Agreed, this is a pointless discussion that is going nowhere.
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We had PMs? lol i never even realized
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i apologize for phrasing that in an assuming way. i also do not think you are victim blaming. however, posting condolences while at the same time condemning the concrete actions being taken for the future is a bit like posting “sending thoughts & prayers” to disaster victims while the rest of your friends are donating money to relief efforts.
if the bottom line is you think disabling PMs won’t do any good, that should be your angle rather than calling it totalitarian right off the bat. but i think even your bottom line is mistaken.
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If the wanikani team’s decided to commit to the decision then they should just lock the thread. I think 99% of the arguments have been made on both sides.
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Agreed. @anon20839864 @koichi, sorry to bother ya’ll, but maybe see if the thread should be locked?
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Nah, I don’t need an apology. You have a right to your opinion and your assumptions! 
It is how discussion works as far as I’m concerned. I won’t get hurt~
I… am too stupid to understand the comparison 
EDIT: Ooooh, now I get it! No, I just purely think she didn’t deserve it. It’s terrible that people have to suffer. But I still don’t think it should be closed. But whatever, I have no power over it anyway and it was decided already.
I am on board with what the team decides. It is their platform. I just wanted to share a different side than provided in the reactions. I hope I didn’t offend anyone and hope to learn with you all.
@anon85167355 if you ever need to talk to someone there is no shame in talking to a proffessional. I would offer a listening ear but that might not be the best road after what you went through.
I am off to bed. Good night all. See you all later .
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Waow. This thread really had its waves, and it’s great seeing some folks come around a bit. Let’s stop talking about whether it’s good, or bad, or whatever, to take away PMs. Whatever you all come up with, the decision has been made. I’ve wanted to remove PMs for the last 5 months anyways, so no blaming yourself for PMs getting shut down, please.
Fact of the matter is, someone in our community was essentially assaulted. And, I’m so relieved that the end of the story turned out well. Not because it’d be a PR nightmare, but because a terrible thing didn’t happen to someone. I don’t know (most) of you personally, but it breaks my heart every time I read any post where one of you is put through any kind of ordeal. I want to make the best decision I can to not just fix the problem for one person, but make sure there aren’t posts like this in the future through prevention.
So would you all help me out? I’d love to change the tone of this thread so I don’t have to lock it >:[
I’m trying to think of what else we can do. I think a sticky post around education for privacy and giving out personal information is a start, but I’m not sure exactly what to put in it. It should be succinct and easy to read, while still making a strong point. Also, adding something to the forum rules will be good, explicitly not tolerating publicly sharing info.
Help me out here, what do you think would be some good things I can do today (and in the future, too, but I’d love to do something today first).
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Can people post discord servers or email addresses or won’t it be tolerated at all to make a connection outside of the forum if people would want that? I mean it is all under public eye now. Not saying people should. But it isn’t clear to me :-).
How does one register on the forums? You could put that warning during the registration or something. Also, do you guys have access to our birthdays? People with age under 18 could receive a warning. There’s probably a way to do this since we have cake day or whatever.
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While I think general internet safety is a good thing to reinforce, I also think a big part of these situations comes down to someone being manipulated, especially when they’re young. Unfortunately I don’t see that as being a problem only confined to web forums, but I do think it could help if it’s also addressed in some way. I don’t have any resources to link to off the top of my head, but maybe some sort of mention of possible red flag behaviours (demanding personal information, harassment, asking for photos, etc) and a link to the email to contact someone to report said behaviour. Speaking up is a very difficult thing for people because they can end up feeling trapped and ashamed. Reinforcing that this is something that can and, in fact, needs to be reported is important both for stopping the behaviour and giving the victim agency in the situation.
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I definitely like the idea of warning against giving out private information and listing red flags to watch out for! Being able to spot a dangerous situation goes a long way in keeping you out of one. As it has been said, children are naive, and predators will use that to their advantage. Giving kids the resources to become more informed can help them become more cautious, more aware, and generally safer online.
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Might wanna drop a PSA on what grooming is what it looks like in an online setting. I’m certain the person in question would’ve recognized the parallels if she’d known about grooming in advance. I think that’d be more useful than a generic ‘don’t give away information announcement’ that’s bound to be ignored.
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Expressing your love for us~
Oh wait, you’ve already done that more than enough :3
But seriously. I think you are overestimating what we expect of you. How you guys have handled this is already beyond my expectations. I think that there’s a very small role that you guys can play in preventing this stuff from happening.
Honestly, I think the best thing is to acknowledge that it has happened here on WK along with a post educating people. Sure, educating people is nice, but the first part is what’s truly important imo. It becomes a lot easier to brush off that warning when you feel like it would never apply to you. People join to find a tightly knit community that shares a lot of interests, so they are likely too trusting of others right off the bat. Thats the real killer in my opinion. I think if people weren’t so quick to assume this was a safe haven of wonderful people to be trusted (dont get me wrong, 99% of people on here are great), they would be less susceptible to manipulation.
I dont expect you to want to have new users seeing about how this incident occurred, but I think it would help. I can’t actually see a warning about this stuff having any effect on its own. I just feel like I would heed a warning much better if I knew it actually applied to me. If you tell me not to go out by myself at night because someone could mug me, I probably wont listen. If you told me someone got mugged last week at night in my neighborhood, you bet your ass Im not going outside at night by myself. That’s the difference it makes.
Overall, my answer is to decide whether or not you are comfortable educating people on this kind of thing and providing this incident as proof that it happens even on here. That should be doable in a day or so. The actual creation of the post may take longer, though.
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Jeez, I knew from the moment I saw the topic title something bad had gone down. I wish I had noticed. I don’t post that much here, but I still saw a few things I thought was odd at the time, and hindsight is 20/20. I’m pissed.
I’m just glad to see Koichi is taking action immediately.
I think a warning against sharing private information is helpful, though I don’t think it’ll be a cure-all at all, just because knowing myself I was pretty bad about rolling my eyes at those things when I was young. But it literally can’t hurt.
I think one thing that might help is just the fact that now the community has seen something like this here, we might be able to promote a more cautious community. I mean, it’s a sad thought because part of what makes this community great is how friendly it is. But it’s still the internet. Might be good for us to occasionally throw in that reality check if we see something getting too personal, especially now that PMs are disabled. I don’t know, it’s just a thought.
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Honestly, this could be a good thing for everyone to be aware of whether they’re underage or not. These sorts of people can sometimes try to soften up the adults surrounding the child so they’re less protective. Psychological tricks can work on people regardless of age when you don’t know how to spot them.
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I think a lot of you are right about people not reading - It’s better to have it there, because (some) people will read it, but a majority probably won’t, knowing the internet.
I definitely rely on all of you to help flag things as you see them - not to put the burden on anyone else, but that’s going to be (and already is) such a huge part of keeping this community safe. You look out for each other, and I really appreciate it a lot. I know I’m in a bit of weird position in this community, but I really feel it’s unique because for the most part people are here to help each other out. I really love that.
Another thing I can do is give the mods and other staff more of a heads up to try and notice anything like this earlier on… though in the end it’s going to be the users as a whole who see the most. So, please let me rely on all of you a little bit 
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I was thinking about doing something like that, but I also don’t want to put any pressure on those involved. Even writing this is putting pressure on those involved, so if you’re reading this please don’t feel like there’s any pressure on you to do this. I think it’s good to show people it’s real, but the conclusion I came up with was I have to also respect the privacy of those who were affected.
But, I do think it’s a swell idea. You’re almost my #1 Som/Daugthær now, I think.
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As an aside, I just saw this too. Thanks @bladepoint for gathering and putting together some ideas for all of this, as well as some info on internet safety.
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I agree that it should ultimately be the decision of those directly impacted whether or not this is something they feel comfortable being used in that sort of way. I also think they should take some time to think about it and talk it over first. Maybe there could be a summary of the incident with usernames removed?
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