Forum Safety and the Disabling of PMs

@anon85167355, since your original thread was locked, I’m replying here; I hope you’ll be able to read it. (I started typing this a while ago, and just now got to finish.)

I am so, so sorry that that happened to you! Reading about it made me feel sick, and so many other emotions as well, and I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. I didn’t completely trust him, but I never thought he would take it so far. Was our 3-party PM just a ploy to make me think that his intentions were innocent?! (I can’t seem to find a way to view past PMs now; was this all removed @koichi, @viet ?) As much I, and others here, genuinely care about you, we can never be as supportive as your family and friends in real life, and I feel wrong about having to pretended to be so close.

You are so courageous to have brought this out into the open, and I’m glad to hear that your parents are making those wise but tough decisions to support your whole-body/mind health. As a parent myself, I know how hard that can be sometimes, and frankly this whole ordeal makes me more afraid for my own daughters in the future.

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There is a big difference between facts and victim blaming. I agree the first sentence is questionable but the rest of the post is solid advice.
I mean people do need to be educated more on the dangers of the internet. Especially young people.

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Doxxing yourself on an online platform without realizing what you’re doing? Yes, this is most assuredly an internet-specific problem.

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The thing is if you teach them early about the online Stranger Danger principle the risk will get significantly less. A parent will always be worried and afraid about their own children. Do your best to educate them about the dangers and keep good watch on your children like Elise’s parents. Who saved her from this threat.

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As others have said, until 5 months ago, there was no PM feature on the WK forums at all. The WK team was reluctant to enable it, and it’s at their own discretion that it can be used or not. With the information they have, they decided not having it would be the better option for now. The options Discourse may provide for the WK forums may also be limit the ability of them to implement the options you suggest.

You are also assuming a lot in your comment and, without stating it explicitly, laying the blame on victims of abuse and belittling them. You don’t know went on between the parties, you merely know a small slice of information.

The victim’s (who is a child, by the way) parents were concerned enough to want her to stop using WK at all. And for Tofugu and WaniKani and the team(s) behind them, I can completely understand wanting to make sure each user has the chance to use their products as well as they can, and that includes not feeling threatened. Perhaps they can eventually find a solution that doesn’t involve getting rid of PMs. But laying the blame at the feet of the victim and saying that trying to prevent abuse is “blowing things out of proportion” is facile.

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I agree about internet safety but the whole thing of “you should have known better” reeks of “well you shouldn’t have gone out wearing such a short skirt” to me.

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Wow.

Just wow.

I haven’t been on the WK community in a few days but it seems a lot has happened since. @anon85167355 I know this has been said a million times already but thank you for speaking out about this. The kind of courage it takes to do what you did is… well, I can only hope that I’d have done the same in your shoes. So, I really appreciate it.

I also really appreciate how supportive everyone has been. It’s unfortunate that this has occurred on a website like WaniKani of all places, but I’m glad to see (almost) everyone responding in a positive manner. I am a firm believer that any negative situation can be turned into a positive one as long as people learn from it and take action. I’m glad to see my beliefs being justified.

There is no point in trying to judge the past. No amount of “what ifs” or “should haves” will ever change it. What you do have is the present, and through your actions the ability to make a positive change for the future. At least, that is what I think.

So thank you again, and everyone else who has spoken up. It is a reminder that no place is truly safe, and I will be more vigilant in the future in light of it.

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It is very easy for more experienced people to not remember a time where they were less experienced themselves. The fact that something has become second nature to them (i.e. people on the internet could be dangerous) and them act so harsh about it is because they cant imagine people not knowing.

I do not agree with the statements made but I also do not agree with calling everything victim blaming. There is a fine line between saying what is and blaming the victim. And the thing is, the writer could think the line is not even close to what he said whilst other people think the poster crossed it by a mile.

I am a firm believer in common sense, but I also am well aware that you can’t expect common sense about a topic people were never instructed in.

TL:DR not everything people see as victim blaming is intended as such. Might be a clumsy way of actually saying something helpfull. And it just coming out wrong.

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Yes. And in my opinion, the forums were actually worse than they were with them in. People had to start slack/skype groups or reply to threads just to have the same type of functionality. PM’s are not at fault, sickos are at fault. PM’s are a tool you should know about and use wisely, just like any other tool in your area of interest.

Nobody knows what truly happened with the parties besides the parties themselves (and this argument goes both ways, nobody knows what happened, we all have the same information). What I know is: a young girl was having a chat with a perv in PM’s, she figured out he was a perv and she cut communications with him.

Good, I’m with you 100% so far. What she should’ve done next is contact the authorities with this information, especially if she knew the guy was grooming a 15-year-old. This is a slam-dunk conviction. What she shouldn’t have done is go to WK and immediately start a thread while still being clearly very emotionally charged over the whole thing here (go read the original thread again, you can’t tell me this is untrue). Nothing will get done this way besides the guy getting kicked (but still able to roam free doing whatever he wants) and PM’s taken away from everyone as a result.

Again, this is not a hard fix: educate instead of taking the toys away. Be proactive about internet safety, not possessive about basic forum features.

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You are not the victim here, and telling one what they should or shouldn’t do is very easy to do from a distance. That may be your slam-dunk conviction, but I do not share it. (As an aside, perhaps she has gone to the authorities. Are we really privy to every single detail of how she coped with this? Are we to hold court over the rightness or wrongness of her actions?)

I am personally glad that she made a post about it, emotionally-charged or not, and that it was left public.

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I am about to become the victim of a headache over this goalpost shifting. The thread is about Forum Safety and the Disabling of PMs. Dragging the “victim” word into the issue over and over again is pointless, you guys are doing that because you know that PMs have nothing to do with this, PMs should not have been disabled and that’s what I’m advocating for.

I sure do hope she told her parents to contact the authorities! It’s the most common sense thing people could do over supposedly a confirmed pedophile, though you never know with society nowadays.

That empathy thing… you lack it.

If there were a way to algorithmically scan PMs or threads for warning signs, like requests for personal information, and add a banner like “Hey, this could be bad. If you feel even a little uncomfortable, read this article, and don’t be afraid to involve someone you trust or reach out to a forum admin.”, I could see a path to both goals being satisfied. I’d like them back, too, as a means of noise-control, even though I’ve personally only sent, like, three, but removing them seems to be the obvious lesser of two evils.

But, speaking from an engineering perspective, it is extremely difficult to get people to educate themselves without sufficient context for them to understand why they should care, the “this doesn’t apply to me” concept discussed about a hundred posts back.

I do agree that the authorities should have been informed (and for all we know, they were: I don’t know what Tofugu’s legal responsibilities or constraints are in disclosing contact information cases like this, but I know the police in my city take these cases very seriously and it just requires one call from concerned parents [I haven’t asked for permission from the victim to disclose details about the situation, but it was similar and progressed further], and if they find something, the fact that the two are in different countries could be used to put travel restrictions in place if the investigation concludes that there’s a legitimate risk). However, while sharing the message in the thread as it was seems objectively immature, that’s at the heart of this whole situation: the victim IS immature (and shouldn’t have to get life lessons this way – nobody should); that’s why they were targeted; an emotional cry is very much within the domain of reasonable reactions.

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This thread is about discussing the validity of PMs and ways to improve forum safety. If you want to talk about what we at WaniKani should do vis a vis PMs, go ahead. This thread is NOT here to say what other people should or shouldn’t have done, or to pass judgment on that.

Keep this thread on topic and avoid personal attacks. I’m only going to say this once.

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Don’t know if this suggestion has already been made, but what about some form of profile messages? They would be public, but still enable users to talk to other users outside of the context of a specific forum topic. I think it might be a good compromise for people who want PMs back.

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Right, right, sorry, I saw red there for a moment. I can safely say what I posted wouldn’t have helped things.

CyrusS beat me to it, but I’d like to add that it is perfectly acceptable to have differing opinions without insulting someone. Regardless of what you think of this situation, insulting someone adds no value to the conversation.

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There`s no need to bring some grand engineering strategy into this. When users are signing up, it’s sufficient to merely say something akin to:

"Wanikani has a dedicated forum full of wonderful people that are just as interested in learning Japanese as you are! Feel free to take full advantage of it, but please keep the following things in mind:

  • Do not disclose private information with anyone. This goes for the internet as a whole, not just the Wanikani forums. As a rule of thumb, if you can’t trust them enough to let them into your house, you shouldn’t be telling them where you live.

  • If someone is harassing you over PM’s, use the block feature to shut them out. No need to deal with this kind of crap here! If repeated attempts persist from alt-accounts, please contact the Wanikani support team immediately and we’ll deal with it.

While we all deserve to make full use of the Crabigator’s realm, internet safety is a serious issue that has to be taken seriously. Click here if you agree to start using the forums. It’s a hundred lashings if you ignore this warning!"

It should be simple, short and something users will read more often than not (hence why they have to read it to go to the forum, but short and flashy enough that it’ll fit on a single page). They cannot use the forums unless they agree with these terms.

If they don’t read it but still click through, well I’m afraid the onus is not just on the site proprietor to educate his users, the user has to put in the minimal amount of effort too. It’s the exact same deal with WK: you can’t just come here, stare at the screen and expect to learn kanji, you have to put in the legwork yourself. The tools are at your disposal, use them wisely.

Edit: I am even okay with having PM’s be disabled for underage kids as a form of parental control. Honestly, this sort of thing would not work on other sites, but since WK requires a subscription it could work very well since kids will invariably have to ask their parents for their credit cards when signing up for services like this, which should act as a filter of sorts.

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Thanks, I’m glad we can get back on topic.

Absolutely. Disagree all you’d like, especially with us. The intention isn’t to stifle the discussion. Given the circumstances, the tolerance for inappropriate behavior towards other users (and what’s considered inappropriate) is going to be low, so just keep it polite. :+1:

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