Training modules/Dealing with online harassment/slides/background-research

Investigating reports: Background research

The facts you verified usually come with context that helps you to navigate the issue and understand what has happened. That makes the background an important component of evaluating a case; if you skip it, you risk overlooking history or facts that are vital to resolving the current issue.

Your background research should cover researching the involved parties along the lines of below:

Regarding the target:
- Has your team dealt with this person before (whether as a target, a reporter, or a harasser)? Were their reports and/or opinions reliable in any previous dealings you have had with them?
- Does this person have a history of having been harassed, whether by the current alleged harasser or by others? (If yes, you may find that you are dealing with a new sockpuppet of an old harasser.)
- What is this person's history in the community? Knowing that someone has participated in a gender-related WikiProject, for example, might lead you to discover that gender is the basis for the current harassment case.
Regarding the reporter (if different than the target):
- Has your team dealt with this person before? Were their reports and/or opinions reliable in any previous dealings you have had with them?
- Does the reporter have a known relationship to either the target or the alleged harasser? That is, might there be an ulterior motive in their report (backing up a friend who is in conflict, exaggerating a situation to make somebody look bad)?
- What is this person's history and what, if anything, might you know about their approach to contentious situations? They may be known as someone superbly level-headed or as someone who overreacts; either of those being true will have some bearing on how you interpret the way they present their report
Regarding the alleged harasser:
- Has your team dealt with this person before? Do they have a history of being reported for harassment? Have they been harassed themselves in the past?
- Does this person have any known friction with either the reporter or the target? It may be that this reported harassment is simply the latest front in a long-term war.
- What is this person's history in the community, and are the events in this report related to that history? Perhaps they have a history of being blocked or sanctioned when editing on a particular topic, or perhaps the reported behavior seems very unusual for them. Search the archives of relevant noticeboards and look at the block log and talk page of the user to help you determine whether that history may be related to your current case.

Adequate background research will not stop at just the two or three involved parties, however; it will also take into account the relationships those parties may have to other editors or groups, as well as any general history of the point of dispute (if any) in the harassment:

Any organizations that any of the involved parties are affiliated with, and whether those organizations may also be in conflict
Any off-wiki activities any of the involved parties may be involved with that are relevant (for instance, someone may be known to participate in a forum that enjoys publishing the personal information of others, or may be open about having a certain gender identity or political view)
Whether the harassment report reflects a known long-term pattern of thematic conflict involving broader groups of users; for example, homeopathy-related editorial controversies.

A caveat on background research: Context is not synonymous with rationalization or excusing. Your background and context research will help you understand the situation at hand, and they may explain why harassment occurred in a situation, but they will not make a valid report invalid and they will not justify harassment that has taken place. All contributors are responsible for their words and actions, no matter the context of a situation. A long history of quality contributions does not excuse bad behavior, nor does being objectively "in the right" or having been victimized in the past. Likewise, a history of bad behavior does not make a contributor "automatically" guilty when accused. Therefore, your analysis of a report's validity should focus on the facts described within the report rather than the parties involved in it.