Talk:Harassment consultation 2015/Ideas/Hire a harassment expert

This is a no-brainer. We have the money, we have the problem. We lack the expert, so hire one. This does not stop us from trying to come up with alternative routes to a solution, and a hired consultant remains hired subject to acceptable performance. Targets must be compiled for deliverables, invitations put out for tender etc. I see this as the tricky part. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:56, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Completely agree. Only this week, we have ARBCOM members being educated by the community as to why it's not ok to punish someone for the actions of others. We expect them to know this. Burninthruthesky (talk) 09:19, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

This is a great strategy: having someone responsible for a) regularly training eidtors in trusted rights positions, on what harrassment is and b) provide oversight/consultation with ArbCom and other community groups through deep knowledge of online harrasment, and managing it. Sadads (talk) 16:50, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Also of importance, we can reasonably expect someone who is not involved, and has no history with any of the players. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:14, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Just to make it clear, this idea is lacking general impact, as it is rather English-language-oriented, or - in case WMF can afford hiring more experts for more languages - major-language-oriented. I cannot imagine, how the expert can follow, evaluate and help solving cases of harassment on non-English-language wikis, or simply on wikis he does not speak their languages... --Okino (talk) 23:38, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

The English language Wikipedia is where the biggest problems appear to exist, and it is the biggest project. It would be a reasonable disposition of funding to tackle the biggest problems first. If it turns out to be worth the money, it could be expanded. The principles should be universal, and translators should be available for urgent cases in other languages. A potential solution does not have to be universally applicable to be worth trying or using. It would be irresponsible to decline a potentially viable solution to a large and persistent problem on a major part of the projects because it might not be applicable to every part, some of which may not even have the same problems. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:52, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I did not say that I decline this solution or that the solution should be declined, I just noted an argument that this one aspect should be taken in mind.

And - I do not follow the opinion that "English language Wikipedia is where the biggest problems appear to exist". In fact, we had some cases with signs of harassment or stalking on Czech language projects, the users even tried to bring them in front of wider public to Meta, but they struggled getting any significant response because of the lack of interest from the non-Czech-language community. It did not mean though they were not cases of harassment and it did not mean they were not big problems, it only meant the problems failed to break through the language and community barriers. So I feel the opinion is based on a number of people that can take care of en.WP and its problems and who really do care, and not on the true scale of the problems themselves. --Okino (talk) 18:54, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

• I disagree that we should have someone "to act as an on-call consultant to arbitration committees, administrators and the Foundation." What we need is help establishing training, policies and protocols. If we have someone dealing with these things day-to-day then all the harassment across wikimedia becomes their problem, which is not what we need. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:38, 18 November 2015 (UTC)