TomBobBlender Forums

I wanted to address something that many people seem to be confused on how to deal with: issues with other users.

Obviously, if a user is breaking any of our rules (harassment, trolling, flaming, etc.), they will be dealt with as soon as the behavior is brought to our attention. If you are victim to this kind of behavior and there seems to be no action being taken, it may be that the mods simply aren't watching the chat. Send us a message to let us know and it will be dealt with. That being said, understand that when problems occur via PM with another user, there is not a whole lot we are able to do. The reason being that most chat clients have an option to block PMs from users, and that, unlike messages in the main chat, you have the option of closing them without reading them. THAT IS NOT GIVING ANYONE PERMISSION TO HARASS ANYONE VIA PM. You still have the option of contacting Rizon and reporting their behavior, because if it's breaking the normal rules of our main chat, it's most likely breaking their server rules. If you're not sure how to go about it, feel absolutely free to contact a moderator about how to do so and we'll help you out. But be warned that if it's an issue that can easily be solved by ignoring the user, then that's most likely what Rizon will tell you to do (if you're on a client that allows it).

Now. If you are having issues with a user OUTSIDE the chat, that is something that YOU and the other user need to take care of between yourselves. If it carries over into the chat, the parties involved will be warned. If they do not comply, they WILL be removed; it is not fair to subject the rest of the chat to your outside problems, and causing drama in the chat room is against our rules. All parties involved need to either exit the chat until they can resolve it, or simply deal with the presence of the others in the chat without causing issues. However, that does not mean that you cannot contact a moderator about the issues. While we may not be able to do anything about it (issues outside the chat are out of our power), we can at least lend an open ear. We may even be able to help settle the issues via PM.

All in all, if you are having issues, always, ALWAYS feel free to contact a moderator about it. That's what we're there for. I can certainly speak for myself that if I'm logged on, I'm actually at my computer (very rarely am I logged on and afk). So for at least myself, you may feel free to contact me about anything. I've been told I'm good for giving advice. Most importantly, enjoy yourselves in the chat!

In addition to what Yuki said, I'd like to explain exactly why problems in private messages are mostly out of our hands.

On an IRC network, there are two ways a user can communicate with other users: Channels and private messages. Channels are denoted by a # prefix and private messages are on a user to user basis. Channels and private messages are completely independent from each other. Because of their independence, private messages are difficult, if not impossible, for us to control. They are a network form of communication. That means that a user can contact another user without being in the same channel as them. Because of this, private message harassment is unsolvable by just removing a user from the channel because the harassment can continue even with the ban in place. That makes private message harassment a network issue, not a community issue.

Even at that, there are things you can do to prevent the harassment. As Yuki said, use your client's ignore feature to easily prevent another user from contacting you. In this case, the server will still send the message, but your client won't show it to you. There may also be server features to help you with this, so try looking into that.

If you ignore a user, but they abuse nicks, proxies, or vhosts to harass you, it becomes a problem the network admins can help you with. At this point, it becomes necessary to /join #help and tell them about your problem since there is nothing you nor we can do.