Stalkingpedia

I had interviewed or photographed everyone from Augusten Burroughs to Madonna to Shimon Peres for Wikipedia. In two days, I was to fly to Brazil to interview the mayor of Rio de Janeiro and Oscar Niemeyer, the architect. I canceled my trip. “I’m sorry,” I told the tourist board who arranged everything, “I have to fly to Denver because my mother is in the hospital.” What a lie! I flew home to Colorado because I was suffering an emotional breakdown over an Internet stalker. I endured his pursuit for three months on Wikipedia. My behavior grew erratic. My paralegal job suffered. I resigned as a volunteer Wikipedia editor.

Encyclopedia Dramatica calls this “Wikicide” and I committed it several times over. I wrote long, tortured screeds for help from fellow editors that were misread as arrogant boasts of my accomplishments. My stalker delighted in these embarrassing verbal dances on Wikipedia, the world’s seventh most-visited website. I found little help from authorities or the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the site. “We don’t have the resources,” wrote volunteer coordinator Cary Bass. Wikipedia has become a site where people fight culture wars and ordinary contributors like me are caught in the crosshairs.

Read the whole article of David Shankbone
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/06/express/nobodys-safe-in-cyber-space

There is a discussion on foundation-l on stalking.

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