Harassment

[Ben]

This post is pretty much copied from another thread in Game Talk, so if you read that one no need to read this.

I thought I'd take a moment to talk to anybody out there having the problem of somebody, most notably of the opposite sex, harassing or bothering you. I know in the "real world," that people doing this sort of thing are hard to deal with. If you report them to the police or whatever, you face a long, drawn out process... usually somewhat public... that has just as high a chance of trashing you as it does whoever was acting poorly toward you in the first place.

This is because our society is built on a foundation of giving everybody a fair chance, and their day to speak their mind. There are what some would call "loopholes," which are actually just the system's way of not leaning one way or the other and giving all parties in the situation a chance to fight for themselves. Unfortunately, this often gives the predator plenty of time and opportunity to continue preying on the innocent. Because of this, people are often afraid of reporting in the first place, choosing to either keep silent or "quit" on life.

That is completely irrelevant here. I am neither obligated nor do I care about being fair in these types of situations. If you report somebody immediately, it is fairly easy for me to go in and see their offending messages...at which point I ban them. I don't even care to talk to them to get their side of the story, because quite frankly, I don't give a $h1&. =) You report them, I check your claims, I find your claims valid, and then I utterly destroy the predator. No mucking about for me... so you have nothing to worry about in reporting the person.

Anyways, we pride ourself on having a safe environment... however, like ANY place in the world, we are going to have some low-lifes show up. I can't watch everything everywhere, so it is really up to you to let us know when something bad is going on. Do this for yourself and for any other people the idiot might be bothering.

Please also keep in mind that this goes for ALL kinds of harassment. I don't stand for any of it, from bugging people about "kill stealing," to messaging underage girls inappropriately... it is all bannable or punishable material in my book.

And as a side note... you can do A LOT to protect yourself by not giving your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, or other chat information away to people you meet in here. I'm not saying don't give contact info out to ANYbody, because you certainly might have good friends here, but a lot of people give and ask for IM contact info as if they are trading pieces of gum. Protect your personal info and be careful.

[Ben]

On the other hand, be aware that if somebody you don't like for some reason says "hello" to you, you cannot report them for harassment just because you don't like them or because you have told them not to talk to you.

I mean... people have to actually be bothering you in some way that makes sense. You will be hard pressed to get me to punish somebody for saying "hello" or "good morning". =\ Of course, if somebody did something to you BEFORE, and I told them to leave you alone, and THEN they say hi to you, that is different. But if I have never heard of your problems before, because you haven't been bothered to report people to me, then I'm not going to wack people around for wishing you a good afternoon. If I did that, people could just report each other willy nilly for the goofiest stuff just because they didn't like each other.