Don’t Read the Comments: Caroline Sinders on Online Harassment
A design researcher at Wikimedia discusses how to define online harassment — and how to stop it
Online harassment is pervasive, but platforms generally do a terrible job defending their users from it. Our techniques, our tools, and even our definitions of harassment are woefully inadequate. How do we get better?
Caroline Sinders is a design researcher at the Wikimedia Foundation, and previously designed machine learning systems to combat harassment as an Eyebeam/Buzzfeed Open Labs resident. We sat down with her to discuss doxxing, trolling, techno-utopianism, and why Twitter needs to hire anthropologists.
This interview was conducted in early 2018.
Logic Magazine: What is the Wikimedia Foundation, and what do you do there?
Caroline Sinders: The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit that powers Wikipedia. We run the servers. We make sure the site runs. We’re responsible for designing things, like the iOS app you have if you read Wikipedia on your phone.
The English-language Wikipedia is the one that people often think of as Wikipedia. But we also have over 200 Wikipedias in other languages. It’s the fifth most visited site in the world.
