way beyond the precedents set by the ArbCom and Wales. They both talk "wikistalking" as following an editor with an intent to harass, not with an intent to "dismantle the edits". There is nothing wrong with dismantling the edits of another editor. If the problem is not obeying other policies and guidelines then we don't need to repeat them here. Wikistalking, plain and simple, is following an in order to editor to harass them.

redundant policy

So, the proposal talks about the difference between good stalking and bad stalking. The proposal says it's ok to follow someone around and fix their bad edits. That's good stalking. This means that what's left is bad stalking. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean that the proposal is trying to make a policy that says it is against policy to follow someone around and break policy? The more I think about this, given the can of worms this "stalking" policy would open, I am more and more of the mind that existing policy should handle the problem editor. And problematic edge-cases should be left to arbcom and jimbo to make a command decision. FuelWagon 19:58, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Leaving aside the question of guidelines vs policy, there are many edits which, in isolation are unnecessary but either unobjectionable or only mildly objectionable, but if made repeatedly on articles that a particular User has edited become harrassment. The same goes for comments on Talk pages. If I see that a user has introduced a certain PoV, or a spelling or grammatical mistake, or a vanity link, or a style that goes against MoS, I might check her other edits to see if she's done it elsewhere; no problem. If someone irritates me and I go to every article that she's edited in order, for example, to change all her dashes to hyphens, or all her correctly formatted links to redirect-links, then there's a problem; doing that on one article would be an annoyance, but nothing to get steamed up about; doing so on all the articles edited by a certain person, and it becomes stalking. It may be that such behaviour wouldn't bother you, but it can be infuriating (for example, it means that when you check your watchlist, you find that every article on it has been edited. You can ignore them all, but then that means you no longer have a functional watchlist (and after all, you don't know what the edit was just before the stalker's...). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:56, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Frustration aside, functionally wouldn't that be handled under grievance policies dealing with vandalism? · Katefan0 22:02, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Mel - the example you describe is very similar to what happened in the case with "The Recycling Troll" (TRT) that caused Jimbo Wales to ban him. Essentially TRT was going around to virtually all the articles that the other editor he was stalking had made additions to. When TRT went to each he would then rearrange dashes, periods, wikilinks and the sort as a "followup" edit, knowing it would force the editor he was stalking to keep checking his watchlist pages and cause general annoyance. TRT's actions were NOT considered vandalism because the changes he was making - e.g. adding wikilinks - didn't damage the content of most of the pages themselves but rather simply harassed the guy he was stalking. That's the basis that Jimbo Wales decided the case on - TRT's edits were not a bannable offense because they vandalized something, but rather because they were disruptive in that he made them to intentionally pester another user. Rangerdude 07:21, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I hear you, Mel, but, if the articles are made better, then the editor who did it shouldn't be punished for "stalking". Really, the articles must get highest priority. And if the "stalker" goes around and makes the articles worse, then isn't that just more evidence to throw on an RFC? If someone is doing bad-faith edits, and if they're doing them all to one person just to harrass them, then it should quickly accumulate to enough bad-faith edits to get an RFC certified. And I get that this is something that an editor can "game", stalk someone and edit within policy in an attempt to annoy another editor, but I think creating a "no stalking" policy could be far more "gamable". I'm not saying that stalking couldn't be a problem, but I think a vague policy that is hard to define and hard to disprove just creates an easier way for a would-be stalker to harass an editor. Rather than stalk someone, accuse them of stalking you. Force them to spend hours and hours defending themselves in an RFC. All it takes it 2 to certify. Without the policy, a 'stalker' could harass someone if they can carefully follow them around and change their edits within wikipedia policy. That makes the stalker do a lot of work. With this policy, rather than stalk, all the guy has to do is accuse someoen of stalking, get one other editor/ally to certify, and the accused will spend hours defending themselves against the RFC trying to prove he isn't stalking and tryign to prove the other editor is filing a bad-faith RFC. It seems to me to make it harder for the bad-faith editor this proposal should NOT be adopted as a guideline or policy. That doesn't mean arbcom or Jimbo can't choose to give someone the boot for whatever reason they choose. But it keeps the subjective decisions out of the hands of bad-faith editors. FuelWagon 22:56, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

But there aren't only two possibilities: make better or make worse. There are countless edits that can be made that merely change things (differences in style, arrangement, etc.), without improving or detracting from what's there. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 14:38, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Mel, I know, but if it's a bad proposal with only two possibilities (make better/make worse), it will only be worse with all the real-world possibilities. It just makes it that much harder to disprove that you are innocent. That's the fundamental problem I see here. It makes it un-friggen-believably easy to accuse someone of stalking. I mean, I could just pick someone, start going to the articles that they edit, let them do what they do, and odds are that you'll find a point where it looks like there's a pattern where the other guy is responding to my edits. File an RFC, and it will be impossible to disprove in any easy way. That's what a lot of this policy crap comes down to: how much time will innocent poeple have to spend fighting a bad RFC? I think this will make it easy to file a bad-faith RFC, and it will make it damn difficult for an innocent editor to clearly disprove it without spending days combing through diffs and histories. FuelWagon 20:14, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I see your point. I think that checking the history of the articles would normally (at least) bring out what had really happened, though; one would just have to look to see which of the two had edited each article first. A pain, perhaps, but do-able.

As I'm being subjected to a minor bit of stalkking at the moment (by Coqsportif (talk · contribs)), I may be overly sympathetic to this proposal, I suppose. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:46, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

If I read the two precedents correctly, the key difference between bad stalking and good following is intent to harass. In both cases that intent was determined by first demonstrating a lack of good faith or useful contributions, and a presence of other trolling or abusive behavior. In neither case did they indicate that the simple behavior of following another's edits is, in and of itself, abusive without an overall intent to harass. -Willmcw 23:11, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Difference between Policies and Guidelines

Since there continues to be confusion over this matter with some editors, please see Misplaced Pages:Policies_and_guidelines

• A policy is something that "has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow."
• A guideline is something that "illustrates standards or conduct that are generally accepted by consensus to apply in many cases."
• Policies are not guidelines and guidelines are not policies. Policies are an official set of rules that editors are required to comply with. Guidelines are an officially recognized set of editing conventions that editors should be aware of and try to abide by at all possible times, but are not enforced upon editors as a rule would be.
• This particular article is being proposed as a guideline, not a policy.

Thanks. Rangerdude 20:11, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Even as a guideline, I think this creates the same problems of making it easy for bad-faith editors to make false accusations and making it hard for innocent people to disprove them. FuelWagon 22:59, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Precedents

The "Precedents" section had a lot of POV interpretation so I have tried to make it NPOV by simply quoting the applicable decisions. The final guideline, if approved, probably should only footnote the precedents. Their place here is perhaps best considered as an aid to guideline-making. -Willmcw 23:03, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

I reverted your edits to the "precedents" section as I see nothing even remotely approaching POV in it. If anything, your chopped up edits to it simply made it hard to read and reprinted large segments of text that are better represented through a simple link and excerpts. If you wish to contend that there is a POV in this section, please state the specific examples of what you object to before declaring without specification that it has a "POV" and rewriting the entire thing absent consensus to do so. Rangerdude 07:13, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

All we need are the precednets, not any editor's interpretation of them. I didn't re-write the interpration, I removed it and left the simple language of the ArbCom and Wales. -Willmcw 07:19, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Wales and the Arbcom decisions are already extensively quoted and linked to in the text. The only "interpretation" given is to state the outcome of each case, e.g. that TRT was banned for good and Skyring was banned for a year. For the purposes of making a concise and readable guideline, that is more than sufficient. That's not to say that there isn't valuable knowledge to be gained in the Wales and Arbcom decisions - only that it isn't necessary to reprint those decisions in full in an article summarizing them when that article clearly links to where they may be found. Also, given that conflict of interest concerns have been raised about your contributions in this article, I will ask that you abstain from making major changes to the proposed text unilaterally as you have been doing recently. Deleting and completely rewriting large paragraphs of text and altering the meaning and application of existing provisions within the guideline proposal should be discussed here first, Will. In your recent edits you have not provided adequate descriptions of your rationale, evidence of your claims such as section POV, or sufficient discussion of the material where your changes are disputed on the talk page. This sort of behavior runs against Misplaced Pages's consensus-oriented and collaborative processes. Please take greater care to remedy these issues in your future edits. Rangerdude 07:33, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

The only reason to include the "precedents" is to indicate exactly what the ArbCom and Wales said. Your spin on the material by, for example, makes it seem that both cases were solely about wiki-stalking, which skews the interpretation. In reality, wikistalking was only one component of the cases. Let me ask you, why do you feel it necessary to provide an interpretation of their clear text? The precedents are what they wrote, not what you say about them. If you like, we can have a section labeled, "Rangerdude's interpretation of the precedents". But if the section is going to be called "precedents", then let's limit it to precedents. -Willmcw 08:04, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Will - once again please describe the purposes of your major rewrite of the precedents section here before unilaterally doing so. Please do not revert to your own version when standing and stated objections to it exist and when explicit requests for you to discuss the issues surrounding it first have been posted. Doing so constitutes revert warring and is generally contrary to the principles of Misplaced Pages:Consensus. Rangerdude 07:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I didn't re-write it, I removed the editor's opinions and stripped it down to the words of the sources. I've posted several explanations of that fact. As for revert warring, when are you going to explain the need for adding your own spin to what Wales has said? Are you smarter or more authoritative about what he thinks than he is? As I said befire you want to add a section clearly labelled as your opinion then I won't object. But please don't masquerade your own opinion as that of Wales or the ArbCom. Thanks, -Willmcw 08:04, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

You've given absolutely no examples or evidence of what you believe to be my "opinions" in the original version, Will, despite multiple requests to do so. You keep asserting that it contained POV and now call it "spin" yet you will not even be bothered to cite what you consider an example of either. You've also given no sufficient explanation of why a simple link to the rulings - which is more concise and makes for a better read - won't work. And most of all, you've conducted yourself in a manner that is highly uncooperative with the purpose of developing this guideline proposal - a proposal which you've indicated your opposition to, BTW, thus also raising the issue of whether it is even appropriate for you to be making major changes to it while the proposal remains. Please address the issues with your rewrite that I have stated below. Otherwise the POV tag remains and outside assistance will be requested regarding your revert warring and anti-consensus behavior. Rangerdude 08:16, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Section POV tag on precedents

Will - Please address the following issues with your proposed rewrite.

1. You have claimed that the existing section had "POV" problems yet you refuse to specify any. What are they?
2. Why is it necessary to reprint entire decisions when a simple link suffices for purposes of being concise?
3. Why is it innappropriate to state the outcomes of the two cases as they occurred, and how is doing so "interpretation" when the penalties are clearly stated?

Please address these concerns and please conduct yourself in a manner that is more conducive to Misplaced Pages's consensus policy. Rangerdude 07:55, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Please conduct yourself in a more civil manner too. That would really be appreciated.

As for the pov, there's a lot!

• Abusive forms of stalking on Misplaced Pages have been deemed inherently disruptive in the past

"Deemed inherently abusive"? Cite please. They've never deemed any such thing. What they actually deemed is in the original text.

• and have resulted in penalties against the editor engaged in stalking.

We need to mention that these editors were also engaged in other trolling or unhelpful behaviors.

• Wiki-stalking has been the subject of at least two major dispute resolution proceedings, both of which have resulted in severe penalties being applied against the stalker.

"Against the stalker"? So now we're calling them stalkers? Whatever happened to "users" or "editors"?

• The most notable case to date happened from February to March 2005.

Notable Aaccording to whom?

• The incident involved an editor named The Recycling Troll (TRT), who was banned for an extensive pattern of stalking against Misplaced Pages administrator RickK

He was banned for a variety of offenses.

• in which the former trailed the latter's edits on a daily basis, making subsequent and mostly minor changes to his work for the purpose of harassment. After a contentious arbitration dispute over the proper way to handle TRT's behavior, Misplaced Pages founder Jimbo Wales intervened and permanently blocked TRT. According to Wales' decision, "the Recycling Troll was making a pest of himself by harassing RickK."

Wales decision said much more than that. By cherry picking quotes a false impression of the case is being presented.

• The stalking edits were "clearly not attempts to help" in Misplaced Pages's mission of writing an encyclopedia. As such, stalking as it occured in this case constituted disrupting wikipedia to illustrate a point.

Wales himself says all of this in a much simpler, clearer, and more authoritative manner.

• In a similar case,

The cases were not similar at all. Who says they were similar?

• User:Skyring was penalized during Arbitraition by [[WP:ArbCom|Committee on August 12, 2005 for [[Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Skyring|wiki-stalking.

What's the idea of all the easter egg wikilinks? He was penalized fora variety of offenses.

• According to the decision adopted unanimously by the participating arbitrators, Skyring is "banned from Misplaced Pages for one year for wiki-stalking and acting in bad faith towards other contributors."

If we quote them here, why don't we just quote them all the way along? These are "precedents", not "interpretations".

In sum, there are so many problems with the interpretation text that it's just easier, and better, to simply list the actual words of the authorities, rather than Rangerdude's spin on them. Also, I agree that once (if) this is adopted then we should reduce the precednets down to links. Until then it is helpful to see the actual texts in order for the Misplaced Pages community to evaluate the material for themselves. -Willmcw 08:20, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

I've been sufficiently civil with you to date, Will, and asked only that you abide by consensus principles when engaging in a major rewrite. Regarding your claimed POV issues:

1.You complain ""Deemed inherently abusive"? Cite please." My citation is Jimbo Wales' ruling, which stated of TRT's behavior of following RickK constituted "disrupting wikipedia to illustrate a point."

2. You object to "and have resulted in penalties against the editor engaged in stalking." This is a simple matter of fact, Will, not a POV. The stalking behavior of both users were specifically identified in the bannings and was a primary offense in both. Skyring was banned "for wiki-stalking and acting in bad faith towards other contributors" and TRT was banned for "Going around pestering RickK pointlessly and writing inane messages to the mailing list."

3. You assert that quoting the passage from Wales on TRT's stalking is "cherry-picking" and assert that "Wales decision said much more than that." The remainder of Wales' decision pertained to the ongoing dispute about the David Gerard block and the arbitration. There is no need to quote all that. If you wish to add that Wales also cited TRT for "writing inane messages to the mailing list" in addition to stalking why not simply add that quote? I would not object, and doing so would not unnecessarily reprint an entire decision that is easily found by a link as you seek.

4. You complain of the case's described similarity "The cases were not similar at all. Who says they were similar?" Now you're just being difficult, Will. Both cases involved a user who was stalking another user's edits, got taken to dispute resolution for that stalking, and got banned for that stalking - that is the similarity.

5. You say of Skyring "What's the idea of all the easter egg wikilinks? He was penalized fora variety of offenses." Actually, no Will. He wasn't. The final decision of the Arbcom against Skyring stated only two reasons for his banning - one specific one (wikistalking) and one about his behavior in general (acting in bad faith). That is not a "variety of offenses." The bad faith stipulation was also quoted in full in the original version. Rangerdude 08:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I will only respond by saying that in each and every case the answer lies on the source material, not in our own interpretations. Add more source material and add a separate section of your own interpretations, but do not remove the actual text or the precedents, or include your own spins without labelling them as such. Regarding the numbered points:

1. Wales never wrote the phrase "inherently disruptive". Who came up with that text? Regardless, anything that is abusive is disruptive, that's a tautology.

2. No, I complained of calling editors "stalkers". Sorry if I was unclear.

3. The point of giving a fuller Wales quote is to show the totality of TRT's situation. He was not banned solely for following an editor, and his other behavior was crucial in determing his bad faith and intent to disrupt the encyclopedia.

4. Saying they are similar is "spoonfeeding". Just list the two precedents.

5. Easter egg links are non-obvious links. Rather than simply listing the name of the decision, and linking it directly, it's confusing and misleading to link it under a different name :wiki-stalking. More spin. Let's just lay out the simple facts of the two cases and let other editors make up their minds.

6. Why do you keep mentioning a consensus for retaining your version? What consensus? The only consensus seems to tend toward dropping the entire proposal.

7. Have a nice day. -Willmcw 09:06, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Question: Being a newbie w/a dumbass question, am I reading this correctly , proposed finding states " While it is not possible to fully assess intent", yet action was taking against the editor. This policy proposal refers to "intent" several times, which may be a stricter standard than already in place. nobs 15:17, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, that's precisely the point. Edit logs are public record, so reading them and following users around can hardly be a problem. The issue is with systematically undoing that user's work, or insulting them, or being otherwise disruptive (which was the case with Recycling Troll and Skyring). Radiant_>|< 15:34, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

RfC on precedents

Question: Should the precedents section of this article summarize the two cases or reprint their rulings in full? Please post applicable comments here. Rangerdude 18:36, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

And if the material is not simply reprinted, how should it be summarized so that bias is not introduced? -Willmcw 19:20, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Has this actually been listed on RFC? Because I don't see it on the page anywhere. Nevermind. I see it on the surveys page. · Katefan0 19:45, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Question to Willmcw re: previous opposition to a Misplaced Pages guideline on stalking

According to the following text by Willmcw posted on July 5th regarding the establishment of guideline provisions of the same purpose as this for wikistalking, he wrote:

A problem with this proposal is that it assumes bad faith on the part of the accused stalker. That seems entirely at odds with the overarching policy. It goes to the intent of the user, which is unknowable, rather than the value of the edits themselves. We already have a policy about personal attacks that covers incivility. If being simply being corrected is harassment then everybody on Misplaced Pages is continually harassed. If an editor is making substantive contributions in a civil manner it should not matter what articles are being edited. -Willmcw July 5, 2005 22:00 (UTC)

As these sentiments convey a position of opposition to the establishment of an anti-stalking guideline to reflect the Wales and Arbcom decisions, as is the purpose here, and as Willmcw is actively editing this guideline proposal and, of recent, denying his opposition to it, he is requested to clarify the above comments from last month, indicate if he still believes in them and if so in what way, and state whether he supports or opposes the guideline proposal that is the object of this discussion. Thank you. Rangerdude 19:34, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

No, that text (why is it even here?) referred to your attempt to add wikistalking to an existing guideline, Misplaced Pages:assume good faith. Please stick to drafting and seeking approval for the current proposal, not a different proposal in a different place from a month ago. -Willmcw 20:08, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Will - I'm asking you specific questions to clarify your position regarding this guideline proposal based on your previous expressed opposition to similar proposals. The statement from you that I quoted above expresses open hostility to the idea of having a wiki-stalking guideline provision. Since you have been engaged in heavy editing of this article after the proposal was anounced and since you opposed its provisions previously, it is in the interest of this discussion's participants to know whether you support or oppose the current item on the table. If you support it you should state so openly. If you oppose it then you should refrain from making major revisions to the proposal as they could be seen as attempts to weaken it, vandalize its text, and obstruct its consideration by the Misplaced Pages community. You're free to comment on this proposal, Will, and make good faith contributions to it but you are not free to disrupt or vandalize it with bad faith edits done for the purpose of disrupting its consideration. So I'll ask you once again, Will. (1) Do you support or oppose this proposal? (2) Do you or do you not still agree with the position you took on this subject in July as quoted above? (3) If you still agree please clarify in what way, and if you have changed your mind please indicate the reasons why. Thanks in advance for answering. Rangerdude 22:42, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Interesting questions, Rangerdude. It is curious why Willmcw refuses to answer. Personally--shifting gears, natch--I wonder if what I call "gadfly-ism" ought to somehow be incorporated into any definition of stalking. I wonder if Willmcw's repeated attempts to delete my own entry and then to keep inserting the strange POV note that my article against intellectual property "is copyrighted," as if he caught me in some inconsistency--would count as mini-examples of wiki-stalking. We probably need a wikistalking committee to decide such matters. NSKinsella (Stephan Kinsella) 05:05, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Not a good guideline

After reading over the guideline and this talk page in full, I have come to the conclusion that this is not a good guideline. The points that have been made about how effetively impossible it is to disprove mean that, while the concept may be relevant as further evidence of disruptive behavior, it is not sufficient to be a stand alone, seperate guideline. If the page was rewritten to specify a clearer way it could be disproven, then it might be valuable, but, until and unless that happens, I do not consider it a good guideline. JesseW 07:30, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

• I concur. The ArbCom's definition of stalking is reasonable and rarely used. This guideline, however, seems to have the intent of discouraging people from reading other people's edit logs (which, after all, is what most accusations of 'stalking' are about). While following is not necessarily a nice thing to do, contrib logs are public for good reason. Radiant_>|< 13:44, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

I take offense at this, I've been avoiding get involved in this conflict but I take offense at you unsuing that I started this in bad faith as your last statement appears to say. I started this because there was no policy on stalking on wikipedia and it appeared that since stalking was becoming more and more of an issue it might be appropriate to have one, I was wrong it seems but this has never been meant to be in bad faith and if you disagree with the policy nothing is stopping you from putting this up on VFD. Jtkiefer ----- 18:52, August 19, 2005 (UTC)