Talk:Passive observers

Acknowledging the troll manipluation

I feel this article could mention more about the complex ethical conflicts involved in gathering information. For example, the reality of the sentence:
"The Cwcki's wealth of information over the years has been gained from Chris's inability to keep information to himself, his incredible honesty has made sure we know everything we need to know without having to befriend him."
is more complicated than that. Most of the CWCki's material is comprised of information such as chats/emails that Chris told to people thinking it would be kept between them, or videos that trolls manipulated him into making by misrepresenting themselves to him. By using that information, the CWCki is in a position where its editors might not directly engage with Chris, but still utilizes the information gained from those that do. Hurtful Truth Level (talk) 01:46, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

• Solid Points, I agree.PsychoNerd054 (talk) 02:27, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Section covering the common ethical questions/criticisms about observing Chris at all

Would it fit this article to include a section covering the common criticisms people bring up toward the idea of observing Chris/having a CWCki in the first place? It's somewhat common for people to insinuate that documenting Chris's actions and work, advertising his existence and failures to other people, or criticizing and mocking him on a dedicated website are in and of themselves a form of trolling or harassment. Another claim I've seen is that, despite explicitly discouraging contacting or harassing Chris, the CWCki and observation of Chris in general trivialize or valorize past trolling in a way that implicitly encourages it. Conversely, there are definitely some people who claim that observing and documenting Chris is immensely culturally important, a symbolic bastion of freedom of speech, or an important archival project, and ascribe disproportionate moral importance to it because of that. It seems like these conversations should be covered and/or debunked somewhere on the CWCki, and this page seems like a decent place for it. Cottonmather (talk) 22:17, 9 May 2026 (EDT)

Sounds good. Hurtful Truth Level (talk) 11:51, 12 May 2026 (EDT)