Hi there! I seem to be very confused on what is considered harassment, and I would love for an admin to clear this up so I don't make false reports. Scenario 1 User A is recording a bunch of people harassing him, and posts it on the forums. User B then says people who record and report evidence are pussies. User B is then reported and punished for Harassment. Scenario 2 User A makes a post that he is part of group Γ. User B then makes a comment, responding to that post and says people who are like those in group Γ are degenerates. User B is reported, but is not punished for harassment. In both scenarios, both User As are participating in the community peacefully. However, User B in the first scenario is punished for harassment because he is indirectly insulting and mocking user A, despite referring to people like that in general (or in other words: a type of person). In the second scenario, User B is not punished because he is not directly (or indirectly) insulting anyone, despite replying to the comment and referring to the same type of people that person A claims to be like. How is it that scenario 1 is punishable, while scenario 2 isn't? What is different about scenario 2 that makes it ok behave in that manner?
Its all based off of staff discretion, the persons past, and what the current situation holds. In both scenarios, that could be considered harassment, but again its up to the staff's discretion to say "alright this has gone too far". Just because you feel offended does not mean action will be taken. You have it flipped. In scenario A, User B is directly targeting that person that made the video, thus they were punished. In scenario B, User B was targeting a group of people. Its difficult to judge harassment at times. Some mods have zero tolerance for it, and some mods are a bit lenient, knowing that online banter will happen. If you feel a staff member made a bad judgement call you can always speak with their Admin or fellow lead admin about the situation. EDIT: Cowcakes made a valid point in SB. The user might have been given a warning point because of the irrelevant information they posted in the report, rather than the contents of the post.
Insulting people isn't against the rules. Harassment is against the rules. There is a difference between the two. You can absolutely harass someone without insulting them. But to answer your question... User B probably hasn't taken it too far yet. We're not gonna punish someone for saying "Furries are degenerates", but if say... every single time you sent a message, they responded with "Furries are degenerates." If enough evidence of this was collected, and it became abundantly clear the user is harassing you, then they will be punished. Elvis' post is very accurate. It's entirely dependent on how the staff member feels about the situation - if some dude is randomly saying "Fuck furries", I'm not gonna do shit about that. If you were to join the server, then every single time you spoke, he says "Fuck furries", then I'd probably tell him to stop. But it's not really that easy to tell sometimes. And sometimes, they aren't talking about you. I hope this answers your question. Remember: Simply feeling offended does not guarantee punishment.
There's also a very important distinction in the second Scenario (the real one, not the generalized/example one), in that it didn't actually call people in the group degenerates, they seem to be calling what that group of people does/likes/etc degeneracy. In particular there are 3 things to take from that post, the first thing being that what they are calling degeneracy very much depends on the experience and understanding that they have of that group and what it is about, the second thing being that it is their own opinion that they consider said group's attitudes and/or likes degeneracy which once again depends on what they understand of the group and what they know of the group's actions and likes, the third and final thing to observe from that post is that they are using their implied affirmation that it is degeneracy, which once again is their subjective opinion, to emphasize that sprays of that kind really shows, in their opinion, that the person with the spray has the "degenerate" likes and/or attitudes and what they think of that. I'd imagine that their thoughts while writing it were way more streamlined than the points above, but those are the 3 things I'd find relevant to observe from that. Now, if it was something like race, if the group being talked about like this was a group of a particular race, then it would of course be racism, even while being their personal subjective opinion. It's an interesting to observe that even though it would be an expression of racism it wouldn't be harassment in this particular case, as harassment would have to be targeted to one particular person, going back to first scenario it is clear why that statement could be considered targeted towards the player recording and making the forum report. In the case of racism though, a statement like the degeneracy one specially in the full context of their entire message would be discriminatory because they would be saying that they don't like that group of people, that the sprays helps them tell if a person belongs to that group of people and that they will stay away from that group of people, in other words discrimination. While legally I'm not sure if legal repercussion types of discrimination, like docking payments, even applies to furries, and I am not aware of anything like "furryism" being a thing, cases like scenario 2 certainly won't be punished (I'm not even saying it should), specially in the current backwards state of the server rules in which even discrimination and racism is allowed if it isn't targeted at a person (and therefore becomes harassment), a state which at the time of this writing has me really questioning why I'm even still continuing to be here...
