Shutting up the whistleblowers? o.o

Callout journals cause excessive public drama and are often riddled with inaccuracies. They turn regular folks who've had a simple disagreement into monsters, and cause negative feelings all around.

Harassment is a serious issue, but going public with it isn't the way to resolve it.

Yeah...I suspect there's more to the story than we're hearing, frankly.

Plus banning people from a public site doesn't really work; they just re-register under another ID.

I dunno. Fandom politics just makes me tired. Next week someone will find a reason to be pissed off at the Weasyl admins, I'm sure. I'm already on more furry art archives than I can follow properly, so I'm not sure I want to add another.

Going public with it makes people aware that something is going on. Sometimes that causes "drama", but it beats telling people that their relentless, cross-website harassment is less important than preventing a little bit of public outrage.

If there was some mistake, though, the damage would have already been done by the original journal. It is for this reason that our legal system is intended to work on the "innocent until proven guilty" principle, and I firmly believe justice demands that others follow that example.

There's a point between torches and pitchforks and punishing the recipient of harassment by preventing them from talking about it in a public forum. Do you really want it to be on the victim to prove they're being harassed, in an environment where the moderators are more inclined to prevent drama by feigning impartiality than believe you? Because that's the situation as it exists right now and frankly it's kinda gross.

Do you want to be the victim of wrongful accusation? That's what allowing such discussions to take place makes room for.

Private, real-world business doesn't belong in public online forums.

Yes. I'd rather be the occasional victim of wrongful accusation. Because it's better than being sexually harassed by a stalker who's following you from site to site. I dunno.

And yeah, real-world business belongs in public online forums. The internet is a communication tool for real-world people who occasionally have real-world problems. Why do you say that real-world problems don't belong online?

I didn't say they don't belong online; they just don't belong on public forums - especially not public forums full of white knights and drama mongers.

Interesting, I know not of this weasyl you speak. I must investigate!

Politics may be moving a number of people over there yeah - but - my primary reason for joining and supporting Weasyl monetarily in the first place, weeks ago, is the feature set, which already exceeds what FA has and continues to improve. Meanwhile, FA has now had 3 months to make improvements of substance after their town meeting, and so far as I can tell, not much has happened - especially on the feature side. Instead, FA has usually been godawful slow for me.

Two months ago I think the argument could be made that there wasn't a critical mass of artists over there to support artists who post commissions offers and such there, but I think things may be at a tipping point. More than 60% of the artists I watch here now have a Weasyl account...

Well I feel a bit silly now. Didn't even read their policy on that.
It does seem a bit heavy-handed, but I'll give it a go. In a way; it's actually kind of classy. Keeping personal matters to yourself and not having everyone dog-pile on this one person you hate.

And just what do you expect FA to do about harassment at deviantArt?

Remember: Once the guy actually did something here, he was out on his ear.

I would have answered the user's harassment claim with the seriousness that it is due, I'd investigate the harassment on whatever other sites, and issue a preemptive ban if the situation calls for it. I dunno, IMHO. I have no tolerance for that shit. If it was my website, fuck it. Nobody's allowed to get harassed.

And how would you even know if it is the same guy?

Note that the FA admins don't ignore what you do on other sites, that's why the guy was gone the instant he was caught violating the FA TOS.

The thing that bugs me is that the admins are devoting so much of their energy to protecting the presumed innocence of someone accused of harassment when they should be applying their energy to protecting the people who are being harassed.

"So much of their energy" being the removal of a single journal that violated the TOS.

She was told that they didn't have cause to suspend/ban him yet and that she should block him here, (which she didn't do BTW), because if he did anything to get around the block he would be gone pretty much instantly. The admins then _continued to investigate the matter_ and were in fact waiting for her to provide some more information when someone else, (i.e. not the victim), decided to start the drama.


I suggest you read the following journal rather than working on what seems to be woefully incomplete information:

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4356040/

This isn't the first time something like this has happened.

* The Issue With Evidence -- The evidence of stalking was primarily pointing at actions that occurred on Deviantart.com and Flashback.org. When we are presented with information off-site we /very rarely/ take action on it, and here's why: we have NO WAY to verify the users' identities. We have to give users the benefit of the doubt. Did somebody make an account on Site X to harass the user, and implicate them in the issue? Is it legit, or just an impostor?

So like, go from a starting point where the target of harassment is lying, falsely accusing someone, and make her jump through all of these hoops to prove that it's "legitimate"?

There is a difference between "we cannot know if this is true" and "we will assume that you are lying." To begin with, consider the possibility the the victim is simply wrong about the accounts being the same person or that a third party is trying to cause issues for both of them.

Do you _really_ want things set up so that I, should I want to, could get your account here taken away simply by going elsewhere and pretending to be you? Because that is what you are asking for!

When you mean this site? Are you talking about Weasyl?