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On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof
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@GF I’m so desensitized to the odd, awkward, or vaguely insinuating messages I receive from random people on games like these that I forget reporting harassment is a thing I can do. I know this doesn’t answer your question exactly but idk maybe offers some insight.
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@Artemis The poll is mostly about whether providing logs produces positive results, but I totally get what you and Pax are saying. I have to remind myself that it’s okay to notice and get mad at being harassed.
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@GF I haven’t reported anything of this type. Everyone has their own definition of what applies and rarely does one person know what another person’s definition is. So I’ve encountered it occasionally, but never to the point where I felt I needed staff intervention.
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Yes. No. “They’re new, they’ll be gone in two weeks.” I’m a male btw.
I noted it down on a lesson on what not to do. Which to be fair I’m doing with a lot of the examples I see here. It’s the weirdest thing, the common sense to actually take something like this seriously doesn’t seem to be very bloody common.
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@Hobbie said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
Yes. No. “They’re new, they’ll be gone in two weeks.” I’m a male btw.
I noted it down on a lesson on what not to do. Which to be fair I’m doing with a lot of the examples I see here. It’s the weirdest thing, the common sense to actually take something like this seriously doesn’t seem to be very bloody common.
There are four main reasons I’ve found why taking action on such things isn’t common:
- They just don’t believe you or care
- They believe you’re overreacting, or misreading a situation
- The person you’re accusing is popular/important/a key contributor,
or - They’ve done the same kind of thing and don’t want to think that they’re a sexual harasser too.
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Yes, yes. On most games, nothing happened. Sometimes I was turned into persona non grata if not overtly so. On the rare few it was dealt with immediately. (I genuinely don’t report red flags though, the one exception has been Arx, where I feel comfortable enough with staff either way that I don’t feel like I need to wait until it’s horrible to say anything, I can just ping with a “hey this happened and it felt weird, i don’t expect action or even a report back, just wanted you to know”. For a long time it was the only game I felt okay doing that on. Now I don’t play on any game that I don’t.)
Hell, I’ve had the yes/yes/nothing was done in RL when reporting both domestic violence and stalking to the police in the 90s. So i’m not terribly surprised to see similar behavior in folks who grew up in that era, and am pleased at some of the changes that you do see.
I can’t think of a single game I played in the 90s/00s that was safe to report any kind of issues to staff, especially if it involved “active” or “popular” players. I’ve even been disbelieved by friends (but not necessarily gotten blowback). I believe that was a pretty much universal experience during that era. 10s-current seem to be a much more mixed bag.
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@GF said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
@Artemis The poll is mostly about whether providing logs produces positive results, but I totally get what you and Pax are saying. I have to remind myself that it’s okay to notice and get mad at being harassed.
What do you mean by “positive results”? The range on that is wide, as is what constitutes being harassed. Whether you were satisfied by the resulting action is an altogether different story than whether the staffer took action or whether there were positive results.
The topic is such a delicate clusterfuck.
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I agree with @Polk that most staffers require logs in a weird form of jurisprudence, which ironically makes the apathy towards sexual victimisation all too realistic.
But I’d wager that most (not all, obviously) people posting here who ask for logs aren’t asking for proof so much as they are asking for context. We aren’t on the game in question, we aren’t privy to those conversations, and we don’t know who they’re talking about. So if someone comes asking for solace or advice or whatever it is, we want context.
I’m not saying it’s right to ask for logs, just that it’s understandable and from a different perspective than the one people most attribute.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
My desired approach when dealing with this problem is that logs are helpful but optional, because as proof it’s unreliable since text on a page is so hilariously easy to alter. But, true or not, having them for reference answers one burning question straight away when running an investigation.
“What am I looking for?”
It’s not impossible, and it’s not even hard to investigate a potential harassment case without them, but context is for kings. Logs of interaction provide a pattern to look for, then when you’re checking behaviour, you cross-reference it against what you have. If it matches, you can rule out #1 and #2 in @Pavel’s list of reasons pretty much immediately.
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@Hobbie Quite agree.
And from my perspective, being a middle-aged(ish) man, some interactions won’t register to me as sexually harassing when it’s aimed at anyone who isn’t a middle-aged man. Not because I can’t tell good from bad or that I don’t understand harassment, but because I don’t have the relevant life experience to understand that X thing is harassing from this person’s perspective.
So when one is actively investigating, logs are less important than understanding what the person did, and you can get that just by asking the reporter.
And all of this is only appropriate for a “do I get this person off my game” investigation, not part of any attempt to mediate the problem or downplay things.
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The place that didn’t ask for logs dealt with the issue immediately; I submitted my complaint, and things were handled all behind closed doors and then the guy was gone. This place has established for me that I am allowed to require safety of a game that I play on, so I no longer play on games that I’m not safe on.
Historically, I have submitted complaints relating to sexual harassment (of varying degrees), been asked for receipts, provided them, and was then raked across the coals in some fashion as a result. This is the default reaction. Usually I was just “too sensitive” and since the text COULD be interpreted another way…but at least one time I was a “known TS hound” so it wasn’t a problem that somebody was pestering me for TS.
I have had false (non-sexual) complaints made about me in very public fashion, and they were done alongside false sexually-related complaints made about someone else. This person was not believed in either set of complaints, due to their own behavior.
I have also had false (non-sexual) complaints made about me that stuck for a long time. It sucked. It sucked a whole lot. I would still rather see the community err on the side of believing victims, even knowing that the Spiders of the world (and their disciples) are out there. As much as it sucked, I was not harmed by exclusion.
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I have not had another player/character come on to me uncomfortable in a long, long time, if ever (I’m a male player who mostly but not exclusively plays male characters). I have reported people for things they’ve said to others in public or in scenes that I’ve been present for. I have been asked for receipts and if I have them or can easily get them, I have provided them (assuming they don’t bring anyone else into the situation who doesn’t want to be in it). Lately, I have gotten positive responses in each situation, but that’s mostly because lately I only play on games where I trust one or more of the staffers very strongly.
As a staffer, I ask for receipts to be shared if the player is comfortable sharing them. I do this because seeing the incident for myself is helpful for me to get a handle on the situation and how to approach the other player, and because being able to say “I’ve seen what you did” has more weight that “someone told me you did this.” There’s a whole lot less room for the person to argue with the former than the latter.
But if the reporting player doesn’t have receipts or doesn’t feel comfortable sharing them, I will absolutely take action with a generalized description of the situation. That action may be asking around to other people who interact with the prospective asshole, or it may be going directly to the source to see their response (it’s usually telling). It may just be watching the person super-closely. Depends on the reported action and what I’ve seen myself of the person. But it will at the very least be watching the person closely and re-evaluating my prior views on them (usually it involves giving them a single warning or kicking them the hell off my game though – the comfort of players is more important to me than the continued presence of very active players).
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Am a man who plays men and the kind of bad play I got sent my way did not surface as sexual harassment but more getting dragged OOCly for crossing the wrong established person. I generally didn’t think I’d get a fair hearing or what even going to staff could have accomplished. But I can definitely attest that the idea of having logs pored over by other parties made me feel incredibly exposed. For someone who has been victimized, especially with mindfuckery and gaslighting, it can be very hard to even be completely sure that the logs are going to reflect well on you. It can be really awful to think that you might not be believed.
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Decided to not report. Then the harasser reported me for being hostile and I got what was essentially a choice between TS this person or leave the game. I left the game.
So, yeah. I do understand why people hesitate and sometimes just figure they’ll just keep their head down.
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As someone who is super insecure and lacks confidence, I’m always thinking “But… what if it was my fault?” in the back of my head without anyone else even needing to make the accusation, no matter how much I try convince myself otherwise. Even about mundane stuff about who left the light on in the bathroom. Even if I know it wasn’t me, the moment someone else says “Well it wasn’t me” the implied ‘so it must have been you’ immediately makes me question my own memory of the event.
That is already a huge hurdle to overcome if I were to think of reporting someone for, well, anything. The fact I could be asked for receipts, and that those receipts might be somehow interpreted differently than I had and used as ‘proof’ that I really had been asking for it kind of just nixes the entire idea of me ever wanting to report in the first place.
But I kinda feel like the people most likely to be victimized are the ones that have that voice in the back of their head already whispering that they’re the one at fault for everything. They’re the people who need to be able to report. So making that process as… gentle, I guess, as possible is important.
That’s my personal take on it anyway.
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@Sammich said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
But I kinda feel like the people most likely to be victimized are the ones that have that voice in the back of their head already whispering that they’re the one at fault for everything.
That is because abusers can sense it. I’m not sure exactly what it is they’re picking up on, but it’s like catnip to them. That’s not to say it’s our fault. When others target you for abuse, whatever their justification, the reason is that they wanted someone to abuse.
You deserve to be able to believe your own memory and have confidence in it, and I’m sorry something has made that so difficult for you.
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@Adora said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
That is because abusers can sense it. I’m not sure exactly what it is they’re picking up on, but it’s like catnip to them.
It’s the same way that scam emails work. They present themselves in a specific way that only a specific kind of person reacts to.
In my experience, an abusive person will start fine, and weasel their way in sociably, perhaps even affably. They’ll then start to drop hints at their abusiveness occasionally. A less targetable person will rebuff those hints, and the abuser will adjust and act like an average person around them. Someone who regularly fights land wars in their own brain will react differently, and that’s what the abuser picks up on.
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@Pavel … So I’ve been in therapy on and off for the better part of a decade. I’ve seen four different therapists in my life. And not a fucking one of them ever put it as succinct and easy to understand as that. Thank you.
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@Adora said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
@Pavel … So I’ve been in therapy on and off for the better part of a decade. I’ve seen four different therapists in my life. And not a fucking one of them ever put it as succinct and easy to understand as that. Thank you.
I’ll put that on my business card when I finally qualify as a therapist!
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Utility of logs has a big IT DEPENDS label on it for me.
I had someone tell me a player was somewhat uncomfortable and they just wanted to let us know, in case anything else came up. I asked if they could show me an example, if they were comfortable. If not, no big deal. I’d make a note and keep an eye out.
They showed me a log. And this person was super bad do not pass go do not collect $200 kind of player.
And out he went in the cold night.
But then sometimes logs are used against reporters, or not believed, brushed off, etc… So I don’t know that there will ever be a full proof system. But I do trend toward believing people when they tell me there’s smoke.
Historically, in my experience, the people reporting are more vulnerable and have more to lose.
