Grants:IdeaLab/Harrassment of Editors of an Article

Harrassment of Editors of an Article
Find a better way to handle editors who band together to drive other editors away from editing the article. They do this by harrassing the other editors in many ways, large and small. The objective, very clear at times, seems to be to curtail their editing of the article.
contact emailskyrocket153(_AT_)aol.com
idea creator
Lou Sander
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created on22:00, Thursday, June 30, 2016 (UTC)


Project idea edit

What is the problem you're trying to solve? edit

Often a cadre of editors "takes over" an article, driving other editors away by harassing them in various ways. If an editor who is harrassed in this manner attempts to contact other editors who were formerly active in the article but have been harassed away from it, he/she is accused of canvassing, and the harassment begins in earnest around that issue. There really doesn't seem to be a way of dealing with this.

What is your solution? edit

Maybe there could be a tag to post on the article's talk page, alerting editors to the situation. It might or might not have a place to name the editors who are involved in the ownership/harrassment. Maybe there could be a specific exemption from the canvassing rule that could be invoked by the editor who is trying to re-interest editors who have been previously driven away. The important thing, I think, is that there should be a way for a harrassed editor to give notice of his or her feelings of being harassed. As it is right now, the harassing editors just do it, and eventually drive other editors away from the article, and maybe even from Wikipedia.

Project goals edit

The goal is to end the practice of editors informally banding together and harassing other editors away from a given article.

Get involved edit

Participants edit

Endorsements edit

  • I have seen this done to several other editors on English Wikipedia, and also to myself, on several occasions. It has been a severe problem, but unlike many of those others, I remained with enwiki (and other-language WPs) out of a commitment to not let bullies win, even after blocking or topic bans. However, I think a special notice board needs to be created to handle such problems, because it could take weeks/months to prove the events in question, as otherwise an en:wp:ANI report could fill that page with too much long-term text. By the way: my endorsement of this topic, within 1 hour of posting, was mere coincidence, as a first-time user on this Grants:IdeaLab, but perhaps shows how severe and widespread is en:wp:TAGTEAM bullying, as to find endorsement within 1 hour. Wikid77 (talk) 23:02/23:07, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Dogpiling is a huge problem and I have seen it occur many times. 104.245.225.12 04:08, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

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