Wikipedia Isn’t Officially a Social Network. But the Harassment Can Get Ugly

Once, an administrator on a Wikipedia page blocked an editor simply because that person’s username suggested that the editor could be gay, said Rachel Wexelbaum, a Wikipedian who works to improve L.G.B.T. content on the website. Amir Sarabadani, a 25-year-old Iranian software developer with Wikimedia Foundation’s chapter in Germany, said that in his 12 years of editing Persian-language Wikipedia, users were often hostile while editing articles related to homosexuality. But Mr. Sarabadani, who left Tehran for Berlin two years ago, said he thought his work as an administrator on Persian-language Wikipedia had made the community of editors there less tolerant of abuse.

Source: www.nytimes.com