Personal Attacks

[Lillabet]

I understand that the role of the Editor is not to arbitrate in disputes between users. However there have been a couple of cases where users have been insulted and attacked with little or no provocation. I know acw was upset about posts directed at her not long ago.

Personally I had a number of highly offensive posts directed at me after telling a poster I believed his views were racist and offensive. (He had stated that to keep our daughters safe all we had to do was not let them near black men) These posts have been removed. However I do not know if this user has been banned / suspended. I do not want you to personally respond to every answer reporting that you get. But might it be worth considering that if you take action against a user for attacking another user you could let the person they attacked know what happened. It would help reassure those who are singled out for such treatment that you take this seriously. Similarly when you remove an imposter let the 'real' user know that this has been done. What do others think?

[VINNY100_2]

In that case ED can you remove the Imposter for Good who keeps trying to copy my name.

[Lillabet]

Ed: The reason that I wanted to discuss this is that I have found that when you are attacked and the posts are just removed it doesn't necessarily feel as though answer bank is taking the matter seriously.

An imposter going out of his / her way to try to upset others in your name or someone using the anonymity of the site to attack you, and I don't mean disagree - I mean being abusive - simply appear to have their post removed in the same way that someone being 'a bit too chatty' does.

As an alternative could you have a banner similar to your 'edited by answer bank' one which you use to replace removed posts. you then could have 'removed for offensive content' or 'imposter: deleted' that way you would be differentiating between chattiness, which to me seems a minor offence, and downright abuse. It would be confirming that you agree the content of certain posts is offensive.

[MargeB]

Would that deter these people really?

[Lillabet]

Honestly, I don't know. I can't begin to fathom 1 the mind of someone who gets a kick out of pretending to be other people to upset strangers. 2, the person who used a debate to attack my gender, the sexuality he attributed to me (wrongly), my politics (which he also got wrong), my intelligence, and to wish violence upon me and my daughters.

I don't know if you assumed I was talking about you when I started this post. I wasn't. I was talking about the violently angry racist whom I had the misfortune to cross.

There has been a lot of criticism of the editor on the basis that the removal of posts is sometimes overzealous. Both for simply being chatty and perhaps some people do report posts too readily. I personally have reported those posts that were impersonating me and one post by the person who then attacked me. I did him the courtesy of telling him that I objected so strongly to his views that I had reported them. I don't believe in going behind others' backs.

As posts are so readily removed it seems as though being chatty is as big a breach of the rules as behaving as this poster did. I'd like some sort of differentiation. Also to know that a person who behaves as he did is treated more severely than someone who is simply chatty.