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Well, the post-then-delete is one of those things where effect is more important than intent, so fits neatly into our discussion of harassment. Granny's intent is irrelevant here. The fact of the matter is that he appears to post things while drunk which he then regrets and asks to have deleted. If this is seem as harassing, and if the content is an important part of this harassment, then we need to find a way of getting around this in order to avoid vaguery. Asking moderators not to delete any post of AG's might be one way to do that, a more credible alternative might be copy or screen-capturging these posts.
The PMs issue is much easier. PMs have an existence over which AG has no control - they cannot be deleted by him, nor can any other person be compelled to delete them. So, there is a ready source of material.
Now, the other criterion I mentioned in treatment of harassment is whether a reasonable person would find content harassing. This requires the view of reasonable persons. In Barbelith terms, that's a pretty narrow field, but we work with what we have. What it does depend on is public scrutiny. This is where the "private" in "private" becomes awkward. On reflection, I would prefer either to abolish them altogether or have them renamed in a fashion that does not suggest any onus to keep them confidential. The situation being as it is, there is a reasonable assumption that what one says in a private message stays in a private message, unless there is an overriding reason for it not to. One of those overriding reasons is harassment, I'd say. As an example, when Smiling Friends, after a big bowl of Student Dope, decided to send sexually harassing emails to a load of people on Barbelith, it came to light pretty quickly. This can be seen in terms of workplace relations as gross misconduct.
In less clear-cut cases, people who are feeling harassed in the workplace are usually instructed either to notify a superior, if they do not feel that they can confront the harasser directly, or to seek a private meeting where they tell the harasser that they are feeling harassed by their behaviour, what the behaviour is and that they would like it to stop. The easiest way to replicate this with PMs, I think, is to notify the other party that the content of their PMs is making you feel harassed, that you would like them to stop using the PM system to contact you, and that if they do not then you will be justified in making public the content of all their PMs to you, so the board as a whole can determine whether they are right in feeling harassed.
I'd hope it wouldn't be necessary to say "and keep a copy of your own PMs", but it often is, so, yes, back button, change name of recipient to self, hit send again. |
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