Hey there. I’ve been a long-time lurker of many, many forums, and I’ve created quite a few communities myself.
I’m curious, how is it that it can take over a year for someone to suggest reviewing privacy settings? Was it suggested early on and ignored, or did no one bother to bring it up or review the report, just delete the content and move on? I’m not sure what the policy is, or how that went down. But surely, if the abuse continued, someone should have reached out to the person reporting it, suggesting they review their account settings?
I’m honestly a bit confused about how that was handled.
Either way, these kinds of actions don’t stop, at best, they’re just delayed. In my experience, these individuals will join conversations using compromised or farmed accounts, come across as trustworthy, and eventually end up with accepted friend requests, only to use that trust to personally attack again. This kind of behavior erodes the trust we try to build online, often with lasting consequences.
It’s honestly appalling, and I wish more communities would be vigilant about monitoring accounts, content, and the reports they receive, applying a zero-tolerance policy where (temporary) IP bans are considered, even if it means risking some collateral damage from public VPNs.
A good community should never make its regulars feel unwanted, force them to hide their identity, race, gender, etc., or make them avoid participating or feel bullied out.
Instead, the extra time spent properly handling these reports could be used to gather information and report it to VPN services, ISPs, and other platforms involved, providing them with the relevant terms of service and a request to enforce those terms on their users. This approach helps build strong relationships with companies that want to offer clean, reputable services and don’t want to be mass-blocked for providing a safe haven to those spreading hate speech or breaking the rules.
Anyway, this isn't my community, and the size here is significant; the staff simply might not have the means time-wise to deep dive into repeat-reports. And spend 15+ minutes on processing it in-depth.
But, if the moderators receiving and processing the reports notice a pattern, they could in my opinion report up a consensus that perhaps the default privacy policy might be worth a short discussion to update. Or perhaps reach out to the person being targetted that they have features on the account they can review to improve their forum experience.
Either way; I am sorry that you're being pushed to a point where you are considering to just not be a valued member of the community anymore. I know I don't tend to post a lot .. And my post count on many vB/XF forums is easily 5k, 12k, 25k, 40k .. People love to notice something about you and take it to your youtube, twitter, discord, etc. And make sure your time ruined so they can feel better about their petty little life. It's a shame. Don't let them win. Despite it being frustrating, annoying and what not. Keep at it, report report report, and take note. Ace up the sleeve is you being in control of the game they're trying to play. If it ever escalates you know what data your legal agent can request through a court order and have them show a judge the pattern over the year(s) and seeking damages might just help you retire early..
Yes, I am rambling. Time for some herbal tea. My point is: it's your life, they don't control it. You can't control theirs. But the staff can value valued members, and the valued members should feel welcome here. I am glad there's privacy settings to limit who can reach out. But I am curious why it took a year to review them.
You make some good points.
Needless to say, I cannot speak for the OP, but I can speak to my own experience re privacy settings.
I suspect that it may be a matter of temperament, or personality: Thus, while perhaps introverted by nature, many of us - among whom, I count myself - never gave the slightest thought to having to set privacy settings (i.e. limit access via privacy settings) until something happened - such as a disgusting, vicious and profoundly insulting direct message, which, I am happy to report, occurred only once in my own case - and which consequently compelled a course of action on my part (such as giving thought to matters such as privacy settings) in response.
In my own case, I must say that the staff acted with commendable speed when I reported the extraordinarily abusive message and - literally within a matter of minutes, as someone from the staff was online at the time - they had banned the individual in question.
Now, yes, agreed, (abusive) patterns of behaviour on the part of individual posters can - and perhaps, should, - be noted, and, I would imagine, if the individual in question remains with the forum long enough, and posts sufficiently often, they are noted, both by staff and by their fellow forum members.
Nevertheless, I am at a complete and utter loss as to why some people should wish to engage their (scarce) free time in insulting pursuit of others: Perhaps they wish merely to provoke a reaction, or assume the right, or arrogate to themselves, the right to insult someone simply on the basis of their gender or ethnicity and have persuaded themselves that this is a worthwhile and rewarding endeavour.
Personally, I remain mystified as to why anyone should wish to do such a (petty and pathetic) thing.
However, I will point out that the vast majority of the staff are volunteers, and do not receive a salary; thus, on a site of this size, it is entirely possible that what you suggest may require resources that the site owners are unable, or unwilling, to expend in order to achieve the outcomes you have outlined.
Furthermore, unfortunately, what is considered to be a successful social media platform, or site, in the online world seems to be measured in terms of engagement, clicks, responses and reactions, and sites are designed to encourage and reward this.
While the staff here are swift (and rightly so) to act upon reports of especially egregious behaviour or conduct, firstly, they need to be notified of it (unless they happen upon it by themselves), and secondly, regrettably, the currently successful 'model' of online life all too often rewards the outrageous rather than the thoughtful.
