Now there's a banner I never thought I'd see my name under: The New York Times!

[terriko]

I wrote for the New York Times yesterday. Not making this up:

Where Are the Women in Wikipedia?: Trolls and Other Nuisances

Okay, so it's "just" their online opinion page, but I was still pretty stunned to be contacted by an actual NYT editor looking for a comment on the wikipedia numbers. I was expecting she'd take some little quote out of what I said, but instead she nicely edited down my piece and there I am, voicing my opinion right under Jane Margolis' statement! (She's the person who wrote "Unlocking the Clubhouse") So Darned Cool.

Comments

[terriko]

I said trolling because frankly, outright harassment in a more legal definition isn't the only problem. For example, on the gf post that I complained about earlier, I also got a rambling comment detailing someone's child custody woes and their frustration with the system as a male parent. That wasn't harassment to me, but it was trolling: content that was designed to get a rise out of me/gf. One or two of those is pretty easy to ignore, but you get crud like that every time you post (and sometimes I do depending on who's linked us lately) and it starts to add up to an excessively time-consuming environment. It's just not about discussing first principles, it's about a small subset of folk who are determined that the fact that there might be a woman listening gives them a right to step on a soapbox even when it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

One could more strictly term that example as derailment, but trolling seemed the best term to cover that sort of thing that might be individually harmless, but collectively adds up to something very close to harassment through repetition.