Wikipedia talk:Cyberbullying

Please leave comments here:

• I strongly endorse everything that has been written here. Kansan (talk) 01:44, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
• Wonderful idea and very clearly written out. This is quite impressive and very necessary. PrincessofLlyr ^talk 02:31, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
• Same opinion as the two above. wiooiw (talk) 02:48, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
• Beautifully and simply written, and very accurate. :) I applaud Peterdownunder for it, and strongly agree with everything here. I often see and delete pages along the lines of "Larry is a fat ---". Cyberbullying is terrible, and Simple English Wikipedia is obviously quite vulnerable to it: we'll need to take a firm stance against it. Sincerely, —Clementina talk 03:04, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
• Seems excellent. Make into policy. fr33kman 03:23, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
• I endorse making this into a policy. Exert 04:52, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
• Exceedingly sincere and neat page. I like the idea, and wonder why there wasn't a policy like this before. Affably, Belle ^{tête-à-tête} 00:34, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Stopping cyber bullying

The whole remedy section is draconian. I would like to retain my judgment as an admin, and I would not like to see revdel used loosely. Jon@talk:~$ 04:54, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Jon would like the "Quickly hide (and oversight if needed) bullying edits" section removed from the suggested policy.

Please discuss below:

Revision deletion

I agree that what we need to do is serious, but all the research is saying that this is a very serious problem. One of the big dangers is what I as an adult editor might see as "trivial", may well be the breaking point for an individual. I do not suggest using revdel loosely. There is no value to this project leaving comments on the open public record (the page history)that were meant to be harmful and to bully and harrass a user. They are still there for the victim to see. Admins have done a great job in removing the offensive and malicious comments that are made. I strongly recommend that we do not trivialize the problem, accept what the experts are saying, and refuse to allow bullies to use this project. --Peterdownunder (talk) 05:36, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, as in most areas of fighting against harm, it would certainly have to be used with discretion. For example, a change which I reverted today called its subject "obese". Now, I'm not sure if the subject is a person, but assuming he/she is...if we go along the lines of Peterdownunder's page, this is a "John is fat" type of comment and should be revdeleted, isn't it? Though a great deal of vandalism is like this, I don't think it would be too much that we couldn't carry it out quickly and efficiently. Revision deleting is quick and simple, and there's really no good in keeping mean, hurtful comments in the public logs. Oversighting, however, should only be used when really necessary. I don't think it would be that great a problem. Respectfully, —Clementina talk 08:59, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Consider this, that I call an editor a "stupid piece of crap", then I go on and edit nicely for a few months, then run for RFA... would not those edits need to be public review? I don't won't think misused as a tool to avoid public scrutiny, even if that use is an unintended consequence. Thanks, Jon@talk:~$ 09:27, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

A valid point, I do not want a policy that has unintended consequences. We need to think what they might be, and how do we make sure that they are not a problem later. Robust argument between editors is fine, although the example above would break our No Personal Attacks policy, and I think we are good at enforcing it. Even with revdel it is still visible to admins who would be able to comment publicly that an editor had been reverted for bullying (if they chose to run for RFA for example.) I think we do a good job protecting each other from bullying and personal attacks. When I was thinking about this while going through the deletion logs, I think we need to a better job protecting our casual users. What would it be like to sit in a classroom computer lab researching Ned Kelly only to find that someone in the class has added "Peter is a fat slob" to the article? Everyone there would get the chance to read it, or look it up in the page history. Who knows what mental state Peter is in - has he just got text message number 20 saying the same thing (I work with one girl who got over 250 one night), is this same message all over myspace or facebook? And now here it is again on the Simple English Wikipedia. I think we need to send a strong message that our wikipedia is safe, and that this sort of behaviour has no place in building an encyclopedia.--Peterdownunder (talk) 10:33, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Peter is a fat slob is technically libel and already oversightable, so this proposal doesn't really change anything. -DJSasso (talk) 18:29, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Confused

The wording of the page seems to indicate that it is an essay proposing a policy, a call to action, not an essay to be made into policy in its current condition. Or am I wrong? sonia♫ 06:12, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I think you are right, as it is not worded as a policy in its current form. I meant it to be a call to action, which is why I have left it in Userspace. As Jon has indicated above, it is a proposal which needs to be thought about and discussed first. While the issue is urgent, I think a few weeks talking about it would be time well spent.--Peterdownunder (talk) 06:35, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Implications of such a policy

For what it's worth, I think a policy on cyberbullying, as an expansion of WP:NPA to include vandalism in the form of attacks on non-notable people in article content, would need to be worded extremely carefully. If a user asserts once that "John is gay", that's probably a boy testing things out at the expense of one of his mates. Labelling it as cyberbullying will probably mean more embarrassment for the target, if he is one of a group of kids in a classroom situation gathered around one computer. Is this then treated as a "deny recognition" situation? Just quietly revdel? My main concern with that is that strikethroughs in history logs become common, and the more harmful forms of abuse seem less serious when revdel becomes a tool that is liberally applied as Clementina suggests above. In many of these cases, I'm sure that neither the user who added the information nor the target will ever look at the history and see what they've added. For them, it's just "Oh, it's gone." As for industrial-grade oversight, I don't like the idea of that being involved unless the bullying is of a standard that would normally require it anyway. Protection is one thing. Making judgement calls as to what exactly affects the psyche of a possibly hypothetical child is not part of the admin role as far as I know. I'm also concerned about changing the perception of administrators from cleanup to a more "nanny state" role.

All the research shows that to say that homophobic bullying is just "a boy testing things out" is to not take the issue seriously. My neighbourhood school has had the region's first stabbing for exactly that - being told he was gay, was just one time too many. One danger is trying to say that some bullying is more harmful than another. The seriousness of bullying should be defined by what affect it has on the victim. Professional advice eg [1] all says take it all seriuosly and confront the bully with the information that the behaviour is not acceptable. I know my students at my school look at page histories to show others their comments if they have been deleted. It is exactly because we do not know the psyche of a user that this policy is important. Former Aussie PM Kevin Rudd said Australia needed a "...national policy of zero tolerance towards any form of bullying towards a kid." Rules for OS are clear, and do not need changing. --Peterdownunder (talk) 11:53, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

The part of this essay that is primarily concerned with expanding WP:CHILD I have lesser issue with. But my question is, who does this apply to? Just children? What happens with users who've never explicitly stated their age? "User names should not show a persons name, age, sex, location, or any other personal information." Is this "recommendation" from an expert to be made part of policy? These are an integral part of one's identity, and thus may surface in usernames. What is the reaction to users like Kiwiteen123? Is the application of the policy different depending on the user's age/location/gender/previous interwiki activity?

Most of these issues are dealt with in our guidelines about protecting children. I don't think our policy on this needs changing, but I think we need to keep it mind all the time. Over the years I have seen admins take quick action to protect younger editors. --Peterdownunder (talk) 11:53, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

This policy would involve significant changes to our civility guidelines, username policy, and deletion policy. I think each of these aspects requires significant discussion in itself. sonia♫ 09:36, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Fully agree --Peterdownunder (talk) 11:53, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anyone (yet) make any "Cyberbully-like" comments on any talk pages. Wikipedia is not Facebook. Anyway, how would you tell if that user has a personal connection with the other user?Albacore (talk) 22:13, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I have seen some edits from IPs that could be considered "bullying". And yes, Wikipedia is not Facebook, but people have taken advantage of Wikis (especially school articles) as a source to bully others. wiooiw (talk) 02:13, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Unintended complication and prescription

I don't like the idea of a prescriptive policy, some of the things we already do, and some of the things suggested we don't already do. I am also a bit concerned about one of the unintended consequence, hiding revisions and the two strike rule. I don't mean to be resistive, but I want to resolve these. Jon@talk:~$ 11:22, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I have taken a bit of time to think about these issues.

Hiding the bullying edits is no different to hiding those that are "grossly insulting". As an editor I do not need to know exactly what those edits were. It is enough to know that edits were removed for those reasons. It is probably simply broadening the term "grossly insulting" to include the typical cyberbullying comments. The purpose of hiding them has two purposes, one is to protect the victim, the other is to remove any satisfaction the bully may have in seeing their bullying behaviour still online.

The two strike rule needs to used carefully. Again the main concern is to protect the victim at the time of the attacks, and to quickly remove the bully's tools. The first warning says "Your latest edit looks like cyberbulling. This is not acceptable on the Simple English Wikipedia. Any further bullying may result in your account being blocked." If the bullying continues immediately after this, then we simply block the user for a couple of hours, just long enough to stop it. But it needs to be as soon as possible. Blocking days or weeks later will not achieve the immediate protection that the victim needs. If we find that the user (and for a school account it could be many users) collects a large number of these warning messages, then we need to take stronger action, as we would for any repeat vandalism. --Peterdownunder (talk) 08:44, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Logs

Resolved.

I have a question, how should be deal with cyberbulling that appears in our logs? All logs can be "revdel"ed, too, so should an account like <removed> be deleting from the account creation log, account block log, and delete the talk page? If we don't do all three, how is this any different that failing to revdel a single edit that contained the same content? EhJJ^TALK 20:59, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that all three should be deleted, I was actually wondering about this earlier today. Exert 21:01, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes those are generally oversighted per being attack names. And I would note, if you revdel something that is libelous like this that you get an OS so they can completely oversight it. -DJSasso (talk) 22:23, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good and thanks for taking care of that. Exert 22:40, 26 September 2010 (UTC)