Harassment consultation 2015/Ideas/First : no denial or silence about it

Project idea

Idea by:Simon Villeneuve

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

(My English isn't really good. Please feel free to correct it !)

I think some kinds of harassment are easy to see and to solve. Clear cases like public physical threats, outing, sexual harassment or user page "bullying" are easy to detect and, consequently, measures can be easily taken.

I think there are other kinds of harassment which are much more hard to solve. Kinds of harassment like wikihounding.

That kind of harassment is often really hard to prove. It's mainly based on the feeling of the "victim". When accused of harassment, the stalker will almost certainly deny responsibility. A good stalker will slowly follow his "prey" on the wiki and cumulate unpleasant diff comments, comments on talk pages and other little "bites" like that to exhaust it. When the "victim" complains about it, often clumsily with a lot of emotion, the stalker will say that he doesn't understand why the other one "over"reacts like that and why they can't stay calm and rational. In that way, the "stalker" can also reverse responsibility and say that HE is the "victim". When the community looks at the problem (if it does), it will see, at best, equal responsibility from both sides or, at worst, the stalker as a victim of the overreacting "prey".

I don't see an easy solution for that kind of problem. For what I have seen, the users who have talked about their feeling of harassment in that kind of situation faces community silence or denial of the situation. I don't know how we can solve, or attenuate, that kind of harassment, but I know what is the first step: break silence and stop denial.

What is your solution?

Simply take very seriously every situation where someone says that she or he feels harassed. For that, we must:

Explain to the person that expressing feelings of being harassed is a very serious thing, and that he/she must be careful about that. Harassment accusations are serious things and must not be "launched" lightly,
Listen to the accusation and don't deny the feelings of the person,
Don't let the silence be the only answer.

After that, what to do? I don't know. Often, the stalker will say that he or she is the victim and it will be very hard for people outside of the situation to judge it.

Discuss this idea at: Talk:Harassment consultation 2015/Ideas/First : Stop denial

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